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"Hey this isn't DoD..." blahblahblah SHADDUP! As Master Prowler of the DoD Forums and Ignorer of All Others, it counts!
My day Saturday was redonkulously long, but first let's start with Friday night...
As some of you may or may not know, I coach defense for a local junior college here in Washington state. We had our season-opening game scheduled for last night, and the team has known about it for months...yet here comes Friday night and suddenly most of the players (all adults, at 18-24 years old) realize we have a game and they need tons of stuff done--helmets need to be painted, facemasks fixed, rides falling through, all sorts of random things they're apparently incapable of on their own, which put our entire coaching staff into a sort of frenzy to get a whole bunch of things done.
So it's about 11pm when I get home and finished up with everything and I fall asleep at my usual time of 2:30, even though...
6am rolls around and my alarm goes off. FFFUUUU. I get up...get ready to go...and finally roll out the door around 7:30am (I had a lot of stuff to do). I go down to the Everett Train Station to pick up two players (all the coaches drove the players--it was a lot cheaper than renting a bus in this situation, due to how long we'd have been gone, we'd have needed to hire like 3 drivers to come, because of labor laws), then make my way to Seattle to pick up a third. We then drive to North Bend where everybody on the team was meeting.
I stop to get gas in North Bend and when it was finished pumping, I remove the nozzle. The tank had an air bubble, and when it released it, the tank literally shot gas out at me, a foot and a half away, drenching my team shirt and pants in gasoline.
Grrrr.
I pull out of the gas station and into McDonald's cause the guys were hungry. Five minutes after the gas incident, I am in the McDonald's parking lot, and this dude from the gas station backs into my truck, completely smashing part of his car in and pushing my bumper into the truck.
Seriously, dude?
So here I am dealing with all of that while smelling like gas, so then we run across the street to the Nike outlet to get me a new shirt and pants. Finally the last of the players and coaches arrive and we get out of there at around 11am. Heading out way over the mountain pass there is a bunch of construction that delayed us for a long time and then also one of the other coaches was following me because he didn't have directions. Well, we got ahead of him by a ways, so we pulled off at Yakima to wait for them. We waited about 15 minutes and the players with me were like, "Damn Coach, how fast were you going?!". Well, it turns out the last player who went with him had directions, and they were stopping for lunch on the way, so we waited for nothing. Finally we just headed back on our way and finally get to Kennewick, WA at around 3pm (random fact: I had never been this far East in my life. Seriously). We stop at a Sports Authority to buy some socks and a mouth guard...then Target to get some water...then get some lunch. Chilled at the Head Coach's hotel room for about half an hour and then I realized that sometime in the last few hours my phone had died...which is why I never heard from that other Coach...so I run back to Target to get a car charger for it.
Fast forward to the game at 7pm. We're playing the defending league champions, who go up 0-7 right away. We're losing 14-21 at half, where I give the halftime pump-up speech because the other coaches know I am very passionate about the game and it holds true here as I popped a blood vessel in my eye while yelling and spitting, but it works as they leave the locker room in a roar.
We storm back and take a 30-21 lead, all by the fired-up defense's doing (blocked punt returned for TD, safety, and then an interception return for TD). They spend so much time on the field though (23 minutes into the half and our defense had been on the field for all but 18 seconds of it) that two things happened--1) They started getting tired, and 2) The offense got rusty, spending so much time on the side. As the fourth quarter went on, this got progressively worse and worse as the opposing team scored twice late, putting the score at 36-36 when the clock hit 0:00.
Overtime.
As previously stated, I am a very passionate person when it comes to football, especially when I have an investment in the team, as I very much do with these guys, having trained them for the last 10 months. I was our defensive coach up in the booth, which was literally a box way up above the stands that you had to climb a ladder to get to. It was the most awkward thing ever and I kept forgetting I was in this little tree house until I would jump off of my stool and almost knock it backwards behind me and down the ladder. Overtime in our first-ever game? This was too much, lol.
They get the ball first (college OT rules--each team gets a try from the 25) and make their way to the endzone, 36-42. They missed the PAT! Ok, so we need to get a TD with our offense that had hardly been on the field for a while, but then a PAT wins it! Well...SOS as I like to say, and we find ourselves at...sigh...4th and 17 from the 32. QB takes the snap and he gets a ton of pressure on him. He ducks out of one sack, then runs out of the pocket, avoiding another. As he gets hit by a third guy, he backhands (it was so awkward) a throw to the running back, who catches it at the 30. He spins out of one tackle, stiff-arms a dude, hurdles another, and manages to rumble the full 30 yards into the endzone!!!
Ok, 42-42. Now we just need to hit the PAT and we've beat the defending champs to open the season. The kicker has been money, so we're good. We have a good holder...good blockers...a good snapper....no problem. Here's the snap....er, what? The snap sails over the long snapper's head and past the kicker. The holder (who is also our starting Free Safety and backup QB--and might I add, is very fast) takes off after the ball and scoops it at the 18, turns right, and heads for the left side of the field, but immediately sees a bunch of guys bearing down on him. He reverses the field and heads to the right, where...no way...there's open grass! Jelani has room to run! He gets the edge and flies into the endzone for the two-point conversion! We win, 44-42!!!
Huge celebration in the locker room....then a bunch of us head to the hospital to pay a visit to one of our players who got hurt and taken there. Then it's grub time...we go to Applebee's and let everybody know we beat their college's team, lol. We finally get out of there at 1am and the coaches and players head back to their motels to go to bed. Well...all but my truck and another car. You see, two of the coaches were heading back that night to take all of the players who had to be back by morning (for work, or various other things). Turns out one coach needed to be back by morning and, as the youngest coach, I drew the short straw as being the other.
SO...on that 3 and a half hours of sleep, I go get some gas and head back across the state. All of the players in the other car stayed awake to keep their coach company on the long drive back...all of my players were lazy bums who fell asleep within ten minutes. I follow the other coach on the way back, but then they get off the highway at Ellensberg for a bathroom break. I was already having a major problem staying awake (I seriously almost nodded off a dozen times), so I didn't want to stop at all. I just pushed ahead on my own. I am not even kidding, I kept almost falling asleep and my eyes closed a few times. Haha, oops. Anyways, by the time I finally dropped the guys off and got home, it was 6am this morning.
Map of locations (for you visual people)
My day Saturday was redonkulously long, but first let's start with Friday night...
As some of you may or may not know, I coach defense for a local junior college here in Washington state. We had our season-opening game scheduled for last night, and the team has known about it for months...yet here comes Friday night and suddenly most of the players (all adults, at 18-24 years old) realize we have a game and they need tons of stuff done--helmets need to be painted, facemasks fixed, rides falling through, all sorts of random things they're apparently incapable of on their own, which put our entire coaching staff into a sort of frenzy to get a whole bunch of things done.
So it's about 11pm when I get home and finished up with everything and I fall asleep at my usual time of 2:30, even though...
6am rolls around and my alarm goes off. FFFUUUU. I get up...get ready to go...and finally roll out the door around 7:30am (I had a lot of stuff to do). I go down to the Everett Train Station to pick up two players (all the coaches drove the players--it was a lot cheaper than renting a bus in this situation, due to how long we'd have been gone, we'd have needed to hire like 3 drivers to come, because of labor laws), then make my way to Seattle to pick up a third. We then drive to North Bend where everybody on the team was meeting.
I stop to get gas in North Bend and when it was finished pumping, I remove the nozzle. The tank had an air bubble, and when it released it, the tank literally shot gas out at me, a foot and a half away, drenching my team shirt and pants in gasoline.
Grrrr.
I pull out of the gas station and into McDonald's cause the guys were hungry. Five minutes after the gas incident, I am in the McDonald's parking lot, and this dude from the gas station backs into my truck, completely smashing part of his car in and pushing my bumper into the truck.
Seriously, dude?
So here I am dealing with all of that while smelling like gas, so then we run across the street to the Nike outlet to get me a new shirt and pants. Finally the last of the players and coaches arrive and we get out of there at around 11am. Heading out way over the mountain pass there is a bunch of construction that delayed us for a long time and then also one of the other coaches was following me because he didn't have directions. Well, we got ahead of him by a ways, so we pulled off at Yakima to wait for them. We waited about 15 minutes and the players with me were like, "Damn Coach, how fast were you going?!". Well, it turns out the last player who went with him had directions, and they were stopping for lunch on the way, so we waited for nothing. Finally we just headed back on our way and finally get to Kennewick, WA at around 3pm (random fact: I had never been this far East in my life. Seriously). We stop at a Sports Authority to buy some socks and a mouth guard...then Target to get some water...then get some lunch. Chilled at the Head Coach's hotel room for about half an hour and then I realized that sometime in the last few hours my phone had died...which is why I never heard from that other Coach...so I run back to Target to get a car charger for it.
Fast forward to the game at 7pm. We're playing the defending league champions, who go up 0-7 right away. We're losing 14-21 at half, where I give the halftime pump-up speech because the other coaches know I am very passionate about the game and it holds true here as I popped a blood vessel in my eye while yelling and spitting, but it works as they leave the locker room in a roar.
We storm back and take a 30-21 lead, all by the fired-up defense's doing (blocked punt returned for TD, safety, and then an interception return for TD). They spend so much time on the field though (23 minutes into the half and our defense had been on the field for all but 18 seconds of it) that two things happened--1) They started getting tired, and 2) The offense got rusty, spending so much time on the side. As the fourth quarter went on, this got progressively worse and worse as the opposing team scored twice late, putting the score at 36-36 when the clock hit 0:00.
Overtime.
As previously stated, I am a very passionate person when it comes to football, especially when I have an investment in the team, as I very much do with these guys, having trained them for the last 10 months. I was our defensive coach up in the booth, which was literally a box way up above the stands that you had to climb a ladder to get to. It was the most awkward thing ever and I kept forgetting I was in this little tree house until I would jump off of my stool and almost knock it backwards behind me and down the ladder. Overtime in our first-ever game? This was too much, lol.
They get the ball first (college OT rules--each team gets a try from the 25) and make their way to the endzone, 36-42. They missed the PAT! Ok, so we need to get a TD with our offense that had hardly been on the field for a while, but then a PAT wins it! Well...SOS as I like to say, and we find ourselves at...sigh...4th and 17 from the 32. QB takes the snap and he gets a ton of pressure on him. He ducks out of one sack, then runs out of the pocket, avoiding another. As he gets hit by a third guy, he backhands (it was so awkward) a throw to the running back, who catches it at the 30. He spins out of one tackle, stiff-arms a dude, hurdles another, and manages to rumble the full 30 yards into the endzone!!!
Ok, 42-42. Now we just need to hit the PAT and we've beat the defending champs to open the season. The kicker has been money, so we're good. We have a good holder...good blockers...a good snapper....no problem. Here's the snap....er, what? The snap sails over the long snapper's head and past the kicker. The holder (who is also our starting Free Safety and backup QB--and might I add, is very fast) takes off after the ball and scoops it at the 18, turns right, and heads for the left side of the field, but immediately sees a bunch of guys bearing down on him. He reverses the field and heads to the right, where...no way...there's open grass! Jelani has room to run! He gets the edge and flies into the endzone for the two-point conversion! We win, 44-42!!!
Huge celebration in the locker room....then a bunch of us head to the hospital to pay a visit to one of our players who got hurt and taken there. Then it's grub time...we go to Applebee's and let everybody know we beat their college's team, lol. We finally get out of there at 1am and the coaches and players head back to their motels to go to bed. Well...all but my truck and another car. You see, two of the coaches were heading back that night to take all of the players who had to be back by morning (for work, or various other things). Turns out one coach needed to be back by morning and, as the youngest coach, I drew the short straw as being the other.
SO...on that 3 and a half hours of sleep, I go get some gas and head back across the state. All of the players in the other car stayed awake to keep their coach company on the long drive back...all of my players were lazy bums who fell asleep within ten minutes. I follow the other coach on the way back, but then they get off the highway at Ellensberg for a bathroom break. I was already having a major problem staying awake (I seriously almost nodded off a dozen times), so I didn't want to stop at all. I just pushed ahead on my own. I am not even kidding, I kept almost falling asleep and my eyes closed a few times. Haha, oops. Anyways, by the time I finally dropped the guys off and got home, it was 6am this morning.
Map of locations (for you visual people)
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