By Steve Holt, Opinion Editor
“Does ‘offense’ mean we have the ball?”
“Oh, so you mean I can move around once the ball is hiked to me?”
“The other team is playing so dirty! I got hit in the face!”
“What just happened?”
If you thought the twice-retired former Packers quarterback and huge weenie Eric Crouch made the above statements, think again-believe it or not, they were made by wily freshmen women during the Welcome Week flag football tournament Thursday night.
As the coach of two teams during last week’s tourney, I stood at the sideline in shock as every stereotype about female knowledge of football was demolished one by one. I found myself wondering whether or not I was really worthy of the position into which I was thrust. I was overwhelmed, really, at the perfect combination of tenacity and strategy that went into each play. Like Crouch, I was way, way out of my league.
Not really.
In fact, all of that was a huge, whopping lie.
But women’s flag football wouldn’t be nearly as fun if all that was true, now would it? I mean, what fun is watching women who know what they’re doing tearing up and down the football field (I know, I know…some, guys especially, might like that. Humor me, though)? Isn’t the “mission statement” of female flag football to “explore and exhibit the distinct differences between the male and female gender”?
I argue that it is. At times last Thursday evening, I felt like my co-coach and I were teaching plays to the dirt on the field. And then, when the ball was snapped, there was about as much movement and contact as there is at a nerd nightclub.
But it was that innocence and willingness to learn that kept my co-coach and I hoarse from yelling instructions and encouragement to “our girls.” We hadn’t known any of them for but about five minutes, but our hearts became oven-fresh muffins whenever they completed a pass or ran the ball more than a couple yards down the field.
And the motivation went even deeper than that, I think. Our praise and encouragement of the young ladies to give it their all every play poured forth from a deep desire to get a really swank looking baby blue “Intramural Champions” T-shirt for winning the tournament. It was for this final reason that we quickly found a new team of impressionable freshmen women to coach after our first team was eliminated, and the overriding reason why us fellas allowed them to enter the sacred vault of pigskin knowledge that we boast.
There, I got that off my chest. That feels better.
[Writer’s note: If any of you who read this column was on either of the teams I mentioned above, I apologize. I mean nothing personal by what I wrote above, and the coaching experience Thursday was certainly one I won’t forget. Ever.]
