LB SIRENS

It was sometime in February that the Santa Ana P.D. challenged the females in our department to a game of flag football. Our females, who will never back down from a challenge said yes. They only had one minor problem, they didn't have a football team. Being the resourceful group that they are they started to send out e-mails to ask for players. One of the females suggested that the team ask my boss at the time and myself to help them get this off the ground.

We coach a Pop Warner football team and I guess word got around that we could whip this group into a football team. Never backing down from a challenge ourselves, we decided that we would. We didn't know what to expect because this was flag football and there is minimal hitting. We recruited 3 other fellow workers to help with this task.

We scheduled a few practices to see what we had and to see who was really interested in actually playing. The coaches all realized that we had a team of very good athletes that have never played football. We needed to turn these athletes into football players. That is kind of easy to do because not one of these females had any bad habits to break. We worked them step by step to the point that they were ready for a scrimmage. Who better than to scrimmage against but our Pop Warner team.

We brought the boys out and after the first few minutes our females realized that they had a lot more to learn. They were being schooled by a bunch of junior high schoolers.  Just a bit of background on our Pop Warner team, last year they went undefeated in league play and missed the Orange Bowl (Super Bowl for Pop Warner) by 1 game. The females were not going up against a bunch of kids, they were going up against a football team.  After the game, our females realized that they had a lot more work to do. Because we have done this before, the coaches figured that if junior high school kids would run slip shod over them, two days later we scheduled to have my nephew bring down a few of his high school teammates. The females were once again worked but you can tell that they made immense strides from the scrimmage before. There is a method to the coaches madness.

We went back to practicing and a few weeks later we scrimmaged the Pop Warner team again. This time, the females made a game of it. The boys from our Pop Warner team told us that they could tell that the females have gotten better. Perfect, now we need to keep tweaking, keep pushing and keep teaching.

Last Wednesday night, we scheduled our final scrimmage before our game against Santa Ana PD. We brought out the Pop Warner team again and lo and behold, the females made a game of it. The females can now call themselves a football team. The all have earned the right to call themselves, the LB Sirens.

On June 18, 2011 at 1 PM at Eddie West Field in Santa Ana, California, the Long Beach Sirens will take on the Santa Ana Police Department. This game is a fund raiser for a Costa Mesa Police Officer who was injured in the line of duty. If you can make it out, please do. This is for a good cause and also you will get to see some real good football being played.