Weds Practice

Today was a great day ...1 hr before practice Alex got to speak with Jason on the phone we called him and he answered. Alex was excited and talked to him about 20 min. Mostly about football I think, I left the room so he could have his own privacy at least as much as a 9 yr boy could have.
It was good to see them talking , the only thing I heard was Alex saying " Dad do u remember what u promised me?"..I have no idea what that is.
It was then time to get dressed for practice.... Alex ,even at 9 can get all his pads on by himself...which is pretty impressive I attempted to take some pics of him doing this but my camera battery died...sorry guys I know you want pics.
On the way to practice he seemed excited about speaking with Jason.
We arrived early he caught passes and stretched and then they started doing up downs( running in place and falling on your stomach every time the coach blows the whistle)..they did this for 20 minutes straight it was brutal and disheartening to even watch I had to keep saying "this builds character, this builds character"
They were dead tired after that...but they still had 2 hrs of practice left.
Most of the practice they scrimmaged against each other ...Alex started at defensive tackle ...guess how many tackles he made.......

well guess.....

right .......zero, goose egg, nada. zip. none

now guess how many he almost made

well guess....

the exact same ...zero

however when they switched to offense he did block someone..but only because someone behind him pushed him into the block
My instincts tell me he has not quite got the jest of this hitting thing..or else he simply prefers not to
A friend of his showed up to watch him practice and talked my ear completely off. so I tricked him into running laps so that I could at least watch Alex. Practice ran 30 minutes late and the boys as punishment for mix ups had to do 20 minutes of leap frog over each other once again brutal. Parents were complaining more than the kids because they were all ready to get out of there. it was dark out
Alex's friend couldn't believe it " He says " Boy they practice harder than we do and I'm a 6th grader"

A talkative 6th grader " I thought silently"
I then drove Alex and his friend home and skipped UDF for the 2nd nite in a row. I think Alex was spending the nite with him.....I then rushed home to do this blog thing.