Saturday Morning Football

Jake was a little torn when it came to Optimist Football this year. We asked him a couple of times before football sign-ups if he was sure he wanted to play again this year for his first year of tackle. With all the concussion issue and health concerns, we have been secretly hoping that his interest in football would wane, but he was pretty insistent that he wanted to play this year.

Then he played several months of highly competitive baseball. His All-Stars Manager wanted him to play fall baseball to get some more work in another season, but he had committed to play football. Once the season and practices began, he said he wanted to quit so he could go play baseball, but we sat down and talked to him about it. We have always had a "no quit" policy once you start something and we explained that to him with regards to football. We told him that if he didn't want to play again next year, he didn't have to, but he had committed to this team for this year and we didn't feel right about him quitting. We also didn't want him to look back and regret quitting just because he didn't like all the hot summer practices. 

He has made a 180 degree turn since then. Now he loves it again and is already talking about next season. They finally won their first game of the season this morning. They had a very early kickoff at 8:30 in very crisp, fall like weather. The last few games they have really gotten man handled, but they held their own this weekend. Jake played the entire game at wide receiver and corner back. He had gotten some reps at QB during the week and will likely get some more this week en route to a starting slot in the next couple of weeks. 

He did really well today and held his own. He has no chice but to try to play bigger than he is and he did it today, taking on blockers that were much bigger than him and making plays in the secondary. He was really happy with his play today, and unless anything changes over the next few weeks, he will likely want to play again next year.

With that process still playing itself out, we just got notification that the three kids are all signed up and ready for basketball, starting in just a few weeks.