Football-The Flag Edition

Yesterday was FE's first football game. He plays flag football with the YMCA. Now, I am the first to admit, I generally take my sports pretty seriously. As in I can tell you where the teenager's team is ranked in their division and by which newspaper. I can cheer with the loudest of them. I question officiating. But this? this is YMCA flag football. For 9-12 year olds. It's been several years since we've played YMCA sports, but prior to our break, the teenager played for 10 seasons and SB for one. Mark coached every single one of those teams. He's unable to coach at the point, but the coach FE has is really awesome and laid back. As you must be at this level.

Well, the coach from the other team? And the parents? Oh. My. Gosh. I knew we were in trouble when the coaches walked up with headsets on. Headsets for gosh sakes. To talk to each other. On the field. And a playbook 10 inches thick. And separate coaches for offense and defense. My brother and I were dying laughing. I mean, the fact that I didn't fall off of my chair is really remarkable. And then? Once the game started? They were obnoxious. They complained to the ref that one of the boys was too tall to be 12, that our coach was subbing too many players at a time, too many men in motion. Seriously? The wife of the coach was looking up things in the rule book because she thought we were breaking too many rules. And another dad from that team, was walking up and down the sidelines taking notes. You would think, the way these people were acting, that all the college scouts in the state would be skipping high school football this week and heading straight for the YMCA flag football field. I am so not kidding. The ball was too slippery, the ground was too wet, the jerseys were too close in color so their kid couldn't know who to throw, and on and on and on. After I finished laughing, I was so thankful that we ended up on a team with an extremely laid back coach. And in the end, even with all their obnoxiousness, we won, by more than should be allowed in this type of game. Since they didn't score at all.