Flag Football

Football season is finally here. The good part of that is that it’s fall and that is my favorite time of year—not that we can tell the difference down here, other than it drops from 110 degrees to say 100, but in spirit it’s a great season. Of course it also means football season starts sticking its nose into our plans. Ever since BYU beat Oklahoma, Brandon has walked around with a goofy perma grin. It’s kind of awesome because I can get him to do pretty much anything now. Anyway, so Dallan and David started their first season of Flag Football and it has opened up an entirely new world/ecosystem to us.

First off it’s great because one of their coaches is a rather large brother of African persuasion—kind of a Bernie Mac model. This would be a first for the two boys—we catch them staring when he’s not looking.

But better than that are the football “moms” er hootie queens that run the team activities. To say they take it to a higher level would be somewhat insulting to all great world achievements. For example,

1. We are not just to cheer for the boys as they run around in circles trying to remember the little play carefully drawn up by their offensive coordinator, we’re to wear team colors and we have little cheers. Can’t really remember them—we were caught a little off guard at the game—the key is to keep from getting eye contact, then we can just pretend we missed the cue.

2. Brandon was standing on the sidelines peacefully watching the play unfolding until a scream behind him, usually reserved for people about to get hit by a car, about caused him to stop, drop, and roll, until he realized it was one of the queens reminding her son that he should probably run a little faster. She then let out a couple of hacks, then exclaimed, “damn I can’t even yell today.”

3. We also missed our cue that after the game, all the parents are to quickly run together an form a disco line facing each other, join hands in some kind of tunnel while they scream enthusiastically as the team (keep in mind that these are 7 year olds we’re talking about) run through their victory lap—or tunnel of shame as the case may be. Again, the key here is to avoid eye contact with the other parents.

4. But by far away the leading indicator that we’re operating in a completely different atmosphere came from an email preceding their first game where their coach proudly unveiled the team song, that his “contact in LA” mixed especially for his Chargers to get them amped up for the game (see link to hear this piece of melodic magic). The boys excitedly opened up the song, like an Ethiopian unwrapping a potato, only to hear something that is generally banned from our household. We had to explain that they were listening to Rap—Brandon has strict rules regarding the music allowed in our house—generally anything released prior to 1998. After listening to a few lines, Dallan wrinkled his nose and said, “How are we supposed to memorize THESE words?”

Well, knowing that the preparatory email was not enough to get the boys fully psyched, at the game one of the queens excitedly gathered all the players together and said, “I have a surprise for you!” and suddenly produced a small I-pod with even smaller speakers and pushed play. She hadn’t really accounted for the lack of acoustics that a large open, windy football field, with about 10 different games playing at once, afforded so she quickly started fiddling with the volume controls as nobody could really hear it, but I think the boys could feel the power of this masterpiece—as evidenced by their blank stares.

Actually the coaches are great—it’s great to see them teach the boys about hard work, preparation, and discipline. Saturday’s games were great; David’s team dominated and Dallan’s team were going after the sportsmanship trophy. Most importantly, the boys have a lot of fun and Brandon may actually get some company when he watches the BYU games, so he’s pleased.