Another day, another practice.

We had another incredibly frustrating practice today. The issue is that we can't divide into A and B teams immediately since we haven't had enough good people show up at practice. If we culled the bad players, we wouldn't have enough left for a quality game. And certainly not with subs. This is especially true with the number of people who are either legitimately hurt or just been whining bitches. Every day, it seems, we have a zillion people to begin practice. But when we finally get to scrimmaging, so many people stand off to the side (cough Patuluk cough) and talk about how they want to go slowly because they arent 100%. What they don't seem to Get is that standing on the sideline goofing off is not the reason to strengthen and get back to 100%. It's a way tighten up and reinjure themselves when they finally decide to man up and start playing. Plus, them not playing means that players like me need to play almost every single point in order to give the line even the slightest chance of success. I've been playing pretty hard every day the last two weeks and I'm not in the kind of shape to do that. Going fast with no recovery time means that I am constantly sore and tired. People need to start to understand that playing a sport necesarilly means that you are going to get sore muscles and rolled ankles. It happens, they have to learn how to play with it.

Henry was being a total bitch today. He has a "tweaked" hamstring, though he never seems to show that when he finally starts playing. So often he yells at one of us to run faster, or makes the entire team do six sprints in the middle of a hard-fought scrimmage, without ever running himself. Which is really frustrating to take. Today, I saw Little Steve cut up line and the thrower lofted one far in front of him (which is a Dangerous pass, though people seem uninclined to listen to me). I could have gotten an easy D but I didn't want to risk colliding into Steve, so I flashed in front of him just to prove my point and then backed off. Henry later approached me and told me that he didn't want me to go for that poach D, even in a real game. He tried to tell me that I've hurt people in the past going for D's like that (which is rather unfair - I once tried to dive out of Bob's way when I saw that my D would result in a collision, and I've been very responsible in most ways during my playing carreer). When I explained that, Henry told me he didn't want me to poach because it took me off my man. Henry is absolutely the poachiest player I have ever played with. He gets D's, but almost never on his own man, and he more often gets torched because he isn't looking at his own man. I, on the other hand, do a pretty good job sticking to my man. I don't get a lot of D's, but I play conservatively, containing so that I don't really get scored on that often. When I do poach (such as on up the line cuts) it is infrequent and in situations when I am likely to get the D and my man is unlikely to burn me for not being on his hip.

But that's enough of my griping.

We had another sloppy practice today with very few high points. Joe, Brent, Luke, Trevor, and Zack showed up to play with us, which significantly upped the level of play. Some of the injured guys played fantasy, picking one player each for their team, and I joined in at halftime even though I was still playing. I picked myself (of course) and Joe. We were not very successfull as a team, netting 3 points maybe. Ah, maybe 4. I had no turns and one D in that second half, Joe had a couple turns and a few scores. I don't think I scored during that period, but maybe.

Tonight, hopefully, I'm hitting the town with Zack and anybody else who'd like to come, which could be a good time.