Shrimpo vs. GOLIATH

  This kid right here....

He made me have a mini heart attack last night during his football game.

Tucker is in the 7th grade.  He plays on a team with 8th and 9th graders.  The 7th grade boys are itty bitty compared to some of the 8th and 9th grade boys.  I realize that all of that will drastically change over the next two years.  But for now, he is a shrimpo on the football team. 

If we are playing a really tough team, then this is what Tucker and his buddies do most of the game....

They wait on the sideline for their chance.

Luckily, our team is pretty good, so they get their chance often in the 3rd and 4th quarter.

Last night, was his chance.  We were winning.  Big time.  Putting our shrimps in would not cause us any risk of losing. He went in the game in the 3rd quarter.  The other team had not started putting in their second team yet.  That meant that some of the first shrimps to go in from our team were facing their first team giants.

Tucker ran a couple of defensive plays and got pushed around a bit, but was also a part of some of the defensive plays. He was doing a good job. He stayed in when we changed over to offense.  The other team kept their starting defensive line in.
Their giants were still on the field.

Our quarterback handed the ball off to Tucker.

He was suppose to run up the middle with it.

He had the ball in his hands for about a tenth of a second before GOLIATH, from their defensive line, showed up in Tucker's face.

GOLIATH had to have been well over 6 feet tall.  He must have been over 300 pounds.

Tucker is #9 there in that photo below.  His very large and strong team mate next to him is #70.

GOLIATH had already thrown Tucker's team mate, #70, to the ground earlier in the game.

Oh dear.  This cannot end well.

It took only a brief moment for GOLIATH to take my child completely off the ground and hurl him down onto his back like a rag doll. 

Kind of like this..

His gigantic arms wrapped around Tucker's itty bitty body and he literally threw him.

This was followed by a full body slam. GOLIATH piled his massive girth on top of my little shrimpo.

In that brief moment when GOLIATH was approaching my shrimpo child, I had a tiny heart attack.  I envisioned that in just a few seconds, all the players would be reverently on one knee to honor the injured player. 

I envisioned that I would have to decide whether or not to run hysterically screaming to the field to scrape up what was left of my child or to stay seated and let the coaches scrape him up.  I imagined that his bones were going to be shattered into a million pieces.  I just knew that Tucker and the grass would be meshed together as one when GOLIATH removed himself off of my son.

My tiny heart attack was short lived, though.

Although GOLIATH attempted to send Tucker to the ground to his certain death, his plan was foiled by some hefty football pads.  No more had GOLIATH turned his back, than Tucker had popped right up again.  He joined his team in the huddle and didn't even seem any worse for the wear.

I am glad that my shrimpo is a tough shrimpo.

Take that, you meanie GOLIATH!