Football is new to us this year. Dante decided to try it out as he enters 6th grade. The divisions are simple - Grades 2, 3, and 4 play flag football. Grades 5-8 play tackle and are divided into two groups, each of which are divided into a JV and a V so to speak.
Dante has been initiated quickly with two solid weeks of nightly practice (two hours plus each night). He's playing safety on the defense. I suppose we'll learn what that means as time goes on and we watch him play. It looks for the moment like he's playing "V" (mostly w/other 6th graders) which is great since he's with his friends. One of the "fun" things about all this is with baseball, Essex Junction (the village of) and Essex (the town of) are separate and bitter rivals. But for football, we play together - meaning we play alongside some of our baseball nemeses. Incidentally, his head coach is the girls' softball coach for Patience's fiercest school rival....
We live in a small world.The learning curve for our family has been steep with equipment confusion and lessons (and after several tries practice pants that actually fit). We still haven't figured out the glasses so he's playing kind of blind.... we do need to figure that one out soon.
Yesterday he had his first official "suit up" in his uniform (he's number 55) for the local Jamboree. There were scrimmages between multiple towns. He was out the door at 7am and home at 3:30. We carpooled with another family we know, which helped tremendously (they were there in the morning, our family was there in the afternoon).
It was hot and a long day, but he's loving it. It's fish to water kind of love so far. And yes, he's sustained an injury (minor, but his hand was pretty swollen) on the first day of tackle practice. He was beaming from ear to ear telling us about it.
Go Dante! Let's play some football!
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