By By Chandler Myers
Football is truly a great sport.
It’s fun to play, it’s fun to watch; everything about the game is just fun.
It’s fun to see big plays whether it is a huge tackle on the goal line that saves the national championship for your team or a huge post pattern that a quarterback and receiver connect on to give their team a touchdown.
One of the greatest things about football though has to be the fun of playing in thebackyard with family and friends.
Several years ago, I had the idea to start a backyard football league in the neighborhood I lived in and one that was just through the woods.
One of my best friends, Chase, lived in the other neighborhood, so I ran the idea by him and he thought it was great.
We both started teams with kids from our neighborhoods, but also recruited to find other players who would help our teams.
We set a date that we would play a game between the neighborhoods to decided which one was better.
After setting the date, I set out to find all the best players I could get on my team.
We started practicing in the backyard everyday going through play after play.
Trying to make it seem as real as possible we would do defensive drills just to get everything right.
Finally, the big day arrived and my friend showed up with some other friends that made up his team or how we viewed it our “rivals.”
This wasn’t any two hand touch kind of football either. This game was full on tackle.
Imagine 20 teenagers in a backyard all with the hope to say their team was the best and they are hitting each other starting dog piles. It was great.
There was a halftime with refreshments compliments of my mom who made some great cookies and lemonade for us.
Touchdown after touchdown was scored and it was like a battle of Big 12 offenses with both teams soaring into the 50-point range.
There was a timer set and it was coming down to the wire.
My neighborhood was ahead by one point with just a couple minutes left.
Our “rivals” started driving the field and ended up scoring a winning touchdown with very little time left.
It stung a little that we lost because come Monday at school I would have to hear about how my team lost, but in the end no one really cared because we came together that day and had an absolute blast.
The game almost became an annual event, but only happened twice.
To this day I still remember that game and realize what a great memory it is to have.
Who knows maybe one day we can get those teams back together to have a “Legends Game” and see if my team could put a victory on the board.
Chandler Myers is sports editor of the Atmore Advance. He can be reached at 368-2123 or by e-mail at sports@atmoreadvance.com