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Sunday, February 13, 2011

Mission Bowl 2011 Recap

 (much of this is my own memory, so help me out with any errors I might have made.)

Prologue: (skip this to get straight to the recap)

It's been a LONG time since I've written a recap of Mission Bowl.  The last recap i wrote was Fall of 2008.  Before that I wrote one for Feb 2008 (we had two tournaments in 2008) and before that it was Feb of 2007.  Go ahead and read that if you want to know more about Team United's history.  There was no tournament in 2009 because they pushed the Fall 2009 tournament back a couple of months to Feb of 2010.  Last year, Feb 2010, I coached team United to a 3-0 round robin record and the #1 seed, but we were beaten by Kairos in the semi-finals 7-6.  That was my last year of coaching.  This year, Eric Chan took over as head coached and installed Steve Chen as his offensive coordinator and Clarence Chiu as his defensive coordinator.   

I didn't go to many of the practices because I was not a coach but I did go to some because Cindy was on the team this year.  I really didn't know much about this team except for what Eric told me.  The last practice of the year, Eric had a lot of the coaches and guy helpers play scrimmage against United.  I was shocked when United's offense basically scored at will against a team full of guys.  I knew from that point that this team would be good.  They were out running us, out jumping us, and Sylvia and Kelly both had precision passes that were flying right over the defender's hands and into the hands of the receiver.  

Hope:

This years tournament started off with Hope.  Hope seemed to have a very different team this year than in years past.  In years past, Hope would constantly run the option, but this year the option was gone. They brought a lot of pressure against us and the offense stalled a couple times due to some bad snaps.  When Hope had the ball, they quickly threw a couple of long passes up the sidelines and they were up 6-0 and then 12-0.  Our defense was not moving around very well in the zone.  We were down 12-0, how could that be?  I knew that the team was good because of how well they performed in practice so I was confident they would make a comeback if they just got the snap problems fixed and once the defense was less nervous.  Quickly before half time our offense drove down the field and scored a TD making it 12-6.  After the half, the offense quickly scored again making the score tied at 12-12.  At this point, Hope changed up their strategy and started rushing 4 at Sylvia.  Our offense quickly adjusted and started throwing screens to take advantage of this, but even though the offense would gain yards, it could never break the big play.  With the first down being every 20 yards, we needed the big play to score.  It didn't happen and the game ended in a 12-12 tie.    

Southland:

The next team we played was Southland.  Southland was last year's defending champions.  They had beaten Kairos to win the championship last year and we had never played them before.  They came down from Orange County and were rumored to play women's football tournaments all the time.  They only brought about 15 players to this years tournament because of a date conflict, so we didn't know what to expect.  Were they going to be the dominant team that they were rumored to be?  Or would they be a weaker team due to the lack of players?  We knew that they loved to run the ball, but we'd never seen them in action.  I think we scored on our first or second drive.  It was a very quick score taking advantage of a couple long passes.  Southland seemed to be caught off guard with how easily we were able to throw the ball. 

Southland's offense was a double wing offense with no wide receivers.  They would do a lot of tricky misdirection and fake hand offs and then run the ball.  Our defense was prepared however.  They contained the run fairly easily and even when Southland was able to gain some yardage, it wasn't much.  They quickly resorted to throwing the ball.  Their passing offense was not as refined as their running plays.  Our defense had forced them out of their comfort zone and they weren't able to move the ball around very much.  I was so excited because I love seeing teams getting forced out of their comfort zone and needing to adjust.  

Southland's defense adjusted to our throwing style of offense and was able to shut down a lot of the long passes.  Even when we were able to complete a long pass, they wouldn't give us the second long pass that would lead to the touchdown.  The game ended up being a defensive struggle that ended in a 6-0 win for United.  After the game, I still didn't see what enabled Southland to run over teams last year.  They were still a huge mystery to me.  Were they good or not?  

The Lunch Break:

During the lunch break we looked at the standings.  At this point the most fearsome team looked to be Kairos.  They had beaten Lighthouse 27-6 and Harbor 19-6.   27 points was amazing.  You can look back on my previous recaps.  27 points was the most points I had ever heard of being scored on a team.  20 points would usually guarantee victory in this tournament.  They were dominating with a high powered offense. We weren't going to play them in the round robin and we didn't want to play them in the first round of the playoffs, so we knew that we needed to win and get a good point differential in order to get the 2nd or 3rd seed.  In the last two years, United only had 2 losses in the entire tournament and both of them were to Kairos.  We also tied with them for the co-championship in Fall 2008 so we knew how good they could be.  Their passing style of offense always gave our defense trouble and their defense knew how to play the pass which has traditionally been our strength. 

Harbor:

Harbor is always the team that had the same colored jersey as us.  They were very good in certain years and not so good in certain years.  This year we had no idea what to expect.  The game started off 12-0 for United.  Sylvia started clicking and she kept hitting the corners to Jess and a couple to Crystal.  There was a long play where Harbor threw for a touchdown against us.  The long pass has always been our defense's weakness, but we pretty much held Harbor in check.  They had to throw a lot because they were behind and it ended up in a couple interceptions for us.  After the TD for Harbor, Sylvia started becoming even more deadly accurate.  She hit the QB zone where every pass was made.  They kept throwing to all of our receivers.  Kelly, Tam, Jess, Natasha, Crystal, all caught TDs or big passes.  Jess made a couple of spectacular grabs and then would turn and run ditching a bunch of defenders in her wake.  At half it was already 27-6.  we were blowing the other team out.  27 points at the half!  WOW.  That was crazy.  Where could we go from there?

Eric decided to rest Sylvia at that point and put in Kelly at QB.  But we still want to get more points in case it came down to a tie between Hope and us for the 3rd seed.  Again, we didn't want to play Kairos. The second half was more of the same.  Kelly threw touchdown passes and even ran for a touchdown herself.  She kept darting between defenders.  Her playstyle was very similar to Sylvia's.  We scored two additional touchdowns and the final score was 40-6.  40 points!  I was going crazy!  We kept on throwing and throwing and nothing could stifle Sylvia or Kelly the entire game.  They had nobody to match up against the height of the receivers!  It was amazing. At that point I knew that this team was insane.  I had NEVER heard of any team getting close to 40 points in a game against ANY opponent.  This team was a cut above ANY team I had ever seen offensively and execution-wise.  I knew Sylvia had grown up from being a decent quarterback two years ago, to a good quarterback last year, to a great one this year. 

Berean:

At this point we were 2-0-1 and it looked like we were going to make the playoffs.  We were playing this unknown Berean team that was also from Orange County just like Southland.  If they were from Orange County and coming down to San Diego to play a football tournament, they must be really into football.  Berean had also just knocked off Kairos which was interesting.  At the lunch break we thought Kairos was the scariest opponent because they had scored 27 on a team, which is considered a lot.  In the course of one game, Berean beat Kairos (22-19 I think was the score?) and we had just put up 40 points on a team.  Berean was 1-2 at this point.  They had not even scored a point until they put 22 points on Kairos.  That's strange.  What happened during the lunch break?  Was this team a good team or not a good team?  I had no idea.

The offense started off slowly in this game with the first drive sputtering without doing much.  Berean came out with their offense and featured a running game with a very good fake.  It was an end around and a fake end around.  This run tricked our defense into getting out of position a number of times and they ran for pretty big yardage a couple times.  The defense was not sealing off the edge and Berean would run along the sidelines for big yardage.  Right when the defense was flustered at the inability to defend the run, Berean would throw a long pass down the middle of the field to their Tight End #87. The name on the back of her jersey was "Beast."  The defense was getting very flustered at their inability to stop Berean's offense. 

On defense, Berean put a LOT of pressure on the quarterback.  Sylvia was getting pressured in a lot of different areas.  They would run corner blitzes and kept Sylvia off balanced.  We were able to score one touchdown in the first half but after that, it was very difficult for the offense to get on track.  We went into halftime down 12-6 

At halftime the coaches made great adjustments.  They put Kelly in on defense specifically to shut down #87 and also reinforced the defense's need to contain the run and also for the corners to cut off the sidelines.  With those adjustments in play, the second half went much better.   Bereans offense could not do anything at that point.  They couldn't run though they tried a couple times.  They couldn't reach the sidelines so they would cut back through the middle gaining 5 yards or so which is not enough in this league.  They tried to throw to the corners instead of the middle targeting receivers other than 87, but the receivers would drop the ball or the pass would be off or defended.  Without the 87 connection, their passing game was much worse.  Kelly made a couple of big plays in the middle of the field denying #87.  The defense came up with a couple of big stops and the girls started getting big smiles on their faces.  This didn't happen the entire first half and now they were stopping Berean.

Right after the half the defense got a stop and then the offense stalled on their first drive of the half.  The defense got another stop and then the offense moved the ball to the end zone and scored.  It was difficult to score given the amount of pressure that Sylvia was under, but the good gameplan came through.  We were tied 12-12.

It was a defensive struggle for the rest of the game and Berean had the ball near the end of the game.  Berean was behind and time was running out so they needed to throw the ball.  They threw the ball to the middle again, but Kelly intercepted the ball and ran it back for a game sealing touchdown.  We won the game 19-12.

Semi-Finals - Kairos:

Kairos played Southland in their final round robin game and lost 0-6.  They weren't really trying their hardest given that they had to face either Hope, or United and perhaps they preferred to face United due to the history?  Kairos has long been an arch-nemesis of United.  Like I said earlier, in the past two years (now 3 years), United had only lost two games total, both were to Kairos.  In the past 5 years (since 2007) United had only lost 4 games total, 3 of which were to Kairos.  We shared a co-championship with them in 2008 and we had never beaten them in a playoff game.  We played Kairos four times in the past two years and every year since 2007.  We were a combined record of 2-3-1 against them.  Kairos was an important team to beat if the team was to win a championship. 

The game started off slowly.  There were a couple three and outs before Kairos started throwing the ball long.  There were two huge deep completions from Esther to Superstina and our defense quickly made adjustments to play #1 really deep whenever she was in the game.  They allowed her to get some yardage in the middle, but after that the deep ball was largely stopped.  Kairos' offense had a number of play fakes in the back, but they rarely ran the ball.  They often faked it to runningbacks and then threw the ball deep.  Our safeties played very deep the entire game.  Kairos was able to move the ball, but they were never really able to break the defense. 

On offense, Kairos also knew how to play against the United offense.  They moved quickly in their zones and played fairly deep zones.  We were still able to move the ball, but not consistently.  One on fourth down try, Eric ordered up a trick halfback pass.  Sylvia dumped the ball off to Kelly.  As Kelly was catching the ball, Sylvia herself ran a slant across the middle of the field and Kelly hit her in stride for the first down.  It was a great play and a great call.  The offense then scored on a screen pass to I think... Eleasa? The score was 6-0.

Kairos came back with a trick play of their own... the patented reverse.  They run this play every year at least once against us.  The co-championship year ended with this play.  They usually get a good number of yards and this year was no different.  They gained about 20 yards and a first down on the reverse.  The defense continue to play deep and play solid not giving up any big plays.  The offense then put together another drive near the end of the game sealing the score 12-0. 

Championship Game - Southland

Southland beat Hope easily to reach the championship game.  They had not been scored on at all since the first game which United played them.  They had rolled over every opponent 14-0, 16-0.  They didn't score a lot, but kept the ball and never gave up touchdowns.  I watched a little bit of the Southland/Hope game and it was clear that Southland was playing completely different from when we saw them in the first game they played.  The defense was faster, the quarterback was rolling out and throwing the ball accurately on the run.  It was a pretty scary looking team.  I don't know if they just got warmed up or if they were holding something back during the first game.  

The championship game began with uneventfully.  We couldn't get much going and Southland started running on our team.  They were able to get a few runs in the middle of the field where we missed 2-3 flag grabs.  They then scored on a deep pass along the sideline.  We were already down 0-6.  Southland was an extremely quick team and very disciplined.  This team really scared me just watching them because they looked so good.  The flags they were pulling were one handed while running full speed or while diving or while sliding.  The defense was swarming and extremely fast.  The offense was able to run the ball a lot better than in the first game because they were so fast.  While they did have good blocking, the evasiveness and speed of their players really made it difficult.  This was probably one of the fastest all around teams I had ever seen. The first part of the game was extremely difficult for our team. 

But then our offense got going.

Sylvia began connecting with receiver after receiver.  It was Crystal going up and yanking the ball down while covered by two receivers.  It was Kelly coming out of the backfield on a screen pass and running for 20 yards.  It was Jess on a corner route.  We quickly scored making it 6-6 tie.  While the defense was having a difficult time against Southland, because they didn't throw the ball downfield consistently, they couldn't score as easily.  They would move the ball close to the goal line but then stall.  Cindy caught an interception on one of those drives.  YAY!  Sylvia got the back back and drove down for another score putting us up 12-6.  That is when the half ended.

We were up 12-6 at the half and the first offensive possession of the second half we scored again putting us up 19-6.  Then we started to feel comfortable.  But immediately on the next drive, Southland answered with a deep pass to the sideline.  Their receiver ran with so much speed all the way down the field and with one play, it was 19-13.  We were only up by 6 points.  When we got the ball back on the next drive.  Sylvia drove the ball down the field methodically hitting Crystal on a deep corner pass again that moved United close to their goal line.  The very next play, Sylvia hit Crystal again o a deep pass to the corner.  I thought the ball was thrown out of bounds but Crystal made the best catch I had ever seen with two toes in the end zone and a full extension grab barely in bounds.  Touchdown!  The score was now 25-13.  

Southland wasn't done yet.  They began to expose the middle of the field.  We put Kelly in the middle to stop their passes, but they kept completing slants and would weave down the middle of the field.  They scored on an amazing pass to the sideline.  There were two defenders on the receiver but the ball was placed so perfectly that the receiver barely caught it in the endzone and in bounds.  It was still a very tight game.  There were only about two minutes left at this point and we got the ball back.  We wanted to run out the clock as best as we could so we ran a couple of running plays, but it didn't eat up enough time.  The offense couldn't convert the third down and we had to give the ball back to Southland with only 50 seconds left.  It was up to the defense now.  

Southland threw the ball a couple times and moved the ball to midfield.  Then on the next pass, it went to the middle, and into Kelly's arms for a game sealing interception!  We had won the Championship!

 

Conclusion:

This year's team was amazing.  It was definitely the best team I had ever seen in the 2 years that I was offensive coordinator and the 3 years that I was head coach.  This team definitely deserved to win the championship.  

6 years ago, we began this journey with 13 players and a team called "Girls play hard 2."  We lost every game going 0-3.  Every year we built upon the previous years getting better and developing deeper relationships.  The 2nd year, we went 2-1 but just missed the playoffs due to point differential.  The 3rd year we went 4-1.  We were the # 1 seed in the playoffs and were undefeated going into the championship where we lost to Lighthouse.  The 4th year, we went 4-1-1, tying Kairos in the championship.  The 5th year we went 3-1, again gaining the #1 seed but losing to Kairos in the semi-finals. 

Yesterday we won the championship going 5-0-1.  Along the way we made a lot of friends and a lot of good relationships were forged.  CEC and CBC have seriously formed a tight bond between the two churches that 6 years ago I never would have thought was possible.  We won a co-championship along the way.  Unfortunately, I don't think anybody was satisfied with the co-championship.  Kairos spoke of the co-championship year like they really won a championship but we spoke of it as coming up short.  But we told the girls that this team was not about winning first.  It was about the fellowship and relationships first.  United has always been about that.  The name itself reflects that culture that we've developed at United.  This year we finally won the championship and it was great to see the sheer joy in Sylvia's face as Eric handed her the trophy.  Her face was the HIGHLIGHT of my day.  We never got to hold the trophy during the co-championship year, but this year we did.  It was amazing feeling that only highlights the relationships that have been developed.  Congratulations ladies!



 

 


Sunday, January 02, 2011

Orange Turtle Photography Website

Our website:

San Diego Wedding Photographer


Sunday, October 18, 2009

I haven't posted on here in forever!


Monday, November 24, 2008

Team United’s Fall 08 Mission Bowl Story

Not everything here is completely accurate… its just the best I could do with my memory (let me know if I got something incorrect).

Here is a link to last year’s (Feb) Mission Bowl story and the year before (07) if you want to read those. This year’s mission bowl was pushed up to November because of all the weather and field issues that the tournament had last year. So we can’t say its the 2009 mission bowl because it didn’t happen in 2009. We can’t say its 2008 mission bowl, because that one already happened.

So this year we had a lot less time to practice and train. We were notified that the tournament was going to be in November in the middle of September, so we really had on a couple months to practice. Another big change we had to go through this year was that Pam (our QB from the last two years) was in China and wouldn’t be playing in the tournament this year.

I also wasn’t sure if I wanted to coach this year because 1) I had started going to Kairos in Feb and 2) It just takes up a lot of time and a lot of time away from Cindy. Anyway, both Pastor Dalon and I decided to coach, but we decided that we would keep this year a “less intense” year and basically we would practice but not try to win that much since we had only 2 months to prepare when we usually prepare 4 months in advance.

That didn’t work out too well because as we got closer and closer to the tournament, it became more and more obvious that we had a very talented team. The more I realized how talented the team was the more I felt like we should do really well and have a good chance to go for it all. So the more I realized how talented of a team we had, the more the pressure built on me.

There was an infusion of great new talent to replace the loss of some of the players from last year as usual, but one big thing I noticed this year that I never noticed in years previous was that a lot of players that had been with us over 3-4 years had improved dramatically. There really is a big difference from being a “rookie” to being a “veteran.”

Anyway, on to tournament day. The tournament had the same format as it had last year. 2 game round robin. All six teams would make the playoffs but the top two seeds would get first round playoff byes. All six of the teams from last year returned. United, Kairos, Hope, Harbor, Harvest and Lighthouse. We drew Kairos as our first matchup and then Harbor.

Kairos

So being that Kairos is now my church and I’ve been going there for about 9 months, this matchup was pretty weird for me. I knew the coaches and some of the girls and Onechuel kept telling me how they were going to destroy us and how good “Superstina” was and how she was going to torch us. On top of that some of the girls on our team had heard how good Kairos was this year and how they were the team to beat this year. Well, personally I thought we were the team to beat, so I didn’t know what to make of all this talk.

Quickly I found out that Onechuel was not all talk. Superstina would catch these 5 yard quick slants and take them for 10-15 or more yards. The defense would get stops but we couldn’t consistently stop the Kairos offense. They scored twice, once on a reverse. Our offense couldn’t get on track either. We tried to throw the ball a lot and it didn’t work out too well. We ran a couple times for modest yardage, but when you’re playing from behind you want to throw the ball and Sylvia hadn’t really gotten into a rhythm yet. We didn’t score at all except for a safety and we lost 13-2.

That’s not how I expected to start the tournament. I knew that Kairos would be a tough team but I didn’t expect to lose to ANY team. There was also a bit of a rule mess up that made me pretty upset. The refs gave Kairos the ball to start the first and the second half, but that didn’t make the difference in the game anyway.

Sylvia was pretty dejected and I tried to rally the girls and keep them excited and pumped, but I don’t know if I did a good job or not.

Harbor

Now since we had a break after the Kairos game, I watched Harbor play a little and I had Simon scout Harbor for me. Simon provided a really detailed and extremely useful breakdown of the Harbor team. Harbor looked like a formidable opponent. They were being coached by the same coach who coached the mens team who were the mens champions a week earlier. I knew this was a tough team. Part of me didn’t even want to try to win this game because I knew we would probably have to conserve our players if we wanted to win the championship. But I knew we couldn’t do that because of team morale. We had to win this game. If we didn’t, people would start to doubt themselves and our team might crumble in the playoffs. The problem was, Harbor was an excellently coached team. They had really good execution.

We learned from Simon that Harbor ran the ball 70% of the time and that their QB was their main threat both running and passing. They would pass deep to the corners in order to keep us off of the run. Good thing our defense was geared to stop 2 things, the run and the deep ball. I put LeighAnn in as a QB spy against the quarterback.
From the very beginning our offense dominated their running attack. While their running attack was well executed, our defensive line just had more athleticism and penetrated the backfield consistently. Leigh Ann would be right behind them, pulling the flag or making a stop on the QB whenever she leaked out of the pocket. Leigh Ann had a lot of football smarts and she knew exactly when the QB committed to run and would dart in to stop her. Their QB “Chu” was very athletic, but Leigh Ann almost singlehandedly stopped her. Early in the first half we forced the QB into a bad throw and Eupheme caught an INT and ran it back to like the 2 yard line. It took a couple tries, but our offense finally punched it in.

Meanwhile our offense started to get on track a bit. We ran the ball a lot more and got Sylvia to run out of the pocket a bit and during the first half we scored a TD mostly pounding the sweep. In the second half they started containing with their linebackers so we couldn’t really run the ball anymore. Our passing offense hadn’t really gotten its rhythm yet, but I could tell that the offense was starting to regain some confidence.

We won the game pretty convincingly, 13-0. They never really got close to scoring on us because our defense was so good against them.

Hope

After lunch, our first playoff game was against Hope. Hope had played Lighthouse and Kairos and had lost both games. The game started off slowly with Hope driving all the way down the length of the field against us. When they were about to score, we put in our “special” defensive package and we stopped them. So our offense took over on the 2 yard line or something like that and we tried to run a sweep but got taken down for a loss. They scored a safety on us. At that point I was kinda worried. How could we be doing so poorly? Not that Hope was a horribly bad team or anything, but we weren’t supposed to be struggling this much.

The second defensive series, things changed. Eupheme intercepted another pass and ran it back in for a touchdown. This changed the momentum a lot. We converted the 2 point conversion making it 8-2. Sylvia started to run a lot during this game. We ran sweeps and they were pretty successful and we scored another TD on a combination of those. Sylvia also started to get her passing into rhythm as she completed some long passes. We won the game 15-2.

Our defense kept getting stop after stop. We would intercept the ball to stop the drive half of the time. A LOT of girls got interceptions throughout the day. It was great!

Lighthouse

Our next playoff game was against the defending champions of Mission Bowl and the tournament host, Lighthouse. Once again, it was very tense in the beginning of the game. The stress of the game when its close is ugh… yuck. But Eupheme again got the scoring started with an INT return for a TD. I give Gavin a lot of credit for putting her at cornerback for a lot of the game giving her opportunities to get pick sixes. That helped us out a lot. I don’t think we converted the 1pt conversion.

That’s the way it stayed for awhile. We were leading 8-0 at halftime. It was pretty nerve racking that entire time. I think that’s how I felt for most of the tournament, nervous. I remember thinking, is it halftime yet? Then I remember thinking, we still have 12 minutes to go until the end of the game? Soon after that though, the offense scored a TD giving us a cushion… I don’t really remember how. Near the end of the game we scored another TD, I think on runs mostly because PD told Sylvia to go conservative. At one point in the game, Sylvia started cramping and LeighAnn had to go in for QB a bit, but luckily Sylvia got back onto the field after awhile. So we won the game 21-0 though the game felt a lot closer than that.

Kairos (again)

Kairos and Harbor played in their playoff game and I heard that Harbor was up 12-0 but then Kairos miraculously came back with two TDs to tied the game. Then they went into overtime and played 4 overtime periods. It took a long time but finally Kairos won the battle. I knew Harbor was a well coached team, but nonetheless I was surprised they were able to hang with Kairos, which I thought was the superior team.

I told my team that though Kairos beat us the first game, we were going to beat them this time. We were going to pull out all the tricks and do everything we could to beat them. I put in our “special” defensive package for most of the game. Truth be told, I really wanted to play Harbor because Superstina gave me nightmares. How could we stop her?

It was a defensive stalemate for most of the game. Sylvia did complete some long passes, but we could never punch it into the endzone. On one play, Sylvia threw the ball deep to Angie and Angie was running behind all the Kairos defenders toward the endzone. Ruth, Kairos’s deep safety, ran and caught Angie from behind and grabbed her flag on the 5 yard line. We had a couple penalties after that and could not punch the ball in.

Kairos’ defensive line was very good and penetrated and gave our offense some trouble behind the line of scrimmage.

Our defense was doing very well, but the special package did not give them as much trouble as I thought it would. Leigh Ann had to come out because she was cramping. Eupheme kept knocking down passes and our defense was performing well, but I was expecting Esther (Kairos QB) to get sacked a lot more often. Our defense produced a lot of sacks this game too, but just not as much as I thought they would.

So the sun was going down and the refs told us that if the sun was going down, they would just give us a 2 minute warning and then end the game. We were going to have a 0 minute halftime… basically they would just reset the ball. There was no time.

Then Kairos finally hit Superstina on a quickslant yet again and she waltzed into the endzone making our defenders miss the flag a couple times. I thought we had lost at that point. They didn’t score the extra point but we had not been able to score at all against their defense so far, and the sun was getting lower.

But on the next possession, Sylvia hit Natasha long on a corner route and Natasha ran all the way down the sideline. Ruth again was closing in on Natasha but missed the flag grab at the goalline and Natasha scored! We tied the game! We couldn’t convert the extra point either (close play) and so we were tied 6-6. Then Kairos started driving again. They then ran a reverse on 3rd down and their ball carrier (Superstina, who else) was running towards the sideline. Our corner (Mindy) was doing her job by staying home on the play and Esther saw that she could potentially break up the play so Esther threw a block on Mindy and they both went down.

Our safety pulled the flag and while they gained a lot of yardage, they didn’t make the first down. But, the bigger concern was that neither Mindy, nor Esther got up from the ground. They didn’t get up for a long time and both teams started praying. Eventually the refs wanted to talk and I think it was mainly Leigh Ann’s idea to go for Co-Champions rather than to finish the game. We consulted our girls and they were happy with that idea. We didn’t want anybody else to get hurt and the light was winding down.

The refs wanted to go immediately into overtime play, but we wanted to propose Co-Champions. Sung and the rest of the Kairos coaches consulted the Kairos girls and they were happy with it too. It was a good idea and a good compromise. I liked it a lot because I really didn’t want to beat Kairos because Kairos is my church now… but I also didn’t want to lose to them either.

So in the end, Kairos and United were co-champions. It was a great ending. Everyone cheered and we all gathered in the middle of the field telling each other how great everyone played. I think everyone was very happy with the ending.

Conclusion

Team United was loaded with talent both on offense and defense. The defense probably intercepted 10+ passes during the tournament. We played 5 games and went 3-1-1 and were declared co-Champions with Kairos. What an accomplishment. Women you all played great and I was proud to coach all of you. Congratulations to the Kairos women also. Us guys have a lot to learn from the graciousness that these women play football with.

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Sunday, November 02, 2008

Prop 8: No such thing as neutrality

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photo by brebot

In California we have the opportunity to vote on a state constitutional amendment that would define marriage as exclusively between a man and a woman. This vote promises to be a very close one and in California, it’s probably a bigger deal than the presidential election. (The presidential election has been wrapped up for awhile in California).

I see older white families holding “Yes on Prop 8″ signs on busy intersections in the morning. I see younger ethnically diverse people holding “No on Prop 8″ signs on those same intersections at night. It is a very interesting fight considering that 8 years ago, prop 22 was passed with an overwhelming majority (61%).

I can perfectly understand why non-Christians would vote no on 8, but arguments for Christians to vote no on 8 have been popping up. This blog post argues that Christians should vote No on 8 because we should acknowledge religious freedom for all and not all religions think that homosexuality is wrong. Basically, don’t pass laws that force others to be Christian or think like a Christian. Many would use this same argument for abortion. Many would argue that we should vote no in order to ensure the separation of church and state.

One thing these people forget is that there is no such thing as neutrality. Those against prop 8 would have you believe that a No vote is a neutral vote on prop 8. You’re not FOR gay marriage, you’re merely for personal freedom and choice. You’re for allowing people to do what they want to do. You don’t want to restrict people’s freedoms even though personally you believe gay marriage is wrong. They argue, if you’re against men marrying men, then don’t marry another man. But if someone else does it, its none of your business.

They have reframed the debate. A vote for YES is eliminating rights for them. A vote for NO is retaining rights. It’s no longer about gay marriage or being gay. But that is wrong. A YES vote is against gay marriage. A NO vote is for gay marriage. It’s as simple as that. Gay activists know this. They want to trick Christians into voting for gay marriage by reframing the debate.

If gay marriage is legalized, children will grow up in an environment where their sexuality is a choice. It will become a government sanctioned choice. The gay community is slowly transitioning their argument from “it’s genetics!” into “it’s my free will choice.” I personally know a couple people who do choose to be gay. They don’t struggle with it. It’s a choice for them. I know most people do not choose to be gay and wish they weren’t. But it’s not true that “nobody chooses to be gay.” The gay community wants people to have that choice and to choose to be gay. The gay community wants more people to identify with them.

That is why there is this argument about whether or not gay marriage would be taught in schools. If gay marriage is illegal, it likely would not be taught in schools because it is difficult for a teacher to advocate something that is illegal. If gay marriage were legalized, it would make it very easy for teachers to advocate gay marriage. Of course teachers would not be forced to teach gay marriage, but many teachers want to. Many teachers have taught about gay lifestyle and that’s a fact.

So it’s a culture war and the law speaks volumes about what is acceptable in society. If you vote No on prop 8 you’re casting a “gay lifestyle is good vote.” Don’t make any mistake about it. There is no neutrality here.

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