May in the Tyler family can only mean one thing, Spring Football! Before I moved to Texas, I had no clue what this was...but here in the Lone Star State it's a really big deal :) The practice schedule is pretty much the same as the regular season and for most schools it ends with a spring football game where the team scrimmages against itself. Plano West does things a little differently and they have a scrimmage at the end of each week, for 4 total games. Either way, we love going and it always feels good to be at the stadium on a Friday night.
This is Stephen's first "official" spring season as a varsity coach. Last spring we knew and the coaching staff knew that Stephen was being moved up, but none of the players or parents knew...so we had to keep it a secret, which was SO hard!I actually missed the first game of the spring thanks to a 24 hr flu bug, so I don't have any pictures of that.
Scrimmage #2: this year the Wolves are carrying a combined roster of 171 players on JV and Varsity, WOW!
"Family"
That's Stephen at the top, at the right edge of the coaches.
Jake in his favorite place to watch the game, Grandma's lap: it was actually cold this game, even thought it was May in Texas.
Each spring there is a Family picnic after one of the scrimmages. All the players, coaches, and families head back to the indoor practic facililty and have BBQ and visit. We have been every year, even when Stephen was coaching at the feeder schools.
Someone is happy to see his Daddy :)
Playing soccer with all the coaches kids
His Aunt Dawn would be proud of his keeper skills!
After the picnic we walked to the baseball field to watch some Wolfpack baseball. We are good friends with the head baseball coach, he and Stephen coached middle school football together back at Renner and now they are both varsity coaches at West.
Scrimmage #3: Stephen's trademark "hands on the knees" stance.
This is Jake with his very favorite player, Ejoo. Stephen coached him when he was at Jasper HS and they moved up to West together. He ALWAYS makes time for Jake after the games win or lose and Jake just thinks he is the coolest thing ever!
Scrimage #4: That's Stephen in the middle with all of the DTs (defensive tackles) Basically what I know about this position is that they are supposed to stop the other team from running up the middle of the field. So, if the other team makes a big play up the middle, I know it won't be a happy night in our house :)
For the last scrimmage, West also had it's 9/10 feeder high schools participating. (In Plano they have 9/10 grade high schools and 11/12 grade senior high schools...but students from the 9/10 schools can play at the varsity level for the 11/12 school that they feed into...it's super confusing and makes no sense to me!) There were over 250 players on the sidelines that night! This was the whole group breaking the huddle, I missed the shot...3 year olds don't always understand photo ops :)
Mamaw sent these binoculars to Jake two years ago and he uses them at EVERY game.
It was super humid out there tonight, so we are looking a little rough
Jake was getting tired of being in the stands so we headed down to the field. Clark Stadium has a big hill behind the endzone and in true boy fashion, it keeps him busy just running up and down the hill.
Hi Mommy!
Sadly, one of our boys was injured tonight...Stephen has coached him since he was in 7th grade, so I didn't take a lot of pictures after the game. Jake wanted to make sure "Big Zac" was okay and we checked on him after the game, but it definitely wasn't a good time to take pictures.
And so, spring football is officially over for the Tyler family. But don't worry, we won't be too bored...Stephen has linemen challenges 2 of the next 3 weekends, then 7 on 7 starts for the summer, and don't forget the summer work out program the boys all participate in. It really never ends, but I truly wouldn't know what to do if Stephen was home every day at 4:30...this is our normal and as crazy as it is, we love it!
15 weeks until the first game of the season, bring it on Flower Mound-Marcus!
2 MORE GAMES, 3 MORE WINS!
No comments:
Post a Comment