Fall Football(!) – Game 5: The Video

I think I clipped more ‘plays’ of the boys for this game than any other so far…..clicking on the photos (any of them) takes you to the video….

Matthew is standing at the 45 yard line as this play starts…..doesn’t go well for the defense as the Grand Ledge back gets the first down and Matthew is there for the group tackle at the end…..

I think this is the same drive, 2nd and 12.   This play was featured in the picture post; Matthew darts in and makes the tackle and holds on until his teammates can arrive and clean up

First play from scrimmage after the defense stops them on fourth down.  Cpher is lined up on the far left; you can see the moose from GL across from him.  Cpher hold his block a long(!) time, and it pays off as the running back comes back and uses that block to cut up field and go for the 80 yard touchdown….

I like this play a lot….Matthew is charging forward before the snap and recognizes that it’s a qb keeper….he changes direction and shadows the guy outside and does NOT over commit, the guy slows down, and instead of the usual get-outside-and-get-a-big-gain we turn this into a loss….

Another play featured in the pictures; the moose is so preoccupied with Cpher he doesn’t even look or move at the ball carrier…..

Matthew did a great job of jumping the snap count and heading for the backfield this game….this is a solo tackle in the backfield for a loss.  Sadly, he’s not staying low on his tackles and he pays for that later on….

This play is quick, I’m late getting to the record button.  Cpher uses his favorite move, the swim move, to go around the moose and throws the other kid double teaming him out of the way.  The ball went the other way, so, it’s all for naught, but, I liked it…..

Our two biggest kids, Cpher and Brock, make this tackle.  Feel bad for the GL running back, because he got crushed….

Cpher got yelled at from the sideline by the coaches after the play that he “gave up”….we talked about it on the drive home because that’s sure what it looked like.  Turns out he ‘swims’ to get away from the Moose, gets held, breaks free in one direction (but not upfield, which is the big problem), gets pushed, and is completely going the wrong way as the running back comes through….

Matthew gets his turn against the Moose…..

This is the play where Matthew gets hurt.  he is clearly moving towards the line before the ball is snapped and you can hear the hit clearly. 

Academics, Athletics, and Miscellany

An update in five parts:

Matthew:  They made the change this year to not have letter grades in fourth grade, so, it’s a bit harder to tell how Matthew is doing from an endless series of checkmarks, and check-pluses, and the occasional check-minus (had two of these the first week, none since).  The general sense is he’s doing fine; breezing through the spelling, no problems with the reading, and doing well in math.  He’s been reading a lot of boy-in-nature books recently, to tie in with his overwhelming desire to fish every day.

He has been….difficult…in getting his homework done, and he’s 45% of the reason that there’s a new rule in the house, no screens (TV, Ipod, whatever) until the homework, all of the homework, is done.

Christopher:  50% of the reason the new rule is in place…..fifth grade has produced a huge upswing in homework, and, in the best of times, Cpher has never been focused enough to get through things quickly and correctly.  

Doing very well in social studies and science (his grades are online now, similar to Kevin’s)……doing ok in reading and writing.  Did not get off to a good start in math…..a little too much focus on reading this summer maybe?  We’ve been doing extra problems at night and the stupid errors seem to be disappearing.

He qualified, through reading scores last year, for extra help and because of some new mandates they only time he, and other kids, can get that help is during social studies.  We had a meeting with the teacher and ended that…he’s getting focused reading enrichment from his tutor (we found out recently that other parents have Laurie work a lot on that kids homework.  We never do that….) and wanted him to be in social studies, which he enjoys.  We reviewed the test results, and he only barely qualified….he is a slow reader, but, is now reading on grade level.

Cello goes well……don’t think he’s at the point of playing a song yet, but, getting there.  Seems to grasp the concepts easily enough, but, don’t think I’ll find him writing music anytime soon.

Kevin:  I wonder, a lot, what having computer access to my grades would have meant for me in high school (aside from more arguments…).   I wonder, a lot, how Suzanne and my aptitude for math didn’t come through genetically AT ALL in our kids.

Asked, begged, Kevin to get his act together for the start of school.  Not so much.  Carrying a low B in pre-calc honors…..parents have moved into full remedial measure mode (homework will be done upstairs now, not in his room) and have denied him privileges (tennis is done, so, he can take the second part of drivers training anytime now….won’t happen until this situation improves, and the delay may jeopardize his getting a license on 12/12).  Kevin has told us that it IS a lack of effort that has him here, so, we’re not thrilled about that

Everything else goes as it should, he’s slipped at times but has the grades he should have in the other courses.  He’s just killing German, he said 75% of his class failed the latest test on present verbs and he was the only one to get an ‘A’.  He’s the only underclassman selected for the German foreign exchange program…..

Athletics:  Both boys tried out for travel basketball.  Matthew made one of the two fourth grade teams….they say they are split evenly but I don’t see that, his team looks like the ‘A’ team to me.  Since they didn’t have a coach for the other fourth grade team until late, that kind of supports my theory, they took the top eleven and put them on the team they had since, if a coach wasn’t found, the next group would have to go back to rec basketball.

Christopher made the ‘A’ team as well.  Barely.  I should, and will, write a more detailed post on this later, since his Dad the assistant coach is a reason he’s on the ‘A’ team……

Miscellany:  Mostly a catch-all for Kevin activities….he’s trying out for All-State again in two weeks and he’s participating in Quiz Bowl.  They have a four person team, and he seems to be the first alternate and resident-geography expert.  Like tennis, Kevin doesn’t seem to be on top of the events like he could be and this gets his parents on him more than he would like (said he needed to be at the TV station for a taping at 7:15….Mom and Kevin arrive at 7;15 and turns out it’s 7…and they can’t get into the studio….)

He may appear on TV later this year….they post the episodes on the internet so we’ll keep people updated…..

Fall Futbol – Game 8: The Video

It’s taken me a while to get these up here.  Click on the pictures to get to the video….

Goal Number One:  You can hear the coach call out to the ref to find out if the kick is indirect or direct and then has Matthew take the kick. 

 

He nails the kick; it hits the wall and deflects in for the goal.  He (and the team) are lucky that his teammate that was on the goalie didn’t touch the ball (and it was a close thing) because if he had we would have been called for offsides and that would be that.  I’m not sure that his buddy Greg even realized he was offsides; we had a similar play on the other end (where I was standing and filming) and we had to call out to him when he did the exact same thing that he was offsides……

I kept the camera on Matthew after the goal….you can note the excessive celebration.

Goal Number Two:  He did what his coach wants him to do…step in and control the ball, and in this case, take the shot.  Their goalie was out of the goal a long way for some reason, and Matthew made him pay for it.

I was surprised that I captured this on tape……I think the next thing I say after I shut off the camera to the guy next to me was “There’s no way I got that”….but I did do a good job of tracking the ball, up to the point where Matthew hit and all the way to the goal.  Yea me.  Totally missed the celebration though…..

Tennis

Not a lot of talk about the tennis meets here……probably should have paid more attention here EVEN THOUGH Kevin mailed it in this year.  As discussed before, I went to one meet where he had been buried on the depth chart and it wasn’t fun watching him play down to the level of his competition…..Suzanne went to one meet and came away not-very-happy with Kevin’s performance (couldn’t get his serve in, etc.)

The tennis *has* improved as the year has gone on….he’s worked his way back up to #3 singles and unlike last year where he was #3 singles and would lose more often then win it’s been the reverse this year…he’s beaten everyone he’s faced.  There was a JV invite in Holt a few weeks back that he won, bringing home a medal, and he’s recorded convincing wins against the other players he has faced since then.

  

So the big unanswered question is, what next?  The varsity team is losing 5-6 players…..Kevin should have a great shot at making varsity *if* he applies himself.  Mom and Dad have made it clear….we’ll pay for lessons (and we think he needs private lessons to ‘fix’ some of his form issues) but Kevin *must* put in more time than just the lesson for us to shell out the money for the lessons (not cheap!). 

 

These pictures are from the last match; against Lansing Catholic’s JV.  Kevin won 6-3, 6-2.  His serve looked about 1000% better than earlier in the year when I first was watching him, and when he gets his first serve in it’s a pretty good serve and he’s going to dominate off of it.  His height helps him here, and he does run better than most of his teammates (he just proved to us that he can still run a 6-minute mile without having been running in over a year)

Earned this for last year’s grades (above a 3.0) and this year’s performance.

Kevin ended up playing in two varsity invites…..so, he lettered this year as well. 

Fall Football(!) – Game 5

Host another one of the endless Grand Ledge teams (this is team #7….there are 10 of them).  Win 26-8…..like futbol, there will be another post coming with the video….this is just the pictures. 

By the way, I realized I didn’t have the hyperlinks for the video from the last game; I fixed that.

We’ll go boy by boy…….

Cpher:  Did something in this game that I’ve been asking him to do for a while…..sustain his blocks.  Our second touchdown of the game it’s really obvious….he blocks and blocks and blocks this huge kid and the running back runs the other way and comes all the way back over to Cpher’s side…where Cpher is still blocking, and goes the distance.

 

You can see Cpher here, getting ready to go into his stance, and across the way is the huge kids from GL.  I don’t think any team has had a player taller than Cpher, but several (including ours) have players heavier.  This moose from GL was about 30 pounds heavier……

 

Cpher reports that, aside from being huge, the moose wasn’t very nice….shared some choice words with Cpher (and Matthew, who also got a chance to block him)

 

This is one of the better pictures…..Suzanne got a new lens for the camera for her birthday and this was the one photo I could really notice how much better it can zoom in….you can see freckles on Cpher’s face. 

This is at the start of the play….it looks like a double-team but is mostly Cpher….

There are about five picture between the first one and this one….Cpher has held the block so long that you can see the other offensive lineman looking upfield at where the running back went.   It’s not often that someone can toss Cpher to the ground, but, after blocking for a bunch of seconds the guy finally got enough leverage to get rid of him….

I think Cpher had two or three tackles during the game….this is one of them and not one of his best efforts….a little too high but I’m not sure he could have done much else….

 

He’s not getting away….I think Cpher holds him up and Brock there just clobbers the guy to clean up…

Matthew:  Looks like Matthew’s time at running back is going to be limited to one game…..he’s back to the OL and linebacker.  I’d love to see him run that play one more time now that we’ve talked it over so much, but, doesn’t seem like that’s going to happen.

 

Saw a lot of action at linebacker again…..made a couple of very nice tackles.  The next four or five pictures are the first of those tackles…a nice burst into the backfield and a tackle for a loss

 

 

The guy tries a stiff-arm……

 

but Matthew holds on……

 

 

and holds on and holds on and the gang arrives to finish this off….

 

Did a good job on the OL as well; more than held his own against the Moose.  Had a scare at the end of the game that you can see on the video….he was back in on defense and was doing what he does…charging into a hole and I’m still not sure what happened.  I know that he wasn’t low….and that’s the big problem, but Matthew claims he never saw the running back…..

The running back certainly saw him, and had about a milli-second to lower his helmet before hitting Matthew, both of them moving at about full speed, head on.  Matthew went down, and stayed down for about 10 seconds.  He finally walked off, and in the end it was his chin that hurt more than anything (which makes sense if the running back got just a little lower)…..but, it wasn’t a good moment.

Fall Futbol – Game 8

Another two-fer on Saturday; football(!) starting at 10:45 and futbol at 2 pm in Novi.  Dad realizes, after we’ve left, that he forgot to pack Matthew’s soccer cleats….looks like he’ll be battling in his football(!) cleats (no metal spikes, so, we’re good).

 

This, and the next five pictures, are Matthew taking a free kick.  He lines up a very long distance away from the ball…..sometimes Mom and Dad think he lines up too far back.  Not all of the pictures below are in the best focus, but, they do tell the story….

 

 

This game was different; we had a new goalie, a boy from the other team who was playing really well, and, a strange thing occurred….we had a lead at halftime, 2-1.

You can clearly see the black/blue football(!) cleats here.  This boy, we think, hasn’t scored a goal for TNT since last April, by Suzanne and my estimation.  He started the scoring today…..had a direct kick when their goalie left the box on a goal kick and got called for a hand ball.  So, for the first time in a long time, we’ll have a futbol-video post soon.

A little too much celebration after the goal for Mom and Dad’s taste…..don’t mind the shenanigans in these photos…do mind when he went to the ground and did some sort of breast-stroke motion.

We may have to bring his football(!) cleats to more games….we went down 3-2 in the second half and Matthew put in a ball from about 40 yards out to tie them game up.  Just one of those plays he needs to make on defense…he stepped up to stop a ball from coming back out and the other team having a counter-attack and just boomed it into the net.  I didn’t think I caught this goal on video but it turns out that I actually got all of it quite well…..

The celebration was a little more subdued this time.

Sadly, the team, collectively, hit a wall about 45 minutes in, and we lost 5-3. This game was a definite improvement, and definitely got Matthew’s attention about getting in shape (or better said, getting in better shape).  He played the whole game, all 60 minutes.  If Matthew is going to log these type of minutes in these games (and it looks like he will be) he absolutely needs to be in the type of shape that he can run and run and run and run for these minutes…

Fall Football(!) – Game 4

A very cold morning and a 9 am kickoff against East Lansing….

Seems like the EL football admins need to rethink things….they look to have had 27-28 kids try out and made the questionable decision to make two teams.  Today is the downside….they barely had 11 players to start the game and had one or two more trickle in after kickoff.  So, we knew right away that we were going to roll all over them.  And we did, the third mercy rule game out of four, a 28-0 shelllacking.

Not many highlights here…..and what highlights that I did keep are only of Matthew……Christopher had a good game, but, just didn’t have any one single play that I could point at as a highlight.  EL had one unique feature, a 192-lb monster-of-a-girl(!) playing on the line…..she was big, but not fast, and played very similar to Cpher (engage the other player, but, not necessarily stay engaged with that player to the end of the play).  She could push our smaller kids around but had trouble with Cpher and the other two big kids on the team.

I told Matthew, you do what they ask you to do, you show what you can do, and you’ll get your shot….He’s lined up here in the backfield, first play of the game, and he takes the ball for a 4 yard gain. 

Matthew’s second decent chance at a run (he had one other chance, but he tripped over the QB’s feet and went down.  This play is the big learning experience from the game, he heads outside like all of the other running backs do, but, he’s not as fast as the other two speedsters and the defense catches him for a loss.

Matthew and I have talked extensively about this play (it’s been nice, he’s started the conversation a few different times after our original talk).  In flag football, he was the fastest, and he could get outside and nail this play.  Here, he’s not (he’s slowed down compared to others, and, he’s playing against older kids).  The move here, and you can see it where I stopped the play above, is to cut in and head upfield and gain yardage, not head outside and lose yardage.  While he’s not as fast as he once was, he is bigger and stronger, and unlike those speedsters, can break a tackle or two….

It’s been a fun week talking about this with Matthew; like the first quarter of linebacker play where he laid back and wasn’t aggressive while he soaked in the game, I’m betting his runs this weekend will look a little different than his three attempts this game.

Matthew’s second fumble recovery of the year.  This time though, it’s not ruled a fumble and EL keeps the ball.  Earlier in the game, the referees blew a very obvious fumble that EL recovered and gave us the ball back…..and the EL coach went nuts, called timeouts to delay the end of the half to continue to rant at the referees and make a point.  This play, in the third quarter, was the make-up call.  Matthew as a little confused why we didn’t get the ball….

Matthew loved EL; “Dad, their guards never blocked anyone!”.  This play he blows through the line and makes the tackle….