Ready for Some Football

The Rush City Youth Sports Club offers football for third through sixth graders. Karl eagerly signed up last spring and waited patiently through baseball and soccer seasons for the first practice in August. After about a month of practice, the regular season began the weekend after Labor Day. The third/fourth grade team started with three games in six days, a pretty rough schedule for 8- and 9-year olds. For his first game, Karl had a great cheering section: the Elliots, Opa, and Grandma and Grandpa all came to Forest Lake to watch the Tigers face the team from Columbus. It was a pretty late game for a school night. We weren’t sure what would happen first—time expiring or night falling! The next night, the elementary school teams scrimmaged at halftime of the varsity game. It was Karl’s first time playing under the big lights of Andy Saloka Field. The next morning, we traveled to North Branch to face the first squad of Vikings. Karl has been playing outside linebacker on defense, and doing a great job. After a couple days of rest, it was on to Pine City to face the Dragons. They had a fourth grader sporting a nice five o'clock shadow… The following weekend it was back to Forest Lake to play the Rangers. We have a bunch of good running backs on the team, Karl among them. A week later, here is one of Karl’s biggest fans enjoying a beautiful autumn day in North Branch while the boys played the second squad of Vikings. This was a momentous day—the Tigers won their first game, and they did it emphatically: 40–0 ! It was a big day for Karl as well as he scored his first touchdown and his first extra point! Here he is running in for the PAT. After such an impressive victory, the coaches took the team to Dairy Queen. The boys went to Forest Lake yesterday morning and beat the team from Scandia. But it was cold. Karl decided to wear his ski gloves when playing defense, and the team had a collection of dad-sized jackets on the sidelines for the kids to slip over their shoulder pads when they were resting. Next weekend is the final game of the season. It has been a lot of fun watching Karl’s games and I’m already looking forward to next year.