The brawl that begins with a prayer . . .

Tis the season for church ball. Now that the season is over, we're glad to report that no one got kicked out, Jerel only got yelled at once by the refs to "let them call the game," and only one game got stopped right in the middle for bad behavior. When Jerel just saw me write about the refs yelling at him he said, "That's because the refs didn't know what they were doing." The ref actually is a friend of his. lol One funny story about Chase's team. One night Jerel was asked to ref. A couple of Jerel's friends, Matt and Jake, were up there for the next game. (Matt was the winner from the ugly sweater contest.) Every time Jerel called a foul, they gave him a hard time about it. Especially when he called one against Chase. They would yell stuff like, "Oh, come on, he's your own kid" or "Chase, did you get in trouble tonight?" I guess turn about is fair play. :) Too funny!

Jerel played with the "Seniors." I just love to say that--Seniors. It makes me laugh so hard. And I tried to say it as much as I could every time I talked to the players in that age bracket. I especially cracked myself up when I was talking to the young college age kids. Jerel's just glad that they don't have the "Veterans" division anymore. It was one of his games that got stopped because a fight was about to break out. I was just glad because he wasn't involved this time, and he was glad because it counted as a win for his team. His team was up in the score and when they didn't allow the game to restart, it counted as a win for his team. I was talking to a new member of the church and a wife of one of the players. Her husband is more mouthy--I mean talkative--than Jerel and she had never heard the phrase "Church Ball, the brawl that starts with a prayer." She laughed so hard at that.

A funny side note is at the beginning of "the game" a couple 18 year old guys from the ward were sitting on the bench and talking to Jerel. They commented that they thought the game would be "all slow" and were surprised at how intense things were. Jerel commented, "Just wait, it usually gets worse." Sure enough, that's the night the fight happened. Jerel just "corrected" me and said it was just friendly shoving. Yeah, whatever. lol The game got stopped right in the middle--sounds low-key and friendly to me. I'd like to say that Jerel was so fast that the picture was blurry, but in all honesty the picture taker probably was at fault. :) But it looked cool, so I had to include them. I also loved the picture of Jerel making sure the scoring table is marking down the extra point for being fouled. It looks like he's hailing a cab. They had a fairly good season and won more than they lost.

Jordan played with the Deacons, and we're sad to say that they lost every game. It wasn't a good season for them. Sometimes they lost by over 40 points. But the good thing was that every member of the quorum came out to play every game, some non-members from the neighborhood came for fellowship, and camaraderie started to develop between the boys. Those boys had great team spirit and never gave up. You would think that sometimes they would get hard on themselves, but they all had good attitudes. Way to go Jordan! It's too bad they don't have swimming and football in church sports. We actually have a state champion league swimmer in the quorum.

Chase's team did really well. And that's saying a lot when you consider all the facts. They have 6 Teachers, but only 5 were allowed to play because the other kid plays for the Junior High team. A couple games they were able to get a non-member kid from the neighborhood to play, but that was it. And it was usually when they needed a 5th player because a player couldn't make it. That means no subs for most games. All the other teams had anywhere from 9-21 kids on their team; they always had fresh legs to play. Plus, a couple of our boys were on the school wrestling and baseball teams. Most games they would practise until 6:15 and be playing 30 minutes later at the church game. They came tired, but ready to play. Also, only 3 of them are basketball players, although the other two are still athletic. Chase is one of the boys that doesn't play basketball much anymore, but does well in track events and soccer. The other boy is a lacrosse player and into dirt bike racing. One time a player fouled out and they had to play with 4, and they still won! They in fact "creamed them" as Chase says. They won by about 40 points.

All that being said, they were a force to be reckoned with!! When I said they did well, that's an understatement. They only lost one game in the regular season and didn't lose any games throughout the tournament until the championship game. The ward they played in the championship game was the ward with 21 Teachers. (But I think only about 12 or so showed up for the game.) Still that was a lot of subs. Plus, 4 of the kids were several inches taller than ALL of our boys. They lost 62-31. It was so disheartening. But then we had to play them again the next night, because we had beaten them before and they came up in the loser's bracket. In the second game, Chase's team played like champions and never gave up. They had so much heart. One kid even ended up chipping his tooth. We were up most of the game, but just got too tired at the end. We ended up losing 46-42. So sad, but everyone (the refs, the other team's coach, parents, etc.) congratulated the boys on playing hard, being tough, hanging in there, and good sportsmanship. We were proud of them, and they had much to be proud of. Good job Chase!

K, a couple of funny pic's I just had to add. One of them is Chase at one of the games. He's there with all his posse--I mean friends. Chase is hiding his face and trying to be so funny. Actually, his friend Ethan brought an air horn to one of the games, and THAT was funny. The other is Jerel trying to show Chase some moves during halftime. He was asked to coach a couple games--I'm sure he was in heaven. He's sooo into sports. :)