The State Championship

You all know that Sport has been playing Little League Football. This is his first year and he plays on what’s called a Gremlin team. That means the boys are 8 and 9 years old. In August at the beginning of the season, Sport was barely 8 and not all that excited to play. My sweetie is of the opinion that pee-wee football is NOT an option.

So Sport attended tryouts and was placed on the Silver team with 19 other kids with varying degrees of skill. Of the 7 or 8 teams in the league, we were probably number 9. We had two brothers coaching our team and both were barely out of high school. Really, it was a recipe for disaster.

But somebody forgot to tell the team. These little guys played their hearts out every game. And those two young coaches were just the role models these kids needed. They understand the importance of team-building, so they had a pizza party and they took all the boys to the corn maze. August had the boys practicing for two hours 5 nights a week. When games finally started the first week in September, they settled down to three nights of practice and a game on Saturday.

The schedule was grueling for a third grader. Thankfully, Sport was off-track from school for 4 weeks of that time. The team started coming together after about the third game. By the end of league play, they were unstoppable!

The end of October and the final game put them as the number one seed heading into the playoffs. That was last week and it was crazy as we played in 4 inches of snow. In spite of the weather, Sport was finally loving the game…they trounced the other team.

So Saturday dawned bright and early. Sport was playing in the “State Championship.” All of his friends’ teams had already been eliminated and we were the favorite to win. During league play we beat this team 33 – 6, but that was early in the season and anything can happen.

Even though the weather was a bit dicey, we decided to take the kids. The Drama Queen offered to stay home with Baby Doll, Teach had to work, and the Dog Walker had a date to the big dance (I’ll show you pics of that tomorrow), other than that, we were a pretty big group. We screamed our lungs out!
The first quarter was brutal with both teams moving the ball less than 10 yards. Then right toward the end of the quarter, with Sport holding his place as an offensive lineman, they ran it 40 yards right up the middle to score the first touchdown of the game. They even managed to make the extra point! The game went scoreless after that into halftime.

Curly was so surprised and excited to see the “Blue Man” who had become the team mascot. Apparently those coaches have another brother…


The third quarter had lots of pushing, but no score from either team. The other team completed a pass even with the wind and cold, and got a first down, but couldn’t push the ball into the end zone.

About halfway through the fourth quarter, our boys managed a 70-yard touchdown to seal the win. We were so excited! The Gym Rat played 4 or 5 years of football and the Dog Walker played 8 and neither one of them ever won the championship game. And now Sport pulled it off in his very first year!

We celebrated by taking everyone to Chuck A Rama (an all-you-can-eat buffet). Sport refused to take off his pads and wandered the restaurant knocking people out of the way (just kidding)…he only pushed a little when his nephews were trying to get ahead of him in the dessert line. Sportsmanship is important in football, but when it comes to brownie sundaes, it’s every man for himself!

Here's a few more pics from the restaurant just for fun.