Back in Business

Sorry for the long delay in keeping you guys updated with my spectacular life. Computer stopped working about a week ago, and with the help of some of the guys, I resuscitated it and it's now working, although every time I turn it off, I pray it turns back on, but that's not interesting at all.

So lots to talk about, but I'll be brief. I'll start with the Knights weekend. The U19 won 56-6 in the 3rd quarter I think. The fields don't have scoreboards, so I use my iPod to punch in the score as it happens, otherwise I go nuts trying to remember everything. The next day, the seniors did the same thing and won like 55-0. Pretty awesome to throw a shut out at them. Defensive line wise, it wasn't our best game which was disappointing, but at the same time, its a bit comforting to know we have a good enough team around us to pick us up when we aren't playing the best.

Most of last week was spent trying to revive my computer. I only really need it to watch film and get notes out for the guys, and I guess to keep in touch with everyone back home, but that's really it. Due to it not functioning and TV getting boring, I ended up reading a nutrition book I brought with me in like 3 days, which is unreal with how slow I generally read and how my mind wanders around. I was pretty proud of myself. The sad thing I guess is that it was a book I "read" in my nutrition class at Truman when I was a sophomore. It was nice to finally read it though, some good stuff in there.

We put in two pretty solid practices leading up to our game against the Rebels, who came into the game second in our conference with a 6-2 record to our unblemished 7-0 record. They have quite possibly the fastest player in Denmark as their QB/WR and is very dangerous when he gets the ball in his hands. They also  would feature a few key players who didn't participate in the 48-20 Gold Diggers win the first time around. Their defense played tough and kept them in the game with a touchdown early in the game to make it a 14-7 halftime score for the Gold Diggers. Both offenses couldn't seem to muster much, as defense seemed to be the theme for the day. At the end of the day, we prevailed with a 28-13 victory. The Rebels had roughly 180 yards of total offense, with 85 of those coming on one scramble by their American QB. No one here believed a white guy could run that fast until they saw him. It gave a lot of the Danish guys hope to think they could one day speed like that. After watching the film of this game, I was much more pleased with the pressure we were putting on their Danish QB. He was constantly had like 2 seconds to throw before one of us was in his face, chucking the ball off his back foot and completed like 5 passes if I had to guess. I don't think he's too big a fan of me......

Early in the game, I hit him as he was throwing and he mumbled God knows what to me. In the 3rd quarter, after his like 2nd interception of the day, I blocked him, and knocked him over as the play was ending, and again he said something. Now this fella doubles as their kicker/ punter and is very good at that. Being that I am on the punt return team, I guess that was his time to get some revenge. I as trail back to get to the punt and see it bouncing backwards and hearing the "peter" calls to get away, I throttle down and start to take it to our sideline. Next thing I know I get slightly brushed from behind and its the bozo punter "getting me back for hitting him" after he threw a pick. He said something like "thats for hitting me" or something stupid that a football player shouldn't say, I just said don't throw us the ball and you won't get hit and walked away. I like to think I made his day by letting him hit me, so I felt good by making him feel good about his performance.

So with that win, we clinched the first round by in the playoffs. Our next game is a couple weeks away when we play the Razorbacks, which could be a preview of this year's Mermaid Bowl. We also have the honor of playing against two UConn guys, a DL/OL and a do it everything WR/DB. Should be an exciting matchup of two unbeaten teams to round out the season before the playoffs. What should be an equally exciting matchup the day before our game is the Rebels-Towers game, which decides the 2nd and 3rd seed in our division.

I now have a couple weeks off due to the U19 National Team participating in the European Championships. They will get to face Germany and Austria, and the Gold Diggers have 16 players going, which is freaking great. We have a bunch of senior coaches going as well, so we do not have the senior practice, but the U19 practices will continue, which will be interesting to see what kind of turn out we get at that. I play on seeing some things I haven't seen, castles and such, and praying for some SUN. We have had a couple of nice days, but as a couple of the guys said a couple of weeks ago, the summer went south for the summer this year, as there really hasn't been any solid string of warm, sunny days. It has been nice recently, but it will be sunny and great when I go to the gym around 10, then at noon, it will get cloudy and breezy, then I head out to practice and its sunny and humid, it's so crazy. The worst thing for me is that the beach is so close, and it's never really been "beach weather" while I've been there. I hate it because I will probably never live this close to the beach again in my life. So that's all I really have to complain about, life is rough right?

Post Summer Break

Summer break ended and we played our first game. We got together and had 4 practices the week before so we knew we would be beyond prepared for this next game against the Towers. Our last game was touted as one of the best football games ever played in Denmark when we came out on top with a 41-40 victory, scoring withing the final minute. With all the hype from the last game, and the opening of our new stands, this game would surely not disappoint!

The spectators game out to support, and the atmosphere was great for a game of football. The weather was a bit warm by Danish standards, but a beautiful day it was. After a very solid week of practice for the DL, I was super excited to play this game. I knew we would be prepared more than the guys would know, and I truly felt we would win by 2-3 scores, but did not really want to seem so positive.

The game started out with the Towers receiving the opening kickoff. The very first offensive play of the game went for a 70 yard passing TD, 6-0 Towers. While it was a blazing start and not the way we wanted to start, a lot of the guys had the same feeling--it's just one play. They ended up rolling out on the PAT for an easy 2 to go up 8-0. The high powered Gold Diggers offense took the offense and put together a beautiful 8 play, 85 yard drive highlighted by a 40 yard reception that led to an easy running score for our QB on a keep from the 2 yard line.  We kicked the PAT and the defense readied itself. Surely they would not score right off the bat again.

They came out and ran on first down and we stuffed it. The next play was a pass down the sideline picked  off by our DB. The offense couldn't put another beauty together and punted back to the Towers, who were stymied by the Gold Digger defense and forced to punt. A major frustration on my day was again how close, but so far I was from blocking punts. I was a step away from all of them, but I'll get that back soon enough, since I could still feel the traveling during the summer really holding me back. My favorite part of punt return, is that I am usually lined up on a DB or WR, so that's kind of fun, and they seem to freak out, when all they really need to do is just get in my way for .5 seconds. I digress though. After receiving the punt, the offense put together a 7 play drive with a failed PAT to put us up 13-8. We would never lose that lead throughout the day, as the Towers could not move the ball with any consistency on offense, and really couldn't figure out how to stop out offense.

The first play of the Towers next drive, the RB coughed up the ball after getting destroyed by our LBs, including one of our U19 guys stepping up. I loved watching this play on HUDL, because you see him going one speed all the way to the play. Our DB scooped, and was  practically one on one with the QB at about the 20 going in, but instead of cutting to the field to get behind blockers, he decided to try to truck the QB and was knocked out at the 2. I told him about the blockers, but with a smile, as usual, he says come on if you're one on one with the QB, what are you going to try to do. Good answer I thought. The Towers defense came up tough and held us to a FG, making it still a one score game at 16-8.

To sum up the rest of the half without using too many words, the Towers offense didn't record 1 first down, and our offense was rolling, putting up 33 points, and the defense allowed 8, however a kickoff return for a TD for the towers made the halftime score 33-14 in favor of the Gold Diggers I believe.

We received the ball after the half, and as expected at this point, marched down the field and scored, going up 40-14. The Towers then seemed to have something going, moved the ball to the Gold Diggers 30, before an huge interception by our LB, killing any momentum they may have been trying to swing in their favor. The offense put together some crazy long drive before a blocked FG ended it at the Towers 5 yard line. They may have been down, but they showed some pride in their team by fighting to keep points off the board any way possible.


After forcing a 3 and out again, our offense went on a 3 play drive to score their last TD of the day to put us ahead 47-14. The Towers answered their next drive connecting on a 40 yard TD pass for the last score of the day to make it 47-20. The rest of the game was back and forth, as our offense ate up clock, and they couldn't piece much together.

When all was said and done, the Gold Diggers defense was on the field for 40 plays, while the offense had an astounding 90 offensive plays. That is a huge number and definitely played a major role in our ability to blow them away.

After the game I met up with some of the guys and had a pretty wonderful night out. We played this game which required like flicking (although some cheaters would push it) a wooden circular car piece around a made up race track. It's extraordinarily difficult to play, but I was absolutely miserable at it. Despite being so terrible, it was a blast hanging out with the guys.

This week, we had a family day type event at our practice, as the whole club practiced together. The U13, U16, U19 and Senior team shared the field and did some work together. It was kind of an odd practice for me to plan, but I did it based on thinking, what would I think is cool if I were 13 playing with older guys. I figured they would really enjoy working in with the older guys so I tried to get them as many reps with the Seniors as possible. Also, the Senior guys did a really good job coaching up the youngins. Afterwards was a BBQ, and it was a truly fun evening of football.

The weekend both the U19 and Senior Teams travel to Helsingor to take on the Kronborg Knights. It will be a weekend packed with football, which is what I love!

European Journey Part 4- Germany

So we get to Munich around 8am a bit sleepy, but much better rested than if we had to sit in a chair all night. We spend some time in the train station and got some coffee and breakfast. We then checked our luggage and got a map and went into Munich. We were meeting the Brinks around 11 at the Glockenspiel, so we headed out there around 10. It was about a 10 minute walk in the rain. It was about 60 degrees and rainy in Munich after seeing 90 degrees and sunny for a week, so we were pretty unprepared for that. Audrey bought a sweatshirt and we had to buy a new umbrella since we couldn't find ours (turns out it was just in the bottom of Audrey's bag). I don't know much about this Glockenspiel things except that it wasn't destroyed in WWII and it's extraordinary underwhelming. Twice a day it does this little dance thing that's hard to explain, but it drags on for like 5 minutes and it's not very cool. I wonder how cool people thought it was like 60 years ago.

We walked around Munich for a little bit and had a couple beers before catching the train back to Bamberg. I did a pretty good job of sleeping all the way back, and I'm not really sure when we got back. In the evening, we met up with some of David's buddies and got some food. It was so good. I got pork shoulder that came with some weird potato dumpling thing and some like mashed broccoli I think. It was all very filling and super good. It was a pretty low key night as we headed home from there.

Sunday morning we slept in which felt wonderful. Lizzi cooked some breakfast and while that was going on we took a ride with David to where they do some rock climbing. We took a pathway up to a big rock that overlooked the area with some great views. We got back and ate some breakfast then we started the our real day by going out and seeing a castle which provided another wonderful view.
It was pretty cool to see hills and mountains, since that landscape is nonexistent here in Denmark. From there, we started a brewery tour around 1 in the afternoon on a Sunday. We went out to all the little breweries in Bamberg and some of his friends from last night met us along the way, even one in full lederhosen. We went to 6ish places and saw some neat churches along the way.  After a wonderful day of beers, brats, and playing BS, we headed back to start packing up and ready ourselves for our adventures Monday morning. We got up nice and early Monday morning and got a ride to the train station. Monday was an uneventful day of traveling which was nice. Basically 5 hours of train rides then an hour of flying and we were back. It felt pretty good to be back, but we were getting sad since we knew it meant Audrey's time here was coming to a close.

Tuesday, Audrey packed and we went to get her some souvenirs before practice. There was some kind of scout convention or something since kids in uniform were running around everywhere. Audrey watched out practice and got to meet some of the guys before getting a post-practice meal at Kosk with the coaches. Wednesday unfortunately came and we parted ways at the airport. It was clearly sad to see her go, but we were so lucky to have been able to see and do what we did. It seemed so long ago that we were in Copenhagen doing a canal tour, almost like a different time. Audrey left, Esben was at the National Team camp, so I had the place all to myself. Audrey made it home safely and is now prepping for her first year of school, and I am in the middle of our game week with the Towers. I haven't done too much in my week since. The biggest highlight was going to a Running Sushi place with some of the guys Friday night. I had zero clue what I was doing and was pretty horrible with the chopsticks. For the first about 5 minutes I was holding them backwards, but turning them around didn't help much at all. It was pretty good food and a good evening.

Football is back and we are in the end swing of our season. Life goes on!