Football is my passion. Yes, I am from Brazil and I am not a soccer player. Being a big fan of football does not mean that I am a good player, or a good coach.

This fall I played JV football as a tight end and linebacker. If you add all the minutes that I played, it was less than 15. And that is understandable. Brazilians do not grow up playing football. They just play soccer. Here was my first experience playing full-pads football.

In Brazil, we have football teams. In my city the team plays in the Second National Division. The Second Division is played just with shoulder pads. Nobody has helmets. Yes, we are crazy.

The experience was really good. I learned a lot of stuff, such as drills for positions, formations, etc… But coaching the Freshman Powder Puff team was more exciting.

When I heard on the announcements that Ms. Thillman was looking for assistant coaches, my reaction was “Let’s try this.” Yes, I am a junior, but an international student too, and I was not sure if the coach for the juniors would want help from me.

At the meeting, others guys appeared to help the freshmen. And a lot of girls appeared too. I would say almost 40…

Kevin, Jake and Emmit were the other coaches that helped A LOT too. (I would say more than me.)

We did four practices; one was really terrible. The coaches were not working in unison. That day I considered giving up on the idea of “coaching.”

After the terrible practice, we changed things. The girls now know how to play offense and defense (at least our offense and defense).

On the field, our job was to put every girl in to play at least once. And we did.  Actually, everybody interested in the game played. The first defense that played was my group of girls. Yes, they did a good job. They stopped Mr. Vickman’s sophomore team and returned the punt for the first touchdown of the Powder Puff 2010 season. Beautiful!

After that, I just screamed all night long for both the offense and the defense.

Once, I almost hit Mrs. Thillman because I was following the girls that were going one more time to the end zone. Sorry, Mrs. Thillman.

All the girls did a very good job. All the changes that the coaches gave them the girls made on the field and put the sophomores in a bad mood.

I liked the experience a lot. It was a little stressful working with a lot of freshmen girls asking at  practice if the are going to start the game and during the game saying that they wanted to play.

At the end the scoreboard showed 32 – 6 for the Frosh.

Frosh is Boss. (At least for one night.)