Support Your Local Sporting Events!

What a wonderful Sunday morning. The air is great here in Waimea, and the field is marked and ready for some football, (flag football). I am one of the assistant coaches for my daughter's flag football team. She plays linebacker/defensive end and is the best defender on the team. Her coach eats it up every time she shuts down a play.

Other coaches try to coach against her, yet she always plays lights out. If she makes four plays (gets the ball carriers flag), she has had a bad day. Her average is eight tackles (getting the flags) for loss of yards, per game, not to mention the ball carriers she runs down as they run the play away from her side of the field. 

She almost didn't get to show her stuff this season, as we were one of the last ones to register, and her age division had too many kids. Luckily, another coach stepped in to make a second team, for her sake. The other coaches really wanted to keep her, but they were told that the first 24 kids would be the ones they could keep. The last group of kids to register would be released. Now, coaches are asking me to make sure there is a team for the tackle season, which begins in two months. The only thing that makes me sad is that she will probably never get to play football for a professional team. I hope to God that she has a chance to make it that far, if she loves it so much, but the way things are, she will not get her shot. That's why we encourage her to play as much now, so that she has these memories of her and her teammates.

It is amazing to see these future high school football stars and athletes flying by and playing. It makes me realize how lucky some athletes are in that they get paid huge sums of money to play sports. Here in Hawaii, we have a lot of kids who grow up and play in different colleges, all throughout the U.S. Luckily, we have a lot that end up playing professional sports, whether it's football, soccer, baseball, etc.  And it all starts right here, on the field of play, in front of family and friends. So, for all you armchair quarterbacks, get out there in your community and support all young athletes in any sport!