tackling and playing with heart and soul

Jonah and Micah played organized football for the first time this year. They've been looking forward to it for years and were happy to finally be old enough to! They started practicing the middle of August, and worked hard running and learning moves every day at practice. It turned out to be a lot harder than they anticipated, and it was a rough season. Our youth football organization joined a new league this year, and our teams were placed in a higher division with teams from much larger schools and communities. The other teams have much more experience, and larger pools of players to choose from, and we struggled playing against them. We never won a game, but the boys never stopped trying! They continued to practice hard and steadily improved throughout the 2 month season. I was really proud of them for doing their best and not becoming discouraged. 

The first game was our only home game at the high school field.  Jonah kicked off the opening kick!

Jonah was #74, and Micah's was #63. During the season, Jonah played positions of Tide End, Defensive End, and Kicker. Micah was also a Tide End and was the back-up Defensive End.

Look at all those 5th grade boys!

All of their games were on Saturdays in September and October. The second game was in Idaho Falls. The team we played against this week wasn't very nice, and our boys had only two good plays: both of which the ref blew the whistle on. The boys never stopped giving their all, but we lost by a large margin and it was a disheartening game.

The third game was at Tautphus Park in Idaho Falls. This team was very rough, and we had a lot of injuries that day, but the margin of loss was less this week than the previous week.

Micah is the 2nd Salmon player from the left, and Jonah is on the right

The fourth game was the best of the season. We played at West Jefferson against Shelley. Our team made a first down (for the first time!!!), and had a good running play that almost made a touchdown. Then, they actually DID score a touchdown for the first time! We were all SOOO excited!!! It was awesome, and the team was so pumped! We lost the game, but you would never have guessed from how happy we all were!

 

The fifth game was against Rigby. They had a very large team--both in stature and team size. Two of their players were as tall as the refs. I found it hard to believe that they were truly in 5th grade!! The boys had lots of good tackles, despite the size difference, and I was so proud of them! Jonah and Micah played so well in this game!

Jonah tackled the quarterback of the other team!

The sixth and final game was in West Jefferson again. Josh and I were both unable to go, because of the pumpkin patch. Josh's parents thankfully took them to the game for us. We were so glad to have the season done--after two months of practicing and driving to games, it was nice to see it end. Jonah really liked playing football, but Micah decided he didn't like it so much. Both of them have talked about running Cross Country next year instead to see which sport they'd rather participate in for future fall sports.

Jonah

Micah