4 Long Days. Still Cooking!

                         "My SHOES, are worth more than your HOUSE!" 
                       16 Time WORLDS HEAVYWEIGHT CHAMPION 

LOL.  Ric Flair is still so cool!  Anyway, back to football.  We finished up our forth day of practice in this miserable heat.  Today was the first day in pads, and the practice was pretty good.  The kids came out of the locker room kind of flat...which is expected after three long days of training.  The coaches got their attention pretty quickly, and it was all good from there.  I worked both the QB's and RB's today (during INDY) because Coach Wilson was at the doctor.  After out stretch period, I took my kids over to the ropes, and loosened their legs nice and slow.  Their legs were heavy and stiff, so I like to take my time and make sure we try to avoid muscle pulls etc..  I love this period, because I can usually talk some smack and joke with the boys during the exercise.  I like to put some of the older kids in front to demonstrate the exercise to the younger players.  I usually say: "OJ, take the players through the drill!"  I let HIM decide how we want to do it. To me, this simple coaching move helps develop leadership among the team.  I know the younger players are completely intimidated by anything the older players are doing. 

In the old days, older players would haze the hell out of younger players.  I remember going to Morehead State University to football camp when I was a freshman,.  We stayed in the student dorms two to a room.  They tried to pair freshman with freshman and so forth. We spent the entire week in terror as the older players came looking for us in the evenings!  LOL, this was awesome!  Back then, we all wore our hair long.  I remember hearing "HAIR CUTS" at 1AM  in the morning.  The Seniors came banging on our door, then  took us down to the bathroom where another senior was there waiting with a pair of scissors...and a football helmet.   They stuck the helmet on our head and cut our hair around the outside of the helmet shell.  Man, it was awful.  We would get woke up at all times at night.  The older kids would give us something like 1 minute to GET DOWNSTAIRS ready to run.  We would scramble to get dressed and got downstairs as fast as we could....with shoes or not. We would run and run and do exercises while the other Seniors would go through our stuff and steal anything we had to eat.  We layed awake at night wondering when the events would start happening.  Most of us finally learned to get fully dressed  THEN go to sleep...maybe.   It was a long week for sure.  Fortunately, as we got older, it was OUR TURN to terrorize the younger players. However, when I look back on it now, it was not so bad....all innocent fun.  Nothing criminal happened, and no one got hurt.  Football camp brought the team together, and we got in some serious work and created some serious memories...good and bad.  LOL. 

Today, any type of hazing is not tolerated. Our coaches make sure that it does NOT happen.

I am done.  Tired. 

GZ