Big Baller

Here's a bit about my oldest boy Isaiah who just finished up his first season of football.  He fell in love with the sport.  He LOVE, LOVE, LOVED it!  He's played basketball, baseball and now football.  Neither basketball or baseball did he respond to as much as football.  Poor guy cried when Ev & I were too sick to take him to practice :(  Can I tell you again how much he loved it.  When we did tryouts he could have gone in either of two different age levels 5-7 or 8-11.  He turned 8 midway through the season so they decided to put him on the 8-11 year old team.  He was the littlest guy in the age division by far, and wasn't as developed as a player as the other guys on the team, but overall I'm glad that's the level they put him on.  I think if he had been with the littler guys he wouldn't have been challenged as much and probably would've been bored.  He picked a few things from the bigger kids that I wasn't too thrilled with but mostly they were so sweet with him.  One of the kids in particular really took him under his wing ~ telling him where he was supposed to be on plays, putting his arm around him & high 5ing him for encouragment

Isaiah's big job throughout the year was on defense. His job was to rush the quarterback. He was a bit too small for offense. The quarterback would throw it was over his head on passes and he got to play runningback a few times and did well, but again there were bigger players that were a bit more effective. He rocked in his role of rushing the quarterback. He put pressure on him and caused quite a few turnovers this year, but it seemed like he was always a second too late for the sack. 

Don't know who this kid is but I love the expression on his face:

This last Saturday was the championship game against the 49ers.  Isaiah rocked it with the SACK!  In the picture below you can see they quarterback's flag in Isaiah's hand and the ball still in the quarterbacks hand.

On the left side of the picture you can see Zaiah holding up the flag.  The whole side line was yelling for him, his teammates ran up and congratulated him, it was so cool!!!  Ev said, he's like Rudy.

Here's the championship team for 2009 with their gold ball:

One last picture because I love the way it turned out.  The kid with the ball is TJ, one of Isaiah's teammates.  This kid was REALLY GOOD!!!  I'd say he was 50-75% responsible for them being the champions.  He was REALLY GOOD!  He was also the one who was so kind and encouraging to my Zai.