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$1 = 6.6361 SEK
I thought I’d post something about my first season coaching. For those of you just tuning in, I stumbled into a little bit of a football oasis here in the land of tall blonde people. And by football I mean the kind that one where we use our hands and run into each other over and over again to gain a larger piece of lawn. Fun for all ages. I signed up as an assistant coach with the Uppsala 86’ers, an American Football club here in Uppsala. Yep, we’re a real team with uniforms and everything.
It was fun. I’d never really coached before was afraid these guys wouldn’t take me too seriously but there seems to be this idea since I’m an American I must know way more than everyone else. Anyway, I started out working with the safeties and cornerbacks because that’s what I knew best from way back. It was a good group, a couple guys have played for a few years, one guy played at a high school in Alabama as a foreign exchange student, and a couple younger guys who had only played for a year or two and were part of the senior team because we didn’t have enough guys to field a U19 team.
The season got off to a rough start. We lost the two games and then won three of the next four. I missed two of the wins to go back to the States in June. That led to the July break. As mentioned on these pages before, everyone in Sweden moves to their little lakeside shed/cabin for the month of July to swat at mosquitoes, sail their dinghies, go for a swim, and eat open face sandwiches and some fish, drink some beers and Schnapps (called snaps here). And usually get a bit of a tan (not everyone is as pale here as you’d think but winter is fast approaching). We won the first game after the break and then went into sort of a tailspin. Early in the season the defense was carrying the offense, and then as the season progressed the offense was carrying the defense. And unfortunately for the last couple games we were handily dismantled by the top two teams in the league when both the offense and defense started to take a break. D’oh! Here are some pictures from our last game at Örebro. An ugly loss considering we had four take-aways (but slightly more give-aways). Also included is a video of one of my getting an interception, slightly off-camera.
The season runs from May to the end of August and we play each team in our league twice. Our team is currently in the second highest level, Division 1. We finished in the middle of the pack, 4-6, not bad but not great. We had some really good moments and we had some real bad ones too. Our defense was very good early on but didn’t finish well. Injuries and dedication hurt us on both sides of the ball. They may play football but they live it like us Yanks. But some of the young guys who would usually not be on the team grew up a lot over the year. A couple of them really impressed me in our second to last game against the team that ended up winning our league. Late in the game we were getting blown out and three of the smallest guys on the team volunteered to be on the front line of kickoff return team. That’s the attitude we need to build on for next season.
We are now in the offseason and all the coaches got together the other night to discuss plans for next season. It was in Swedish but you can tell when everyone is talking about trying to get guys into the weight room. Swedish is a weird language. It’s an old language but they don’t have words for many of the more modern English terms. So it’s a little off-putting when you are listening to someone talk in the melodic, sing-song, kind of Swedish way and they through in something like “rudimentary” or some phrase like “big deal.” Weird. Tomorrow night we have our end of the season party, and offseason workouts begin in a couple weeks. I think at this point I’m still planning on coaching next season but I’ll go through the workouts too and get into shape in case I decide to play next year. I mean where else am I going to get the opportunity to run into other guys over and over again for a couple hours?
