And as another season grinds its way into gear, I’ve been thinking a lot about how football and being a football family demand a lot of similar physical and emotional commitments.
Football, and being a football family, takes teamwork.
And luckily, my husband and I make a really good team. In his football job on game nights, my husband is up in the booth -- away from the field, but very much in on the action. His daddy's job at home is not much different. He’s not on the field (football keeps him away from home most days until just before the boys’ bedtime and sometimes not even then), but he’s very much in on the action. He monitors, helps make adjustments, keeps me motivated, and provides endless emotional support. There’s no way I could run this program without him.
Football, and being a football family, take hard work and dedication.
The two of us have accentuated the importance of routine and fundamentals with our twins from the get-go. Nap times and dinner times and screen times and bedtimes are established and rarely vary. The boys know and understand our expectations, which provides me an immeasurable advantage when I’m putting them through their paces alone at home during the season. They are disciplined and, for the most part, dedicated to the routine. But that doesn’t mean things can’t go wrong in an instant. Blitzes can still blindside me. Takedowns can occur. Turnovers can and do happen. But discipline and vision can shift that momentum right back to the proper side again, just like in football.
Football, and being a football family, require a solid game plan.
Without one, your team will rarely be victorious. And even if you do have one in place, you won’t always get the W. Still, it is pure insanity to play ball without one. Since most of our family’s day-to-day offense is on this mama’s shoulders during the season, our schemes must be solid and darn-near foolproof. I’ve come to rely on zone blocking and a solid running game. There’s no time for a huddle (and no one around to huddle with even if there were time). Now most days, everything goes according to plan. But regardless of the number of reps and hands-on instruction you’ve given, execution is rarely without flaws. Balls get dropped. Players go down. Penalties are accrued. Mama’s nerves get sacked.
And that’s where my coach excels most...
Because football, and being a football family, requires motivation.
When you’re going it alone for the vast majority of the season, you need both inner and outer motivation. With my husband in my corner, I have the outside motivation covered. He knows how to give just the right pep talk to pull me back into the game, more energized and ready to succeed than before. But for those times when he’s not available for a consult – those times when I have to get up, dust myself off and execute the game plan without anyone else around to bounce off ideas, I have to dig deep and rely on those hard-and-fast fundamentals. I have to trust the vision, do what we do, run what we run, and believe in our teamwork and tenacity. We’ve tried to plan for every possible scenario, to account for every gap, and to have the flexibility to take what comes at us and roll with it.
Yes, football and being a football family require physical demands and emotional commitments from everyone involved. There are so many lonely dinners and difficult bath times. There are so many rushed labor-day cookouts and daddy-less trick-or-treats. There are so many tears from kids who miss their daddies -- and occasionally from mamas missing them too. Because there may not be crying in baseball, but believe me, there is crying in football. A lot of crying.
But most of those tears are the good kind. The happy kind. The proud kind. The kind you blink away as your boys run to the fence to give Daddy a kiss during summer practice. The kind that stings your eyes with pride as you and your boys rush the field for a hug and kiss after the game. The kind you shed after your husband reads you a text sent from a player who just secured a D-1 scholarship. The kind that runs down your cheeks and off your chin after a championship run that ends in success.
The kind that unexpectedly well up when you think about how much you love your football husband, your football family, and your football life – your hard, hectic, wild, and way-harder-than-you-ever-thought-possible football life.