Congrats Zach!

Congratulation to my lil bro Zach on his high school graduation tonight. When really thinking about coming here to Denmark, I looked at some days I would miss, and this one of the big one's for me. I am really proud of the little guy and wish I could be there for him like he was there for me at Truman screaming his lungs out! i love you buddy and have a fun night--you deserve it!

Life in Denmark has been swell. Friday was some kind of holiday, and there was a football game between the Demons and Rebels that I joined Esben in attending. The Rebels head coach is also a part of the U19 National Team with our coaches, so we know him pretty well and he is just a great guy to be around. The Rebels beat the Demons 43-17 with some good playing by both sides. The Rebels have a QB/WR from Harvard who is a fast, quick, and shifty guy. The holiday on Friday threw me for a loop since I wasn't really used to watching football on a Friday afternoon.

Saturday the U19 Team played at the Amager Demons. The Demons had a total of 14 players at the game, but we came out flat. I told our DL in warm-ups that we look like we've already won the game by showing up. The first quarter was tied 0-0, but we picked it up and rolled on with a 46-6 win. The most disheartening thing for me though was the amount of personal fouls we picked up. We played with very little discipline (however I cannot say that as a generalization, we have some solid quality guys that were trying to squash it all), but just loosing your cool in a game is something I have never understood, let alone when we are delivering a beating, why be a jackass. That stuff just weighs on me a bit I guess. After the game, we went to the house of a former Gold Digger coach who lives right by the field. He had a big BBQ for our players and we were there for a while. It was a super nice backyard area and a ton of fun to hang out with our coaches and players, not to mention some good food!

Also Saturday night had the game of the year so far in the National League as the 3-0 Copenhagen Towers traveled to Vejle in Jutland to take on the 1-0 Triangle Razorbacks. The Razorbacks have played few games which is I believe due to one team being dropped in the NL (long story that I don't really know short basically).  I heard from a lot of the guys that went as well as from following twitter updates that is what a game that lived up to its billing. The Razorbacks edged the Towers by 5 I believe. We were originally scheduled to play the Razorbacks June 4th, however due to our EFAF game in London, it has been moved to later in the season. We get the Towers twice due to them being in our conference, once in late June right before our summer break, and once in August right after. Those are games that mean a lot to our club (as I have been self banned from wearing any purple to keep from any teasing/ beating I may take at the hands of my teammates).

On to Sunday- the senior game vs. the Kronborg Knights. The Knights have not won a game so far under their new head coach and have had some time to prepare for us and threw some new things at us, and didn't do too much of some things we may have expected from them. However, it was not enough as we won 62-0 with the game being called towards the end of the 3rd quarter due to the skies opening up ferociously. They were a hard fighting team that wanted to play football. At one point, two of their players were telling their coach to stop yelling at the refs and let them play. That gets some respect in my book.  My shortfall of the day comes on my general lack of ability to score. My first chance game on a bad snap on a punt from about the Knights 25ish yard line. I kept rushing and I sorta nudged the punter out of the way and tried to scoop the ball, it took a bounce up to my chest as I bent down and bobbled off my hands, then I went to the fall on it idea and as I jumped on it, it shot out towards the back of the endzone where I though it would go out until one of our LBs jumped on it. TD, awesome. I got a lot of crap for that one, I really should have scored, but I blamed it on my ripped up gloves that have no grip. The second one was on even more of a silver platter as I blocked a punt in the endzone. I spun around to find it and saw it rolling to the sideline. With only the vision of TD in my eye, I take off after it. As I think okay, just dive, don't scoop, fall on it and prepare for the pouncing, I get tapped of balance by the punter and its puts my jump off from the ball. This time, Showtime gets his SECOND TD of the season thus confirming his Theory of following Ryan, which states that if you want to score a TD, follow me and wait for me to mess up, and it will be there for you. I just can't believe I have two chances and I came away empty handed. We also work on this stuff all the time, so I should be good at it. Hopefully I'm just saving it for a really crucial moment, like a go ahead TD or something cool like that!

I went on way to long about that. I am just in disbelief. There must really be an American TD curse on this team. I'm afraid to break it because of what happened when the Gold Diggers broke their last curse (injuries). So I really think I'm just being a team player on this one, not a klutz.

This upcoming week is an off week for the senior team, however the DL will get together for some conditioning as usual. Our focus is on the London Blitz and winning that to get the chance to play in the EFAF Cup Final, which would be huge for us! They are a solid team and we jut got some film on them that I will be watching. It will be good for us to play in a game of this magnitude after being relatively unchallenged the last few weeks.

The U19 guys have a HUGE week for them as they play the rival Copenhagen Towers. The Towers are the team to beat this year, and our guys really need to be focused up and have a good week of practice to play with those guys. I am looking forward to this game and will be coaching the hell out of the DL so we can be in a position to win!