Kubasaki Dragon Football Comes to a Close

1. Matt finished off his first year of Kubasaki High School Football with a trip to Daegu, Korea. The Dragons beat the Warriors 31-12. The players selected to go (only 22 of the varsity players), two coaches and two parent chaperons left for Daegu Thursday morning. They arrived in Korea and after a 5 hour bus ride arrived at Camp Walker in Daegu. The boys stayed in the barracks on base. On Friday they practiced and were able to go off base to sight see and do a bit of shopping. The game was at 2PM on Saturday. The Dragons' had a great game on Daegu's artificial turf field- Matt said it was the nicest field he had ever played on. The boys just stayed up Saturday night since they had to leave for the airport at 1:00 AM Sunday morning for a 8am Sunday flight home.

Football here is a bit different than in the states. Their regular season consists of four games against Kadena High School. This year the Dragons were able to play two additional games- a home game against Yokota, Japan and the away game against Daegu. The extra games helped spice up the season...gets a bit boring playing the same time time after time (especially since the Dragons have not beat the Kadena

Matt played many positions on offense and defense as well as Center and long snapper at times. His main position was offensive line. Matt was the only Sophomore to play Varsity all season.

We debated letting Matt go to Korea (even though the Football club picked up the tab for food and lodging, parents had to pay airfare, which was NOT cheap) but after much discussion decided to send him. Our whole idea about taking a duty station overseas was to explore and experience as much of the world as possible. So our 16 year old son has now been to a country neither Mike nor myself have been to! Lucky boy! Matt said you could definitely tell you were in a foreign country- even on base nobody spoke English. In the food court on base they did not have drinks...even though they were "American" eateries like Taco Bell and Subway, there were no soft drinks. When I asked him what they did for drinks he said they just didn't drink anything. One thing that really stood out to him was the horrible air quality. Matt said the smog there was terrible- you could hardly see past the skyscrapers. All the boys came home with sore throats and head aches. If the air in Daegu (which is only the fourth largest metropolitan city in South Korea) is that bad, it makes we wonder what the air quality is in Seoul.

These are a couple of cakes I made for the last "Pre-Game Meal" the Football Parent Group put on for the boys. Before every game the boys were supplied with a meal since they had to stay at school (some of the boys live too far away to get back in a timely manner) Game days were long days- school gets out at 1:50 PM and game time isn't until 7PM. The boys had a bit of free time after school, were served food at 2:45, then went off to view game films before suiting up around 5pm to practice before the 7pm game. The last pre-game meal was a fun one- Sub sandwiches, chips, pasta salad, bananas, Gatorade, goodie bags, and the cake. Boys loved the meals- we received so many "thank you's" each time.


Now that football has ended, Matt has just a week off before the next sport....WRESTLING!