The enemy's truth-telling

Yours truly overlooked a principle of America's War Game and paid a price. Postseason-ball carries a different intensity than regular season ball.

Honestly, I was a little checked out heading into the Bull Dogs’ consolation game against the Fighting Turtles, whom we’d dispatched two weeks prior. Our main goal for the season was to beat the white whale team who’d beaten us three times in two seasons, once in a title game, and thus claim the championship for ourselves. So when they smoked us 26-0 last week, the motivation for the final consolation game just weren’t really there.

We didn’t do a ton differently, but you could have watched our practice juxtaposed to theirs (you practice on opposite ends of the game field) and been able to tell the difference. They were drilling plays while I had the kids line up at midfield and take turns trying to catch go balls I launched for them into the end zone. The thought was, “let’s just have some fun, go flip over the turtles again, give out medals and celebrate a fun season.” A couple of our better players didn’t even show up.

It was pretty fun, but I suppose we forgot these were fighting turtles. Their coach who recognized me from YouTube was happy to work on teaching us a thing or two about how to win in flag football. What followed was a rather humbling L that diminished the celebration for the Bull Dog season and imparted some lessons that will hopefully help me for the next season.