Watching my son play full contact football at 8 years old is one of the high points of my life. I see a drive, a determination, and a true love for the game, like I have. He also is out sized in most cases, like I was. His continued effort that I have seen him put out at all six practices has made me very proud. Tonight not only was I allowed to be proud, I was "WOWED" along with most of the people watching practice.
Many of these kids are rather drama princess like in regards to injuries. They twist their ankle, "Coach I broke my leg" the break a nail "Coach my arm is broke". So far Billy hasn't done that once. He got a bloody nose and kept on fighting his second night of practice, though many of the kids thought he was dying. Now I understand that you cannot get a true reading of talent at the 8 year old level of football, but you can sure as hell see what they have in the heart department.....and my Billy is FUCKING STACKED.
They were running a drill and Billy happend to be the ball carrier.....he got lit up! He hit the ground back first and came up gasping. I ran over and so did his coach. He got the wind knocked out of him, which is an impossible injury to fake....you can breathe or you can't. He fought with tears as me and the coach had him hold his arms up and about 30 seconds later he was fine. The coach asked if he wanted to go sit down and Billy said "No coach I want to go run the ball". I of course grinned, shrugged at the coach and he set Billy up with the ball again.......and then came "the run".
Let me back track real quick before I dip into the awesomeness of "the run". The yeti that hit my son is one of the biggest kids on the team and has 20 to 30 pounds on my boy. He is from what I can tell going to grow up to be an idiot like his father. I say this because they both grinned and the father was chuckling as my son fought for air. I thank them though, because Billy heard it, and he answered it.
So the coach gives Billy the ball and they get lined back up. Billy takes off, ignores the hole that his blockers made for him, turns the corner, and explodes toward the yeti. I cringed a bit at first because he wasn't following his blockers, but I grinned....seriously grinned before Billy made contact. The contact was amazing, but not as amazing as the yeti flying out of bounds and landing on his back as Billy ran 20 yards untouched into the endzone. I do not have much more to say about this except I am proud that he got back up, fought through the pain, and righted a wrong. He also saved me from knocking the fathers remaining 3 teeth out. I guess tonight though, I watched my son sweat out the last bit of breastmilk.
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