Making Adjustments

Much to my dismay, it seems that athletes and coaches are indeed human.  We are subject to the same health issues that plague normal people...even though we believe it could never happen to us.  As most of you know, a great friend and coaching colleague (Charles Washington) died last month from hyper tension.  Another friend (and football camp roommate) David Shimfessel died a couple of weeks ago from heart and kidney failure.  Now I find out that another friend is in a real struggle with a cancerous tumor located between his lungs.  He has never smoked a day in his life.  This guy is a mountain of a man...the very picture of what a great athlete (in his former days) is supposed to look like in his 50's.  Thick hands, powerful and strong.  He will need this strength as he faces some long weeks of radiation and chemo therapy.  If anyone can beat the "Big C" this guy will do it.  Life can be so unfair sometimes.  

 I have been looking at the game video of last weeks game with Palm Bay Heritage.  There is no doubt that Heritage is a good football team and deserving of the state ranking they opened the season with.  However, we did not do ourselves any favors  either.  We turned the ball over several times, and we also had nine dropped balls...four of those in the end zone for touchdowns.  Today we started working on correcting these issues before our first regular season game this Friday night.  

Today, I was anxious to see how the kids would react to a rare loss by this program.  I thought Coach Lenny did a good job with addressing the issues which probably cost us the game in my opinion.  We cut the in-field practice a little short so the kids could view the entire game together in the film room. I always liked to do this because it allows a player to see his mistakes under the scrutiny of his own teammates.  Peer pressure is very strong.  Coach Bethel used to say: "The Eye In The Sky Don't Lie"  so the kids usually do not have a lot to say about their mistakes.  

Tomorrow we start back into the normal routine for game week preparation.  I will check back in tomorrow evening.  I am getting tired.  Need some sleep I think.