3 Point Blogs - 3PointScore.com

Hi everyone and welcome to another blog of coaching flag football. Well, we've past the half way mark of the season and now hold a record of 3-1 after beating the Vikings 26-6. Not bad for my first time coaching flag football. In fact, I have a little secret to share with you: Shhh, don't tell anyone..... (whisper) I don't even watch football (end whisper). I'm an NBA fan, and I feel like I'm living a lie. I feel so guilty when someone comes up to me talking about T.O., Reggie Bush or some great play, game or team and telling me 'I know you saw it!', all I do is put on the best grin I can muster and reply 'Yeah, it was great!' To be honest, I've never even heard of Terrell Owens or Reggie Bush until a couple of weeks ago. There; now I said it, and I feel like a heavy weight has been lifted off my shoulders. Now lets get back to flag football.

This past week during practice we focused mostly on defense and it paid off greatly during the game. We could have shut the Vikings out but the Vikings coach is very observant and while our Defense was getting in order after we made a good stop, he had his team hike the ball real fast which caught us off guard and our boys wasn't in position. Other then that one moment, we were a well oiled machine on defense. I was really proud of our kids, but I thought we could have done better offensively.

On Friday's practice I told the kids that I wanted us to at least score 35 points because I believe that we have a much better offense then our record have shown. Our Offense was stopped 4 times and I wasn't satisfied about two of those stops. The Vikings Defense really improved since we first played them and on two occasions they stopped us with great defensive determination, my hat's off to the coach for doing a great job on that team. However, the other two times was more of a matter of us stopping ourselves by over cutting, running out of bounds and kids simply not listening. Those two possessions would have made us reach our goal of 35 points. So this week my goal is too keeps us on the same defensive track, while improving our offense.

Last week I started following all the scores from our division and I've learned something. When the season began I believed that the Panthers were my only concern, well in the eastern conference of our division there is another team that is undefeated just like the Panthers are, this team is the Colts. The Colts record leaves us in 3rd place over all which means we'll be in the first rounds of the playoffs unless one or both of them drop 2 games within the next 3 weeks. In this league the top 2 teams get to bypass the first round of the playoffs and go stright to the second round. So now the stakes have risen and our chances of winning it all have slightly lost some weight, decisions have to be made.

During the game I had to make a hard decision; either we'll be content with the way everything is and remain happy go lucky, or we strive for greatness and get a bit more serious. In life I've learned the hard way that once you've reached a goal, you must set another one or you will become complacent and fail sooner or later. We've reached the goal of becoming a good team, now it's time to strive to be the best. I know these are only 6-8 year olds, but in a world full of so much negativity, the sooner they start learning to strive for greatness, the better off they'll be in life as adults. This is not an easy thing to teach 6 -8 year olds because it can only go 1 of 2 ways. They can run with it and their confidence begins to soar like eagles, or I can be too demanding and crush their self esteem, so I have to be very careful in how I approach this because I see other team trying this and are failing.

This week we're having a scrimmage with one of the 9-11 year old teams. Eventhough this scrimmage is for me to see where our offensive weaknesses really are so we can work on them, I can't help but to think, what If we can score against the older kids and stop them from scoring? If we do that, it will be very hard for me to not except nothing but the best from these kids when they play against kids their own age. Next weekend we play the Eagles and from looking at the scores of all the games played this season, we shouldn't have much of a problem.

It seems like my personality is changing, thus my team's personality is changing as well. Fun seems to be getting replaced with a focus to win. I don't want to lose the focus to win, but I don't want the kids not to have fun anymore. I have a lot of thinking to do this week. Until next time, see ya!