The NATURE BOY!
I bet you thought my obsession with Ric Flair was over didn't you? LOL. Ric Flair was known for his colorful gowns which he wore into the wrestling ring before doing battle. I read somewhere that some of Flairs gowns cost him as much as $10G a piece. I really like this one. Notice the Lions on the bottom of the robe, along with the matching Lion's fur. This one is awesome!
Today is Tuesday, and we do not play this week at all. This is our bye week, so we are just working on getting better. We sent some of our younger players down to the JV this week to get some playing experience....which is very important. I love to watch these younger varsity players get some reps, play some ball and have some fun. The JV game is much slower than the Varsity game, so the older kids generally do very well playing down. Normal JV teams are comprised of 9th and 10th graders anyway, so this just evens up the teams a little. Generally speaking, our JV team has mostly 9th graders playing a normal JV schedule. Some schools have a 9th grade team, a JV team, and a Varsity team. This week they are playing our District Rival's (South Fork) JV team. It is important to our Varsity team that the JV team takes care of business and beats them soundly. In Florida, a player can only play (or dress) for one game per calender week, so this is a good opportunity for some of our kids.
When I played HS Football, this play rule did not exist. We actually had players dress and play in a Freshman game on Wednesday, A JV Game on Thursday, and a Varsity game on Friday. This was just grueling, but necessary to stay competitive. Besides, games were usually easier than the damn practices anyway. It was all out war every day...regardless of the day of the week. We did not have the weight rooms the schools have today, but I do remember doing a lot more conditioning than we do now. I remember sprinting across the field (back and forth) for 30 to 40 minutes per practice, or until everyone was puking. We had these 'trails' behind the school which went high into the woods. There was a "long trail' (about 1 1/2 miles) and a 'short' trail (3/4 miles) which we ran several times per week. . Each trail was full of obstacles like mud holes, old tires etc.. which were designed to impede our time completing the run. Both trails started at the same point, but the long trail forked off to the right, and the short trail forked off to the left.....far out of sight of the coaches....we thought! Both courses would exit at the same point. Coach would say: "LONG TRAIL, You have 15 minutes" and we would just haul ass trying to complete the damn obstacle course. There would sometimes be a coach at the 'fork' to make sure we were running the right course. By the time we got back from running this small mountain, we were completely shot. Just exhausted. Generally this was at the end of practice.
We noticed that the coaches were not always standing on the 'fork', and it became pretty predictable on when he would be there. We decided that if the coach told us to run the long course, we would actually run the short course and stop and rest for a while. A teammate decided to hide a cooler filled with some soda at our resting point. YEAH BABY! We were all set! LOL. Big mistake. One of the PE teachers (A Football Coach) decided to have his class run the short trail during school. I guess he found the damn cooler during 6th period, and he did not say a word to any of us. For some strange reason, our coach opened practice with the trail run that day. As you can imagine, he said: "LONG TRAIL" and we all took off knowing that we would be running the 'short trail' and stopping for a sweet brewskie on the way back. This was a bad, bad idea. There were three coaches waiting for us at the hiding spot. We denied knowing ANYTHING about a cooler. Too late, we paid the price for several weeks after that. LOL. Stupid kids.
More Tomorrow.
GZ
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