A quiet quiet quiet weekend around here. Only Matthew and Kevin in this report.
Matthew: Lost 24-22 to Holt.
You can click on this picture to watch all of the Matthew highlights:
If you just want the two best highlights, click on the next picture:
This game had it all, highs, low, controversy. Glad the team played better than last week. Glad they played more than well enough to win. They also played poorly enough to lose.
Suzanne brought the camera and took a bunch of photos during the game while I videotaped. Matthew continued his kicking duties and crushed a lot of kickoffs…..one kickoff bounced all the way to the 10-yard line; wish our coverage was a little bit better, a lot of these good kicks went to waste.
The team is divided up into a RED team and a WHITE TEAM; Matthew is a linebacker and fullback for the red team….
But, since some teams are just bigger than us, the coaches have made a PINK team. They’ve stated that it’s the biggest players on the two teams, and that’s true I guess. It’s also the best players on the two teams. Matthew plays tight end on this team, and you can see above, he’s playing defensive end.
Matthew likes when he is a defensive end and the other team puts the tight end on the other side of the field…..a free shot at the quarterback. And this was a good play EXCEPT for the tackle, which isn’t low, and the qb spins away from him after a second or two. Matthew does hold him long enough for the rest of the team to show up for a five yard loss….
Two pictures from one run that didn’t go well….no hole in the line means it’s hard to even get a yard (and I think that’s what he got here, one yard).
They were winning 8-0 at the half, we scored, and Matthew missed this extra point, so, it was 8-6. We never got those two points back throughout the game. What happened? Matthew said afterwards he thought it wasn’t a good hold, but, watching the tape, that’s not the case…he just mishit it (ball hit the line, wasn’t even close…)
This is the next kickoff…I think he was a little mad because he crushed it; this is the one that bounces back to the 10.
Picture 1 of 9: Matthew only has two plays for him when he is full back; 31 dive and 32 dive, simple runs right up the middle…
Picture 2 of 9: Sometimes a hole is not there, he can either hit that hole and see what he can get or try and kick it outside. He has been encouraged by his coaches to just hit the hole and see what he can get. He has had some success doing both. All of that doesn’t matter here; his teammates opened up a huge hole!
Picture 3 of 9: Matthew is past the line and cutting right..the two linebackers are coming up to tackle him.
Picture 4 of 9: They have him. But, they, like Matthew earlier, make the mistake that 90% of the kids make on every tackle at this level…..they are too high.
Picture 5 of 9: And if you are high, and the guy you are trying to tackle is big and good, you might not make the tackle, even if there are two of you. Or even three of you, as the one safety is going to come up since the linebackers aren’t getting it done.
Picture 6 of 9: The safety, in the end, isn’t a lot of help. Matthew is moving away from the linebackers at this point and the safety, while he hits Matthew low, does not wrap up…and Matthew is strong enough to break that tackle and the safety now stops/trips the linebackers so Matthew is able to pull away…
Picture 7 of 9: Matthew pulling away.
Picture 8 of 9: The wide receiver makes a nice block to get one guy chasing Matthew…
Picture 9 of 9: But Matthew is built for rugged fullback type play and has slowly evolved away from being very speedy (he is fast, but, certainly not the fastest). And the safety catches him 55 yards down the field…
Picture 1 of 7: Matthew’s other big play came from the tight end position; a tight end reverse. They ran it early in the game and didn’t get much…any kind of penetration along the line really screws things up since Matthew travels so close to the line….
Picture 2 of 7: But, the line was awesome again here…you can see one Holt guy getting pancaked! The two running backs have hit the two guys on the end, and Matthew is cutting back upfield into this huge hole.
Picture 3 of 7: So, yeah, it’s easy to rack up big gains when there is absolutely nobody in front of you. The line of scrimmage was the 25 so Matthew, for all of his running across the formation, is only now back at the line of scrimmage.
Picture 4 of 7: Big hole means a big gain…
Picture 5 of 7: Nobody even touches Matthew until….
Picture 6 of 7: …he’s at least 8 yards downfield….
Picture 7 of 7: And you can see the horde of Holt players really on him at the 15. The sweetest part of this play is he dragged this pile another 5 yards to the 10. We scored on the next play.
We had our chances to win, but man, I’ve seen some bad refs in soccer and can’t recall being as mad about the refs as I was at the end of this game. Every time we would line up to go “hurry-up” on offense the ref would make us stop and wait for the defense. Twice we didn’t wait, he through a flag! One was for delay of game(!) the second one was for an illegal shift, you literally can call illegal shift on every play at this level…somebody is moving a little bit. Unbelievable…let the kids play.
Kevin: Went with the tennis team to Holly for the Holly Invitational……eight teams, each flight in a 8-team bracket. So, basically quarterfinals, semi-finals, and final matches, with consolation games as necessary.
Match 1: Beat Grand Blanc 6-0, 6-0. I thought that all of these teams at this invite were pretty good so not sure what to think of this. Kevin, always optimistic, said that Ross and him just played awesome….which has to be true to win –0 and –0.
Match 2: Lost to Midland Dow 7-5, 6-2. A better showing than Kevin and Parth made 2 months back and Kevin says (to him at least) that it was closer than it looked, especially in the second set…he says a lot of the games went to deuce before being decided. I guess it’s progress.
Match 3: Beat Rochester Adams 6-3, 7-5 to finish in 3rd place.
