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Multigenerational Mom Muses on Twin Toddlers & Twenty-Something Daughters

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Post-Season Football and Family: So Hard, So Worth It

Post season: it’s the toughest season of all. If done right, it’s the equivalent of an extra half-a-season: 5 games, culminating in a trophy and rings.
Again, if done right.
And let’s face it, we want it done right.
And doing it right is far from easy, but always worth it. I have to remind myself of that.

Especially because post season is wrapped up in the most wonderful season of all – the holiday season —and that complicates matters. A lot. It adds about a gazillion stressors to players’ and coaches’ lives alike.


If all goes according to plan, family gatherings will be cut short or missed… family pictures, too. Along with basketball games, wrestling matches, Nutcracker performances, school plays, chorus concerts, bedtimes, holiday movie nights.

So many missed family times… but also, so much family time gained, too.
Because for us, football is family.
And oh, how we love this game.
It’s not the touchdowns and tackles that make our hearts sing with joy and our lungs ache with love (although it certainly doesn’t hurt)…

It’s the players and men out on that field. It’s the knowing them, the loving them, the watching them accomplish tasks they never dreamed they could accomplish.

It’s seeing them forge bonds of brotherhood. Watching them face challenges with passion and confidence. Witnessing them relying on others as much as themselves. Embracing family. Understanding that family is strength and family is love and family is a powerful, moving force.It’s never easy. But it’s also always worth it.

Nobody moves mountain alone. Nobody wins at football or at life, alone. That takes commitment and common ground, and hard work, and family.

Over the next few weeks and for the rest of their lives, these players and coaches can accomplish great things because they know and understand the importance of family. Because they are members of the best family of all: the Canes Football Family.

Come on, Fam!! Let’s do this hard thing!!

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The Letterman

Our football program is a storied one. Giants have grown from our gridiron. Heroes have hailed from our hashmarks. Our Friday Night Lights have incubated some of the Greatest Of All Time.  There is one GOAT, though, that stands above all others.

This past Friday night, my twin boys and I were in the field house when HE walked in — larger than life and with a twinkle in his eye.

Now my boys are incredibly shy —  hiding behind my legs or climbing daddy’s shoulders around most people — but not around this hero. They’ll line up for some knuckles or a quick hug Every Single Time.

No, I’m not talking Trevor — although he was there on Friday night too, and just as genuine and gracious as ever.

But nope — I’m talking E. The man. The myth. The legend.

His given name is Edgar Moore, but his fans — his generations and generations of fans — they all know him by a single letter. A single vowel.  “E.”

Now “E,” the Letter, is the most influential in the English language. The Silent E  has transformative powers, working in concert with consonants to turn soft vowels into hard ones.

“E,” the Legend, is likewise influential. Far from silent, he cheers and cajoles, working in concert with coaches to turn soft players into hard ones. And he takes his job VERY seriously — and we’re not simply talking Friday nights in the fall. E is there with the team sweating it out at every summer workout and every fall practice.

And he’s been doing it for over thirty years. Over the past three decades, on any given Autumn afternoon, E has been spotted making his way across busy Church Street from the local Burger King, where he has a job (of 28 years), to the field house, where he has a calling (of 33 years… and counting).

E has been a part of every championship season the Canes have had — and he has the four state rings to prove it. (Plus three more in baseball). He’s worked with three head coaches and hundreds if not thousands of  players. As a matter of fact, four of the coaches on staff wore purple jerseys back in the day, and E was their manager then.

And E is their manager now.

But his role with Cartersville Football goes way beyond Manager.

E is Encourager and Nurturer and Motivator and Dancer (has he got the sideline moves!) and even (most surprising of all to those not in the inner circle), Odds-maker.  His skill for predicting game outcomes is uncanny.  His track-record is mind-blowing. Vegas should be so lucky as to have an E in their corner.

And we here at Cartersville– we know how extremely lucky we are to have him in ours.

E is a blessing to every member of our football community — coaches, players, families, and fans. We all know his name. We all sing his praises. We all know his worth — Priceless.

Because there’s simply no CANES without our Not-So-Silent E.

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Legends of the Fall and the Alchemy of Football

This weekend was a tough loss. I don’t know that I’ve ever been as invested in a group of players and coaches’ families like I have been with this group. And it’s been three years of continuous wins. Of glorious, riotous, practically-perfect wins. And Friday night hurt. And if it hurt me – a marginal member of a legendary football dynasty — I can’t imagine the pain of the players and coaches. Although I did bear witness to it. But I’ll get to that in a minute. First, let me tell you what I see and know about these boys and their leaders.

For the past two years, from the stands and practice fields, I’ve witnessed this team pour all of everything they have into the game, purifying their sweat and blood and spinning it into gold. And purple. Because these athletes are alchemists. They have transformed common elements of a typical Friday night under the lights into the stuff of legend. They are legend.

And I’m not talking individual legend – though we have that too. We have region and state and national legends among this team. But, no, I’m talking legends of discipline and legends of character. I’m talking quality of soul and purity of heart. They are good fellows, the whole lot.

They own and are the stuff of legends. And victory was theirs. For so many seasons

And then, last night, it all ended in seconds. And in silence.

And the loss was so sudden and so heavy and so hard.

And what I saw after, in the belly of a field house they’ve called home half a year every year for their high school careers – a field house witness to half-time harangues, post-game heroes, and now postseason heartache – was the purest pain I’ve ever borne witness to. Players wrapping themselves up in the arms of their football family for strength and support. Searching for a way to handle the hurt. To shoulder the hurt. To weather the hurt. Padded shoulder pressed to padded shoulder, coaches patting heads and rocking giant bodies while whispering words of comfort and wisdom… and love.

This team knows love. The fans love them. The community loves them. And we are all hurting with them.  But those coaches have a different love for their players — a love unfathomable to those of us who have never played the sport. But I see glimpses of it from the practice field and the sidelines and the field house. I see its power. I see how it builds confidence and character and futures.

Yes, these boys know love. And they know disciple and determination and how to win big. And now they know how to lose big.

And I know this loss – with its devastating, season-ending sting, a sting they will always feel somewhere deep in the marrow of their being –  will prove valuable to these players and their coaches alike.

Because football is truly an alchemist’s sport. And it gives players the skills to transform baser matters into gold – and this loss, this harshest of base matters, is their biggest challenge yet. But they have what it takes to sift and sort through the pain and then forge ahead into the brightest of bright, golden futures. They have the stuff. The stuff of legends.

Your fans are in awe of you, Hurricanes. And we thank you from the bottom of our hearts for showing us how you spin sweat, blood, and tears into purple and gold.

*Huge photo creds to Cathy Sharpe, Cartersville Purple Hurricanes sideline photographer for capturing this beautiful cover shot.

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It’s the Most Wonderful Ball of the Year: a Postseason Sing-Along

championshipprayer

It’s the most wonderful ball of the  year

With the brackets all forming

And top-seeds all donning their jerseys and gear

It’s the most wonderful ball of the year

 

It’s the most treacherous postseason ball

Proven dynasties going, some underdogs showing

With some bound to fall

It’s the most treacherous postseason ball

 

They’ll be one seeds for hosting

And die-hard fans boasting

And painted torsos for the teams

You’ll see hurry-up offenses,

stout, hard-nosed defenses,

coaching staff powerhouse schemes

 

It’s the most wonderful ball of the year

With those shotgun formations and smash mouth foundations

And Winners-Take-All

It’s the most wonderful ball of the year

 

There’ll be uprights for splitting

And ‘backers for hitting

and running backs rarin’ to go

There’ll be scary near-misses

And tales of the blitzes of

Quarterbacks taking a blow

 

It’s the battle to clench #1 time of year

There’ll be much missile-throwing

And scoreboards all glowing when trophies are near

It’s the battle toclench #1 time of year

 

There’ll be offense aggression

With deep penetration

From the gunslinger’s merciless blow

There’ll be defensive glories

And big tales and stories

Of championships seized from the foe!

 

It’s the most wonderful ball

Yes, the most wonderful ball

It’s the most wonderful ball of the year!

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Sunday Night Baking for our Inside Linebacker Boys

This week, the 2017 football season officially kicks off. And that means that from here on out, on any given Sunday, you’ll find me in my kitchen baking up treats for my husband’s players.

He coaches inside linebackers – those middle of the defense playmakers, ever ready and willing to bounce blockers, blitz quarterbacks and tackle large quantities of fullbacks and fudge brownies.

And I love baking these boys some sweets as much if not more than they love eating them. Baking is one of my all-time favorite pastimes. For me, it’s a form of love. I bake for people I admire and respect, and I bake for people I appreciate. And I always, always bake for people I love: my children, my friends, and now, Cartersville’s inside linebackers.

I mean, what’s not to love? What’s not to respect? They work hard and they play hard. They take their knocks and they get back up again. They understand discipline and commitment better than men quadruple their age. They are well-studied and they are selfless. And I figure baking up something special on a Sunday afternoon is the least I can do to let these young men know how much I appreciate what they do for their teammates and for their coaches.

It’s a tradition I began last year when my husband joined a team more focused on family than any we’ve ever been a part of.  We are a community and my baked goods are my attempt at communion – at feeding their souls with foods consecrated by love.

This coaching crew is qualified in so many different areas, but I must say that one of their finest talents is building relationships with the young men who risk limb and ligaments for a ballgame.

A ballgame, yes — but it’s so much more than a ballgame, as well. It helps these young men realize the importance of being a part of something bigger than themselves. Everyone is an integral part of the team. They work hard. Together. They grow strong. Together. If they win, they do it together. If they lose, they do it together. They are a team.

The offense doesn’t win without the defense. The defense doesn’t score without the offense – well, sometimes they do, but that’s beside the point. The point is, they are all needed: the quarterback, the h-back, the receivers, the linemen, the corners, the linebackers, the nose guard, the kickers. They are all part of the team. Without each one of these positions, the game would flounder and fail. It would be nothing but a muddled up mosh pit of egos stomping their feet and flailing their arms, and ramming and jamming at one another — with absolutely no point and no progress.

Kind of like the world was this weekend. A world full of egos. Look at me! See me! I matter! No one else matters but me!

It’s becoming abundantly clear that there are vast numbers of people out in this world who know nothing about hard work, toughness, sacrifice and teamwork.

Life is a contact sport. It is hard. It is tough. And it requires sacrifice and teamwork and love.

But the greatest of these is love.

And that’s what I admire most about these Cartersville coaches and their football philosophy: the love they give their players. And they’re not afraid to show it. I’ve seen it from the stands, and I’ve seen it in the field house. I’ve seen it at practice, and I’ve seen it in games. They love their players. A lot.

And to quote a little Seuss, unless someone like them cares a whole awful lot, nothing’s going to get better. It’s not.

I’m starting to think the world needs more football. And a whole lot more coaches like Canes coaches.

 

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Football Gives me All the Feels: Confessions of a Coach’s Wife

It’s the beginning of the football season once again, and there’s not too much I can say about the football life of a football wife that I haven’t said before.

You already know I love it. And you already know it makes me crazy. Some days I can’t sing its praises enough. Others, I want to wring its disembodied little intangible neck. It robs me of time and it showers me with blessings.

It is a paradox of ginormous proportions.

This past Sunday morning I sat on my back porch, the silken and slippery humid air settling and sliding off my limbs, making everything feel slow and sweet simply because it was Sunday morning.  You know, all easy like.

So I breathed in the easy. I breathed in the sweet, succulent calm, and I held it deep down in core of my soul.  And there it remains. My future calm in the storm of the impending football season.

Wordsworth was fueled by powerful emotions recollected in tranquility. Me, I’m fueled by the opposite: tranquility recollected during powerful emotions. Because starting tomorrow, and for the next five months, my life will be FILLED with powerful emotions. Wave after wave of powerful emotions. No doubt about it.

Starting with love. I’ve always had a hard, strong love for the game. It began in middle school, when I fell hard for the Dallas Cowboys of my youth and the TCU Horned Frogs of my hometown. This was no puppy love. It was true and it was deep and it was eternal.

And with that love comes butterflies – a tickling, nervous anticipation every, single game night. When I see those stadium lights, haloed in the gloaming, sparkling with the wings of a thousand frenzied moths, saluted by the cheers of a thousand frenzied fans, my belly goes downright giddy.

But along with all the love comes intense jealousy — jealousy of the time it steals away from our family, the demands it puts on the man we love most. It keeps him from us for most of the week and it keeps him from most of what our family holds most sacred: meal times and bath times and story times and bed.

He came home late the other night – for the third time this week — calves flecked with paint from lining the field. It was well past the boys’ bedtime. They had missed him. Again. And they had said so. Again. Several times. And it’s only the first week of many, many weeks we will miss him this season.

So yeah, I get jealous sometimes — of the time that it takes. And sometimes it makes me sad. And sometimes it makes me mad. Like that other night, when Mike came home late, all paint-flecked calves and sweat-stained shirt and flat-out worn-out…

But when I saw him, a calm settled over me, my Sunday Morning Calm. I remembered. I remembered that this is my love — this man and this sport. This is my life and this is my destiny — a destiny written long ago, in the helmeted stars of America’s team.

Yep, football makes me crazy. And happy. And angry. And happy. And jealous. And happy. And frantic. And happy. And, well, you name it, I feel it. All the feels. The great, big, powerful feels. Except for sorry. Football never makes me feel sorry.

 

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