Adventure to Mexicali

Sign on the bus. Who is Anton?
A much nicer field. Turf.

Memo. After a tough loss, and an injury.

This is Yahir. He caught the touchdown pass.

The three hour bus ride didn't seem so long. We drove through a beautiful mountain pass, called La Rumarosa. Rocks were everywhere on the mountains and we could see across an entire dessert. It was breathtaking. But I was nervous. Once again, I didn't know what to expect. They told me it was going to be hot, and that the team was good. But that is all.
We got there, and it was hot. But not too hot. Mexicali is often over 100 degrees. But today it was only 95. So we warmed up in the shade and tried to stay cool.

We battled. The other team, the Lobos (which means wolves), scored first. But we fought back and scored our own TD with a 45 yard pass from Oliver to Yahir. We even drove again after an interception and missed a field goal before halftime. We went into the half tied at 6-6. That's when the injuries started happening. We lost our center, Memo....our giant, Julio....our fullback, Varela, and our stud running back, Jaime. All at once. We were scrounging to put people in place. We don't really have any depth at any position. We usually only have enough time at practice to teach the first stringers how to play. And sometimes those people don't even show up to games.

We ended up losing 18-6. Coach Tony called the principal to tell him and he was excited. He thought that we should have been blown out. This team won the championship last year (apparently) and the league officials came and told us that other teams were talking about us, saying that we were good. Tony was excited because last year they didn't score until the fourth game and they were losing by 40 or 50 points.

That felt good. I like to hear about progress. But I still don't like to lose. Last Monday, after our first game that we lost, I was mad. I was grumpy and told them how much I didn't like to lose and asked them how we were going to create a culture of winning. I don't know if that was what helped, but I do know that they practiced better and started to see that we could play a lot better.

This was the only game where we have to play in Mexicali. I am glad for this. I didn't return home until 11pm. Most of the games will be played in Tijuana or Tecate. I am excited about the game this Saturday...