7th Grade Spring Football

The 7th grade football season ended in a 1-5 record with our only win against Bronson. We were pretty happy and not disappointed in the very least. Throughout the entire season, I was allowed to play in a lot of the games at the end of the games, probably for the last two minutes, but I never really made any plays. The goal was now to wait and move on to the next season and hopefully only get better. The only way we could do this was by starting with spring football.

Spring football for all of the non-8th graders from the previous season was difficult as we knew we were losing some decent players. Jared Armstrong was moving to St. Louis and James Zalman was quitting (but he would come back in the middle of our sophomore year season). Along with losing them, we also knew we were losing 8th graders like Chris Clark and Chris Croushore as they were both top receivers on our team. But with all this loss, we knew we were getting a great addition. With losing both quarterbacks (Armstrong and Croushore), we were getting a new one: Robert Moss. He was/ is one of my best friends that didn't play football in 7th grade, but we still managed to be best friends. He was going to be our quarterback.

From what I remember, I don't think Robert ever played football before that season. Surprisingly though, he was naturally good at the sport. It was obvious and was noticeable by all of our friends and everyone else that Robert was pretty much just a natural athlete and could almost play any sport with no problem. Even though Robert was really good, though, for some reason we would all still make fun of him and make jokes about him. I can remember one that the coaches would always say, especially Coach Kerkau and Coach Carter Johnson; they would always say something like, "Hey, Robert! Did your mom set your clothes out today?" I felt kind of bad, but I can admit that I was probably a part of it, as well. Oh well...

Anyways, to the subject! 7th grade spring football I can remember us all doing push-ups and sit-ups instead of being on the bench press, which at the time, I had no idea what it was called. Pretty much, I was very naive about fitness and everything involving weight lifting. Anyways, they would also measure how tall we were and weigh us, also. After all of these mandatory steps that needed to be done was finished, we just went outside and ran around a little bit. The Varsity would run 40 yard dashes while the Middle School team would start doing drills with Coach Ringdahl. These drills were just to get us all warmed up and to start getting used to what the next season was going to be like.

One thing about spring football that I remember clearly was when Cody Neff came out to play. Cody Neff was/ is still one of my best friends and when he came out, it was a lot of fun. It was fun to be out there with him and have him hanging out with us; plus, it was another player on the football team. I remember one time when we were practicing tackling on these tackling dummies, coach wanted us to do a little roar... I know it sounds kind of cheesy but I can remeber Cody probably making the loudest ones out there and I could hear coach shouting, "Who's this new guy!?" This was really encouraging because after that I felt very assured that Cody was playing football in the fall... Turns out, he didn't show up. I was curious why he didn't, and when he told me why, I accepted and respected his decision not to play. It still puzzles me today...

Spring football was soon ending, but all I could remember was my goal from 7th grade football: to get better. At the end of 8th grade football, I can remember getting better, but now that I look back on it, I know I didn't get much better by much (as compared to my transition from freshman to sophomore year). Anyways, at least I fulfilled what I set out to do, and it could only get better...