#2 Pensacola Wolfpac versus Crestview Thunderbirds

Loss / 39-0

Surprise, surprise, we were the underdogs…again. Perhaps you could say we were the wildest of wild cards. No one expected us to win. No surprise, no one expected us to be taking the field in a playoff game. The coach/owner of the Wolfpac team openly said he was going to work on some new plays to get ready for the next playoff game. Going to treat this like a scrimmage game and told me he was going to put 80 points on the board. And he wasn’t bluffing, he was serious. And with our offensive coordinator Coach Hyatt getting orders, we were down to one coach. So anywho, when we got there they were #2 team in the league. And well...when we left...they still were.

We were hoping to catch Wolfpac sleeping and pull the upset. We had a game plan that was a sneak attack and hopefully disorient them. And to Coach Taylor and Coach Hyatt’s credit, it worked first quarter. The Wolfpac team is bigger than us in both team roster depth and average height/weight for players. We’ve got a 5’5”, 135lb quarterback for Pete’s sake (#7 in the picture below). True enough, he's got a huge heart, but still 135lbs.  When I say "huge heart", for real, a huge heart.  I've seen him get tackled by a couple of 300lb men and he gets up asking them if that's all they got and that his little sister hits harder than that.  I swear it's like a bantam roster picking a fight with a couple of pit bulls.  I just shake my head and tell him to leave those big men alone.  It's comical. 

Anyway, back to Wolfpac, they’ve got linemen that are about 8’ tall and 400lbs. Well, okay, I exaggerated a bit about their team but without a doubt, they’re bigger than us and deeper than us.

So we kicked off and the first hits were hard, hard, hard. First play and there’s a downed Wolfpac player on the field. I knew then it was going to be a long hard night of football. About 10-12 minutes into first quarter and I look across at the team coach/owner for Wolfpac and he was quite the excited one. Uh yeah, I woulda been too because the team they were facing showed up with absolutely nothing to lose. If we lose, we’re supposed to. Big deal, you beat a first year team. That’s like a high school kid beating up a kindergartner. Yeah, put that on your resume.  If we win, oh my, oh my. Then the impossible happened and we got a jump on the them with #9, Mario Holley making an absolutely beautiful touchdown (aren’t they all when it’s for your team) but it got called back for a hit from behind from one of our linemen. I was thinking a soap party might help players understand about costing us a touchdown in a playoff game. But hey, I’ve made my mistakes too so it is what it is. I've learned that mistakes in football are like mistakes in life.  If you haven't made any, your either coasting through or lying.  As in either, too many mistakes and you'll find yourself on the sidelines as the game (or life) passes you by.  By first quarter, the score was 0-0.

Second quarter starts and we are definitely in this game. We play hard but make critical mistakes. Some the Wolfpac capitalized on and some they didn’t. Things got a little silly a few times on our side as players started to lose their focus. Seems like it was 21-0 in their favor by the end of first quarter. Fortunately for us, the coach had a few words of motivation for everyone in the locker room.  We seem to get a lot of those.
 

Third and fourth quarter go on and we end up losing 39-0. Most of us left it all on the field and it felt great to play football with these guys.  We all shook hands and gathered in the middle for prayer. Paul Smith, team coach/owner of Wolfpac came out and said some things that I hope the players won’t forget. He suggested we all go out and bring 2-3 friends for next year. He said we played 10 times better than we did the first time they played us. And then the Wolfpac team gave us a round of applause as a congratulatory for making so many improvements. It was sincere and that was gracious of him to do so. Heck, I almost forgave him for trying to run up 80 points on us...

As a first year team, we did good. As a team that wasn’t ever supposed to make it, we did great! Next year is already in the works. We’ve got a tryouts being worked out, the field is secured, and our scrimmage has been agreed upon but no date set yet.

We did good boys and I’m absolutely excited about next year’s team.