Saturday

It's 6:55 a.m. on Saturday morning, September 3, 2011. A little early for a Saturday morning, but today Matthew is playing with the Redlands Terriers Football team at the ESPN Sport Center in Orlando, Florida. They've been there since Tuesday night. The Varsity played Thursday and beat the team from Florida 21-7. Now the pressure is on the Junior Varsity. I got up at 6:30 ... moved the computer to the kitchen counter, and turned it on. While waiting for it to 'boot up,' I enjoyed a cup of coffee before waking Ron up... At 6:52 a.m. I've logged into redlandsfootball.com and walk upstairs to wake Ron. He joined me downstairs, I hit the play button and they were just getting ready for the National Anthem before the game begins. I fixed our usual Saturday morning waffles, and with the play-by-play streaming over the internet, we ate breakfast listening to the game and waiting to hear Matthew's name...then they called out #58 - that's Matthew's number! But the announcers didn't have his name on their list...
Actually, I was impressed with how the game was going. They hadn't done well in a scrimmage game the week before, in fact they lost 34-7. But from the play-by-play, it sounded like they were playing well in this game and the defense was really stepping up especially when the other team was in scoring position. We scored first, then scored again! We're leading 14-0.
When Matthew pressured the Quarterback, they called his number again and said, 'we have got to send someone down on the field and get his name.' Soon, they announced #58 was Matt Bennett and he had almost sacked the Quarterback again. Wow, how we wished we were there!
Still it was such a nice morning - we were still in our PJ's, Ron was alternately laying in the floor with Bon Jovi or sitting in one of the chairs. I sat in the other chair - both of us listening to every play. Each smiling at the other whenever we heard his name or number. We were parents proud of our son. We were happy and content sharing this time together. During half-time we called Ron's mom, who was also listening to the game in South Carolina. And when the game ended and we had won 14-7, I had tears in my eyes I was so happy. So proud of Matthew. I'm sure for Matthew, it made spending the summer standing in front of Gerrard's market selling tickets to the latest fund-raiser worth it ...