Kevin: Varsity Fall sports started practice Wednesday…..unlike previous years Kevin is a lock for the varsity team this year. His partner from last year, Ross, is not coming back this year so there will be a new partner for the upcoming season. This looks to be sophomore Adham; he has been aggressive about getting Kevin to practice with him this summer and they have been playing against the #1 doubles team a lot. I’d be shocked if Kevin and Adham weren’t the #2 doubles team from the start of the season through the end of the season.
Cpher: Seventh grade football brings a new development; no coaches on the field. So, all plays have to be run in from the sideline, and a whole lot more memorization must occur. Doesn’t really affect the big guy….he needs to know a few basics that help determine formation direction and ball direction and he is good to go.
(lots of controversy over this banner that is on the website…the school district has adopted the ‘O’ and the name as the standard logo and banned Native American imagery…..which seems like a big overreaction to me since the whole community is named for an actual person, and the imagery is as close a representation to him as is possible. The youth football program, which is not legally associated with the school district but uses the facilities, has kept and continued to sell gear with the imagery)
There will be two seventh-grade teams again….the mantra here is that is good for playing time and development and bad for actual results. Probably a good thing overall for the program that there continues to be just enough kids to have two teams; sounds like each team will have 15 or 16….
Noticeable at practice that for one reason or another (different growth spurts?) Cpher is again the tallest, and this time he finally seems to have half an inch or an inch on his buddy Mason.
Seven games for seventh graders this season also…..not sure if we get one in before Labor Day or not.
Matthew: Soccer discussed ad nauseum elsewhere; looks like Monday and Thursday are half football days (start at soccer, end at football); Tuesdays will be all soccer, Wednesdays will be all football.
(Chief John….”In 1839, the settlement of Hamilton was founded by Freeman Bray (Bray Mill occupied approximately the space of Ferguson Park) as a trading point with the surrounding Ojibwa people and as a farming community. After 20 years of being known as Hamilton, the non-native settlers chose to replace Alexander Hamilton as the namesake of their young settlement in 1859, the year after the Chief died. By this act, it is obvious that John O. must have been a popular and revered man to be given such an honor, especially when the popular opinion at the time was not necessarily favorable toward Native Americans.”)
Yesterday he was kicking the football with his buddy Greg before practice started; I missed the start of this fun while watching Cpher but finally noticed the kicking and had to text Suzanne “Holy Hell can that kid kick a football!”. Easily getting the ball almost 40 yards in the air….was definitely out-booting Greg by a good 10 yards on each opportunity.
Sixth grade, surprisingly, will also be two teams. This is a good thing for Matthew, I was afraid with having to miss so much practice due to soccer that if there was one large team it would be very easy to not see a lot of Matthew on the field. But, with only 15 or 16 kids on each team, there will certainly be a lot of opportunity for Matthew to play.
Not surprisingly (to me at least) today finds Matthew about back with a tee booting the ball around….and a renewed commitment to spend some time early at practice or after practice kicking footballs.
