35 people $35, 1 month!

Like you might have seen before I was invited to attend a combine back in America for some NFL and CFL scouts!!! I will need to raise a VERY reachable amount of money in the next MONTH for the expenses associated with all the trip in order to make this happen! (International Airfare, hotels, and associated fees). Close friends and family I need you

r help!

I have broke it down and it is simple, I need 35 close friends and family members to help by donating $35 in just a month to reach my goal!!!

35-$35 in one month!!! I have had the greatest friends and fans ever since the beginning and I appreciate everyone's help so much!!!!

MAKE A PLEDGE NOW AND LET ME KNOW ASAP!!! I only have 1 month to make this happen!!! :D COMBINE 2013!

To make a donation click on the Not Just Alive campaign button at the top right of this page and DONATE TODAY!!!

(Please also send me a email phatcow07@live.com with your mailing address so that I can send you out a thank you card, and post cards in the future!!!

THANK YOU SO MUCH EVERYONE!!!!!!

Euro-America Challenge 2012

For a small town boy from Robinson Texas, my life has proven to be very crazy and unpredictable in the last 10 years, sometimes a little more than I would even like to admit. Specifically, I have spent the last 4 years of my life flying around the European continent and playing and coaching the sport that I can truly say is my passion.  On August 29th I found myself on a airplane on my way to Warsaw Poland to play in a European American football All Star game, nervous and excited but ready to play some good football.

As you might know American football in Europe is typically not the breathtaking spectacle that captures the imagination of a country like it does in the USA, but on September 1 2012, the Warsaw Eagles American football club of Poland put on a football game that caused a wave of excitement, curiosity, entertainment, and even some drama!

   To say the absolute least the Euro-America football challenge in Poland was a huge success! I wanna say the total sold ticket count was over 30 thousand and over 40 thousand were in attendance. It is crazy to think that any American football game in Europe could be this big and it was a huge honor to be selected to be on the EUROPE All star team. The EU team had some extremely talented players. While I was in the locker room I was looking around and was very surprised of the sheer athleticism of some of the athletes from all over the European continent. Believe it or not the EU team suited up quite a few ex NFL football players and a handful of D1 caliber athletes, and like you might have guessed so did team USA. aka the entire roster. lol

Life has a funny way of sneaking up on us and really taking us places that we would have never imagined and this was one of those event. All around I had a wonderful experience and met some great athletes from all over the world.  Euro-America Challenge = life changing experience and proof American football is exploding in Europe.

 

Croatia in retrospect.

Hummmm Croatia in retrospect.....The 5 months I spent in Croatia were wonderful , trust me I know you have to take everything with a grain of salt but I really enjoyed almost all of my time living and playing for the Zagreb Thunder football club.  I did not have the best season of my life but it was still full of great plays and good teammates, so I cant complain.  The season was speckled with low team numbers and injuries but in the end it ended with a playoff game that depended on the point spread. One more touchdown despite losing would have secured a spot for our club in the Final game! They say a picture can say a thousand words so, lets see what a whole bunch of them can say. Enjoy. 

 Coaching during a walk threw practice

 Coaches meeting at the gym.

 Visiting Budapest

 On top of the local mountain in Zagreb

 Split, Croatia

 At the National Camp, helping coach.

 On top of the city of Zagreb

 Crikvenica, holiday trip

 Snorkeling in the sea

 Croatian seaside sunset

 More snorkling

 The island of Solta

 In the tower on top of Split, Croatia

 Warmups before playing the Cannons

 This happened 4 days before the football season.....

 This is 4 days later...should not have played. Terrible decision

 91 yard scamper ;D

 Trying to break 1000 tackles

My Paradise

I have been many places in my life, some warm, some hot, some really cold, and most of these places leave me with new great experiences and memories, but occasionally I run across a place that I know will forever be stuck not only in my mind but also my heart. In the summer of 2012 that place that will for sure stain my mind and soul was- The Adriatic Sea. There is a since of peacefulness about this particular sea that is unparalleled by anywhere else I have traveled. The warm breeze, the soft kiss of the sun, the refreshment of a nice dip in the cool sea, just to retreat back to the warm towel laid ready for your return. Mmm not many places like it. The Adriatic Sea is the kind of medicine that God has given to the soul that needs peace, for I am almost sure, no broken heart could turn away the peace that those gentle waves bring, stroke after stroke from the warm promise of a sunrise all the way to the settling comfort the sunset brings.  -The Adriatic Sea, my paradise.  

Thunder VS Alp Devils pictures.

Complacency the seed of failure

Last week my current team matched up against a cross city rival, the Zagreb Raiders. It was a intense and hard fought game for both teams and even though both teams played hard the Final outcome was 19-3 in favor of my team the Zagreb Thunder.
      Every week is a new experience for me and honestly I have no clue what to expect, so as you might expect I am looking forward to new games every week like a kid at a candy store.  This was the first game that my stupid lingering ankle injury did not keep me from running outside the pocket and making some ground action happen. One highlight includes a 74 yard scramble that ended up on the 1 yard line with me in pain and a Zagreb Raider with a hand full of hair......
     The reason I title this complacency is the seed of failure is because after a great game and a excited and re-energized Zagreb Thunder, Tuesday and Thursday had an average of 15 players at practice......(That is a number that will cause any true lover of American football to grind their teeth and be just as frustrated as their coach) Especially because this weekends match up is the Ljubljana Silverhawks, arguably the best team in the Central European Football League (CEFL). And just because we got a victory against the Raiders does not mean that the Silverhawks are going to just lay down and take it easy on us this week.......
    Matter of fact, it looks like my team will pad up 19-25 players to compete at a level that the Thunder have not seen in the 2012 season. Week by week, I stress at all team meetings and practice wrapups the danger of mistranslating potential for success....for there are many many talented players and people with potential that are flipping burgers and sitting on coaches watching the players and people excel at things that they were much more equipped to be great at but because of cancerous complacency.........are not doing anything with all the potential that was given to them.  That my friends is why I feel I need to remind my boys as well as my readers....complacency.....is......the.....seed.....of......failure.

Last weeks W is in the bank, now we have to go earn another one.

THUNDER READY. #HIT/BREAK

Games Games Games and more Games (RECAP TIME)

                                                           Thunder VS Patriots

Post game talk with Cannons

Thunder VS Generals

The 2012 football season in Croatia has been a bumpy one to say the least. Despite some adversity we are sitting on a 2-1 Croatian record. As you might have read in a prior post I managed to find myself with a level 3 ankle sprain 5 days before my first official game of the season. Oh the irony....yes I know.  But despite my injury and also a torn Achilles tendon on our other import, the Zagreb Thunder have seemed to rise from our hard circumstances and played some good football and got a couple wins. :D

 The first team we played were the Zagreb Patriots, a well coached and heavily stacked team in comparison. (player numbers, imports, etc) despite me being a little above crippled this game our team managed to rise to the occasion and play semi well vs the what seems to be outright better football team. The final score of this game was 33-0, a score that does not reflect a couple Thunder trips to the red zone and hard fought battle between cross town rivals.

The next game was vs a struggling program the Osijek Cannons, the coaching staff and I knowing that this game was going to be one of our less strenuous games decided that I should not play much because of my recovering ankle but because of an injury to our QB I went in at the end of the game and with a game total of about 8 plays managed to score a touchdown and help lead our team to victory.    The Zagreb Thunder showed flashes of great potential with a couple of very well executed plays and intensity but still lacked the full comprehension of our playbook, (offense and defense).

A week after these 2 Croatian League games, we took a bus to play an international game in Slovenia. Week 3 of the 2012 season we padded up to play the Maribor Generals. This is a team with a talented Slovenian National team ready QB. But this proved to be a challenge on our defense considering we brought 20 total players to the game and ZERO corners but we played relatively good football in comparison to the adversity. I had never in my life felt this shorthanded, but after a 35-18 loss, I was actually quite proud of the guys that came to play because the players with almost no experience in pass coverage managed to do a pretty good job. For me personally this was the first game that I was able to be semi mobile on my ankle and because of that stayed in the pocket as QB most of the game and passed for maybe 200+ yards 1 TD and had 1 rushing TD. Not phenomenal stats, but......starting to show that, Mr. Jones is healing. :)

A run of bad luck...

      The first couple months of Croatia in have been overall amazing! I mean how can I complain while I am in one of the most beautiful places in the world helping people learn to play the most wonderful sport in the world and getting paid to do it. I promise I cant complain.

      But what I can be frustrated about is a run of bad luck all at once. The team I am currently coaching and playing for is the Zagreb Thunder. They are historically the first American Football club in Croatia. Since there inception a couple teams have spawned off of them and another couple popped up in other large city's across the nation. The Zagreb Thunder have lots of good things going for them. I mean, they have lots of things that teams would love to have, a core of great hard working guys willing to learn, they have the will power to grow, a little money behind them and even a couple dedicated people really working hard to help the club thrive. 

     But what they also have in 2012 is......terrible terrible luck.   Before coming to Zagreb I was constantly reminded about the talent at wide receiver, and because of that I decided that the spread offense would be the best for the team. Sounds great right??? Well in theory it is!!! But what happens if you lose all your receivers!?!?

     Since joining the Zagreb Thunder I have lost many many core players to plain and simple STUPID BAD LUCK. Some of that bad luck being key players moving away to other city's to work but most of it being...just plain old INJURY......even though as a football player we are used to losing guys periodicity throughout a season, no one plans for the kind the Zagreb Thunder has had to deal with. In 2012...

    

 The Zagreb Thunder has lost participation of 5 of our primary receivers.......Losing 2 to jobs, and 3 key guys to injury, including our hard working president/tight end. Because of this we as a club are left with a few brand new guys, most of which are brand new to American football. On top of that the Zagreb Thunder also lost BOTH American Imports including Jovon Williams (Arizona St) and myself and this is no where close to  everyone that is banged up. 

   

  I cant lie, at first I was frustrated beyond belief, maybe even a little depressed, but now I understand that despite our circumstances we as a team can do nothing but get stronger because of this adversity!!!

      

    Our new receivers are going to have to STEP UP and rise to the occasion! To be totally honest I am  nervous but at the same time extremely excited for a chance to be the lucky one guiding these new guys along this unbeaten path!!! It will be my honor to help groom these new players to become the best that they can be. For the Zagreb Thunder is not 1 man 2 men, 10, 20, 30 or 40 men, the Zagreb Thunder is the root of all American football in Croatia and I am proud to be the person bearing the responsibly of watering it, even at the moment where adversity creeps in! 

     We cannot forget that "Calm seas don't make skillful sailors." So we are going to keep on working with what we got and doing the best we can. So that when we go home and look ourselves in the mirror we know that we gave it our very very very best.  

"Adversity is like a strong wind. It tears away from us all but the things that cannot be torn, so that we see ourselves as we really are." -Arthur Golden

No matter how the season unfolds this year, I am looking forward to playing with this great group of guys and am looking forward to both the victory's and challenges that lie ahead!!!!   

THUNDER READY, HIT BREAK!!!

"Plitvice lakes" AKA Garden of Eden.

The last 2 weeks in Croatia have been great, as I posted in my last blog, I picked up my wife in Budapest and she was staying with me for 2 weeks. :D It was a blast! Unlike a couple wife visits in the past this time we stayed non stop busy. Trips and practices and meetings out the wazoo, but just as it was tiring it was equally rewarding! As you see in the pictures above we visited the Plitvice Lakes here in Croatia, roughly 2 hours from my apartment. Let me go ahead and tell you....I walked about 1000 miles during this visit but for every mile i walked it was worth 4!!! THIS PLACE IS INDESCRIBABLE. I cant put it into words the way this place looked beautiful, wonderful, peaceful, majestic, breathtaking....man so many adjectives fail to measure up in comparison to what these lakes have in store for there visitors! I admit even though I am a self proclaimed "good photographer" LOL I failed to capture the beauty of this place. Believe it or not my wife Jonna (SUPER WORLD TRAVELER 5000) was even in shock to the majesty of this place. She even admited that it was if not the best which it might be but at least one of the most beautiful places she has ever seen! And dont forget this girl has been to every continent besides South America! ;) So she is borderline nature appreciation expert. These last 2 weeks have been wonderful and I am extremely glad I chose the Zagreb Thunder for 2012, from Zagreb to Budapest and Budapest all the way to the lakes of Plitvice and the shoreline of Split...Southern Europe is... WONDERFUL. But dont take my word for it, check out these pics!