I wanted to make these forms available online to anyone who might be interested. You do not have to live in McGregor or be a McGregor Mirror subscriber to enter.  ANYONE can enter. The winner gets his/her photo in the paper, bragging rights for a year and a free 1-year subscription to the McGregor Mirror.

All entries must be postmarked by December 19 (the mailing address is on the form). You can also drop them by the McGregor Mirror offices. Or if you download and update the Excel version below you can just email it to me at david@davidtaylorfamily.com and I’ll print it out and give it to the contest director (i.e. my old man).

Here are both the PDF and Excel versions of the entry form:

2009-10 Entry Form (PDF)

2009-10 Entry Form (XLS)

We lost our playoff semi-final.  It was a tight game.  We were ahead until Troy scored a late touchdown with less than a minute to play.  It was a good season–but LONG.  Now we can have a little break before basketball begins in January.

Here are Andrew’s highlights.  He had a nice kickoff return, a sweet TD catch and a crucial interception.

The entire game can be viewed here:

http://vimeo.com/7615083

Our peewee team finished the year 4-2 in district which puts us in 2nd place.  We’ll play the 3rd place team Saturday morning at 11am.  If we win, we actually play a second game that night at 8pm against the winner of #1 vs. #4.  Regardless of how we fare on Saturday, I’m really happy with the way things turned out on the team.  The coaches really did a good job of teaching the kids and pulling them together.  Things looked rough early but as the season has gone on things have begun to click into place.  I’m looking forward to Saturday both for the excitement of the playoffs AND the fact that it is the end of a looooong season. 

We defeated the Belton team 12-6 and and finished district with a 4-2 record.  We’ll be in the playoffs next weekend.  We play sometime Saturday morning and if we win we play again that night.  I can’t believe we might have to play two games in a day.

Here are some Andrew highlights from the Belton game:

If you are REALLY bored and want to watch the entire game, here it is:

http://vimeo.com/7492885

We beat the other McGregor team 20-0 to move to 3-2 for our district games.  It looks like we have a good shot at making the playoffs.  The other McGregor team was ahead of us, but it turns out they were playing with a 14-year-old (this is a league for 10- to 12-year-olds) and had to forfeit their wins.  He didn’t play today and we beat them soundly.  From what I understand, the head coach was banned for the season as well.

This really upsets me off for two reasons:

1) Safety.  It is always wrong to cheat, but to cheat like this in football is something else altogether.  When you have a 14-year-old out there hitting 10-year-olds that is a safety issue.

2) Reputation. Certain towns always have a reputation for bending the rules.  Back in my day it was always Marlin who was suspect.  I do NOT want to see McGregor get this reputation.  Once you get a reputation like that it is hard to shake.  It sounds like McGregor Youth Football needs to be cleaned up.   If certain individuals lack integrity, they have no business being involved with youth sports. I’m glad the people in charge took the right action, but next year they need to be more organized (like our youth baseball organization) and require birth certificates for everyone.  They need to double-check these things so it doesn’t happen again.

Having said that, I’m glad to be associated with our team’s coaches.  Props to Cedric McLeain and Mike Robinson.  They are great with the kids, they are teaching them a lot, and they act honorably.

Here is a highlight reel for Andrew from today’s game:

He had a kickoff return that got called back (boo!) and had two really nice receptions.  The second one was for about 60 yards and a touchdown!  He also had quite a few tackles.

We beat the Troy Trojans 16-0 this weekend.  It really seems like our team is coming together.

Here are some highlights of Andrew’s play.  He had 2 interceptions and another nice catch on offense.  Sorry for the poor camera work.

If you are really bored, you can watch the entire game here:

http://vimeo.com/7127250

We beat the Red Raiders 30-0 today.  Below is a catch that Andrew made.

Andrew had a nice highlight from Saturday’s game.  He’s #21 and does a good job returning the opening kickoff. Here it is: