5 Dancing in the End Zone

5 Dancing in the End Zone When we arrived for our next practice, Andrea and the girly cheerleaders were practicing their routines at the other end of the field. "Losing! Winning! We won't lie! We're most happy with a tie! Go… Moose!" What a lame cheer. Finally, Coach Hyatt showed up in her Mini Cooper with her nose-picking son, Wyatt Hyatt. There was a guy sitting in the car with them, but he didn't get out. Hmm, that was weird. Coach Hyatt blew her whistle. "Line up!" "Are we gonna pick up your car again

today?" asked Neil. "No!" the coach barked. "Today you ragamuffins are going to learn the most important part of football—how to do an end zone dance." "A what?" asked Ryan. "After you score a touchdown, you have to do a dance in the end zone," Coach Hyatt said. Then Coach Hyatt showed us her end zone dance. She shook her butt, lifted a leg over her head, hopped up and down for a while, and then put her hands in the air and waved them around like a crazy person.

Coach Hyatt is a riot! "Now you try," she told us. We all shook our butts, lifted one of our legs over our heads, hopped up and down for a while, and put our hands in the air and waved them around like crazy people. Wyatt just picked his nose. "Can we have some Gatorade now?"

asked Ryan. "No!" barked Coach Hyatt. After we learned the end zone dance, the coach went to her car. Remember that guy who was sitting in it? Well, it turned out he wasn't a guy at all. He wasn't a girl, either. He was a dummy. "This is my friend Elvis," Coach Hyatt said as she carried the dummy over to us. Sure enough, the dummy looked just like the real Elvis. It sounded like him too. Coach Hyatt pushed a button on the back of the dummy and it started singing, "You ain't nothin' but a hound dog…." Coach Hyatt said we were going to use Elvis to practice our tackling. Tackling is fun, because you get to knock the dummy on its butt. We all lined up to tackle Elvis. I got to go first because my name begins with A.

"Okay, A.J.," said Coach Hyatt. "I want you to pretend this is somebody you really hate." That was easy. "I'm gonna pretend it's Andrea!" I told the guys. "You ain't nothin' but a hound dog!" sang Elvis. I pretended that the Elvis dummy was Andrea and rammed it as hard as I could. "Don't be cruel!" sang Elvis as I got off him. "Ooooooooh! I'm all shook up." "Good job, A.J.!" said Coach Hyatt. Each of us got to tackle the Elvis dummy five times. It was cool. Coach Hyatt showed us how to go for the legs so the runner would fall down. Wyatt just picked his nose. Doesn't that kid ever run out of boogers? When we were finished, the coach blew her whistle and said we could take a drink

from the Gatorade jug. That's when Little Miss Perfect came over. She had on a cheerleading uniform and was holding pom-poms in her hands. "That was a very violent exercise you were doing," Andrea told us. "Is it really necessary to hit the dummy so hard? I think that leads to violent behavior in children." "Can you possibly be more boring?" I asked Andrea. "Why don't you go back to your side of the field and work on your lame cheers?" "Humphf!" said Andrea. Then she stormed off to do more lame cheers with her friends. "We don't hate and we don't boo! We respect the other team, too! Go… Moose!"