champions

it was a good year of football for me. earlier in the spring i was in three different leagues at once, playing in the uvu league once again, another flag league up in salt lake, and my tackle league. we dominated the uvu league, but lost a close game in the semi-finals of the playoffs, again. the salt lake league was rough. we probably had 8 different guys play qb at some point during the season. when we had everyone there, we were a good team, but the commitment level wasn't there for most guys so it was tough. in the first round of the playoffs we lost to a team that we had previously beaten because we were a man down for quite a bit of the game. the tackle league was rough. the qb and i never seemed to get any kind of groove going, and i finished the regular season with no touchdowns. the post-season started with a rematch of our final game of the regular season, a game we lost 40 to 6. with no one expecting us to win, we shocked the league and won that game 12 to 6. our qb finally decided to give me some chances, and i was lucky enough to take advantage of it. i ended with four big catches for 75 yards (more than i had all year), including a huge 4th-and-long conversion and two tds, the second being the game winner with less than 30 seconds to go. i had to miss the next game of the playoffs, which my team sadly lost because of our lack of players, but it was a sweet end to the season for me.

during the summer, we played in the uvu summer league, and we utterly dominated. we went on a streak of five games in a row with no one scoring on us, which is especially impressive considering that flag football is more wide open and generally more high scoring. well we found ourselves in the championship game once again, but after the first half, we found ourselves down by a touchdown to a team that we had beaten twice earlier by a combined score of 72 to 6. i couldn't help but think i'm cursed or something, always destined to finish second best. but we came out firing in the second half, and quickly regained the lead. i myself had two second half touchdowns and we were able to claim the uvu championship. i finally got myself an intramural championship t-shirt. :)

with my change in work schedule, i was unable to play in any weekday leagues during the fall season, so i just focused on my weekend tackle league. i think we had a lot of great pieces, but we were in desperate need of a quarterback to bring it all together. so we went recruiting. we went through quite a few potential qbs, but no success. then one of our guys recruited a handful of players, who then in turn recruited a handful of players, who then in turn recruited another handful of players, which finally got us a great qb, along with a very full roster. it was a little much, and quite the struggle to keep everyone happy, but i think we found a way to make it work. it was a good season. we definitely had our moments of trials. we lost a game in the final seconds. we suffered a tie in the most random of ways when our qb forgot to take a knee at the end of the game and they just took the ball from him. but we ended the season as the #1 seed, and eventually found ourselves in the championship game against the defending two-time champions. it was a rough game, full of mistakes and turnovers. but i ended up catching the only offensive touchdown of the game and we ended up winning the trophy! it was rough sacrificing a bit of personal success and glory, but winning the championship made it all better.