Heck of an effort

Very strong effort today against Lake Country...it was a shame that somebody had to lose that game. It's an even bigger shame that it was us who lost, 7-6.

However, after the game I told the players that I thought they gave everything that they had. Though we came up on the losing end of this one, it was definitely not for a lack of effort. The kids gave us their hearts and played a very physical and tough game. We had a good week of preparation, and a good effort in pregame warmups.

Defensively we knew we would have to be disciplined against the Lake Country offense, and we were. The only points we allowed came after a blocked punt put us in a difficult position.

Offensively, we hurt ourselves badly with penalties. Too often we put ourselves in first-and-15 or first-and-20 situations, and couldn't dig ourselves out. We also had some tough penalties go against us in key situations (such as a 4th quarter quarterback sneak that would have resulted in a first down). Some of the penalties were simply mental mistakes...some of the penalties were confusion about personnel groups....and some penalties were just part of playing the game.

I need to do a better job of having the players prepared for their personnel groups...we had a lot of moving parts today and sometimes there was confusion over who was supposed to be in and who wasn't. It's something that happens at the youth level, especially with all the information we give the kids...but we know that down the road they will get it and be better football players for it.

This will be the final week of practice, with our final game on Saturday. I told the players that if we sharpen up mentally and give the same kind of physical effort that we gave today, next week's score will take care of itself.

For the last week of practice, things will be a little bit different than they normally are. I am going to try to make an effort to meet with each player individually and discuss how the season went. We will talk about the player's positive attributes as well as the things that they can work on going into next season.

Finally, Thursday's practice will be a pizza party courtesy of coach Mike. If they behave themselves, of course.

Thanks, and we'll see you for practice on Monday.