San Tan Youth Football League Eagles

Well folks… Fall Camp officially concluded tonight as the Eagles underwent their final preparation for tomorrow’s season opener against the Diablos.  The boys have been doing the “little things right”… now it’s time to make “BIG THINGS HAPPEN”!!  Tomorrow’s kickoff is at 8am at Queen Creek Middle School.  Coach Gene has asked that the boys are all dressed and ready for warmups at 7am, so make sure you set those alarms.

Prediction time… it’s always tough to call the first game of the season as we don’t have a frame of reference to go off of, but you’ve got to feel good about the Eagles chances.  The Diablos were pretty tough during last week’s scrimmage burning the birds deep on a couple of pass plays, but Coach Romel spent alot of time with the kids this week working on pass defense.  Look for Dakota Neer to break a couple of big runs tomorrow and for the defense to come up with some big plays when it matters.  I see both teams putting some points on the board in this one with the Birds landing the death blow late in the 4th quarter…  Birds 26, Diablos 20.

UH-HUH…. YEEEEEAAAAAHHHH BOOOYYYYYYYY!  The Birds have sharpened their talons and are ready to spread their wings tomorrow as the STYFL kicks off the season with a round robin scrimmage featuring each of the STYFL clubs.  We’ll be covering the scrimmages tomorrow and providing some video footage, pictures, and sideline reporting of the event.The boys have worked incredibly hard and have made a ton of progress in the past month.  Tomorrow will be a great measuring stick to see how we stack up against the competition.  Rest easy little birds… tomorrow morning we will rise up and serve notice to the rest of the league that the Eagles are indeed the team to beat as we head into the regular season schedule!

The Birds open the season this Saturday with a full day of festivities and a little football as well.  The Eagles will apparently be laying the smack down from 9:30-10:30am.  Should be a good litmus test to see where we stand relative to this season’s opposition.  Details below…

OPENING DAY
THIS SATURDAY FROM 9AM – 2PM  (I’m sure Coach Gene will have us down there at like 5am or whatever, so set your alarms people!)

• You can purchase wristbands for $5 or that day for $7. (All presale money will go directly to our club and wristbands purchased the day of will be split among all clubs.) The wristbands will cover all 6 inflatables and an obstacle course. I will have these wristbands at practice if you would like to purchase these.
• Tickets are $.25 each or $5/25 tickets. These tickets will be for the carnival games (Eagles trading post, Eagles cookie walk, Bulldogs pie in the face, Bulldogs ring toss, Bulldogs duck pond, Rams football toss, Rams dime toss, Rattlers bean bag toss, Rattlers balloon board, Special Forces wheel of prizes, Cardinals potato sack races, Cardinals face painting and the dunk tank). There will be pizza, hot dogs, drinks, popcorn, candy and ice cream.(yum yum)
• Round Robin Scrimmages will start with the Mighty Mites at 9:30am then Jr. Pee Wees and then Pee Wees. (about an hour for each division)
• Parks and Rec will also be there doing the Punt, Pass and Kick event which will begin at 10am. This is free and for boys and girls ages 8 – 15. (no cleats allowed)

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Hey everyone… quick post here on practice this week.  Practice will be held as follows:

• Tuesday 9/2: 6-8pm
• Wednesday 9/3: 6-8pm
• Thursday 9/4: 6-8pm
• Friday 9/5: 6-8pm

Ladies and Gentlemen… the table has officially been set.  Time for these birds to eat!  Coach Gene, who turned 27 this week, dished out the game schedule at practice on Tuesday.  The general consensus in the peanut gallery was “Wow, only 6 games?”, but hey… it’s better than 5, right?  I’m personally just grateful that the games are all in Queen Creek.  And as long as we’re being honest here… I’d rather eat a bowl full of dung beatles whilst pole vaulting off the top of the Empire State Building than go out to the Maricopa Dust Bowl again this year.

So here’s the dealio… all the games are at 8AM.  The boys must be on the field and in uniform at 7am… so set your alarms people.  Ryan Ingram will greet you with Starbucks in hand each week when you arrive.  No really, he’s that good a guy…

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Hey all… I’m horribly pressed for time, but I thought I’d provide a real quick update.  The boys had a great practice last night.  So much so that the coaches called them together for an inspirational session just after practice.  The practice was tough and physical and the boys met the challenge head on.  Lots of pads have been popping the past two nights.  This team looks awfully good to me at this stage.  We’re going to lay some serious wood on our opponents this year if they play with that level of intensity.  Very impressive young guns… keep it up!

Side notes from Eagles headquarters…

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Having met the requisite pre-conditioning requirement, the Eagles will don full pads for the first time tonight in a much anticipated progression of the preseason.  Tonight, as they say, we’ll separate the men from the boys.  After last night’s practice, I caught up with Drew Ball (imagine that) who had this to say about full contact practice, “It’s been fun and all, huffing and puffing around the field and running routes and stuff, but I’m a linebacker, Dad!  I was born to hit!”  I’m sure other players share those sentiments.

Shot out to Coach Romel who ran “suicides” with the boys last night!  Pretty impressive stuff Romel… I broke a sweat just watching you, literally.  Also wanted to thank those who took the time to fill out their player bios.  I have received about ten of these now, so keep ’em coming!  Ryan and I met on the website last weekend and the site is undergoing some upgrades as we speak.  Should be pretty cool when it’s all said and done!

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Hey Eagles fans!  Week one is going extremely well as the boys are starting to whip into shape.  Tonight’s practice was cut short due to a rather large storm that rolled into town around 7 pm.  You know the boys are pretty jacked up for the season when many actually seemed a little bummed that they couldn’t get a full practice in.  I did, however, catch a few sarcastic “aw shucks” smirks from the peanut gallery.  Heck… dinner before 9pm…. what a concept.

Some pretty cool stuff going on this season with fund raisers and stuff.  If you weren’t at practice earlier this week, we learned that we could order jersey’s replicating our son’s game jerseys.  Pretty cool deal… $46 apiece.  Pretty steep, but worth it in my opinion.  I just hope they’re not “slim fitted” if you know what I mean.  Also, Jenny passed out a packet at yesterday’s practice with some more Eagles loot for sale for interested parties.  Jamie Ingram designed some pretty killer looking tee shirts and hats that you can buy as well.  I’m thinking about putting a shopping cart up on the site so people can order them whenever they feel like it.

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Jenny sent out an email requesting ideas for the Opening Day on September 6th.  The Eagles club has to come up with two Carnival Games and Two Vendors for the event.  If you have any ideas… post them to the comments section below and we’ll forward them along to Jenny.  I’d post her email address here, but that would be just begging the spam gods to jam her email inbox full of unmentionables.  So, check your email or talk to your coach at practice for futher direction.

Also, in a seperate email Jenny asked if anyone is interested in beign a Cheerleader for the Eagles and asked you to email Kristina DuPuis if interested… see spam god remark above.  Again, check your email or see your coach if interested.

Go EAGLES!!

Hallelujah… the football season is no longer just around the corner, it’s here folks… in all of it’s splendid glory!  The 2008 Mighty Might Eagles took the field as a unit for the very first time last night to begin the requisite pre-conditioning routine.  I have to admit, I was impressed with the kids as they seemed to be a little ahead of the curve in terms of coordination and how quickly they adapted to what they were being asked to do.  I was expecting a lot more “Fred Astaire” routines as the coaches ran the boys thru agility drill after agility drill.

Also of note… they actually executed the E-A-G-L-E-S… EAGLES chant flawlessly at the end of practice.  If you weren’t there last year or didn’t see the year-end DVD… the first Eagles chant actually made the blooper reel as the boys more or less couldn’t buy a vowel on their first attempt.  And while I hesitate to use the word “cute” in a football context… that was just plain “cute”.

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