"Oh, Bloody Hell!"

I'm just shot -- as in "tired."

What a long, freakin' week. Basically, after Katie and I moved out of our house in South Dakota and moved to Minnesota, I've been bored. Thank God that I have the Internet and some sweet PC games, but other than that -- whoofta. Until I got a phone call this past Monday, things have gotten a little bit better.

The phone call was from the athletic director at the high school I will be teaching at. He offered me the job to help coach 8th grade football. The district is offering me a some-what decent contract to do this, so I jumped at the chance. Practices started on Tuesday and ever since then, I'm having so much damn fun, but at the same time, I'm tired.

But it's well worth it. I've been racking my brain trying to think of things to do -- the other coach only has one year of football coaching experience under his belt; his specialty is wrestling -- so I had to think back to the days of high school football and what we did.

Of course, the first week or so it's all about conditioning -- getting these kids back into shape. But it's just unbelievable how much information that these kids know! They're athletic, they play to play (I've already told them: "If you're out there to show off to the ladies, you don't belong here"), and most of all, they're having fun. For the first few days, we had them run half-pads -- but they're so damn eager to hit and tackle, we full-suited them up this morning.

I've taken over the offensive and defensive backfields. I consider myself a more of a offensive person, so I work with the QB's (reading progressions, proper exchanges, avoiding the blitz) WR's (catching the ball, going back to the QB if he's in trouble, pass routes) and RB's (hand-offs, pass blocking).

On defense, I really have no clue. I'm running around like a chicken with my head cut off. I'm controlling the linebackers, but I never played linebacker a day in my life! The corners and safeties are my specialty, and the other coach and I have decided to run a 4-4/6-2 defense. I had to do some research myself, looked up some drills to run, so on and so forth -- but we just need to be more precise in what to do. Sometimes I don't know what to do!

But here at the middle school/high school level, we want to stay on the same page as the varsity. We basically run an I-formation package, with a flanker and a wide-out on opposite sides of the ball (with a tight end, obviously). We are probably going to be more of a run-offense, but after watching our first-string QB throw the ball around a little bit, he's starting to impress us. Especially when our tight end is a lanky 6'4" -- he's our primary target.

It was scary today when we ran our last play of the day (Panther 38 Halfback Pass) and all of our receivers were running streaks down the field. The halfback took the toss and threw towards the tall tight end. He didn't catch the ball, but he sure came down awkwardly. He gripped at his left wrist, almost to the point where he was crying. "Oh, shit," I thought to myself. Luckily, nothing was broken -- just a sprain -- but a short, scary moment when I thought we lost our best ball catcher.

So that is my life for this past week. I've got fantasy football drafts this weekend, plus I have to make up a playbook for the players sometime this weekend. In-service days are next week, then school starts on the 6th.