Q&A Episode

The podcast discusses the journey and success of Team Crusaders in flag football. They talk about the team captains and their roles, as well as the expectations and improvements for the team. The host also thanks the fans and sponsors for their support. Overall, the team is determined to perform well and make it to the championship round. Welcome back to Team Crusaders podcast. I'm your host Tony. And today we'll be talking about and going back to the questions I asked Chong Chong about Team Crusaders. And also thank you to our sponsors of Bubble Baseball, Tokyo, AGC, Director Barber, and Falcoma. In the last episode, we were talking about the first question I asked them, you know, where and how Team Crusaders started. You know, it's amazing how the journey that they went through. The mistakes, the shortcomings, and pretty much everything. And to kind of learn about that team, to really learn a lot from the players themselves too. It really makes me understand, you know, this is the reason why they got this far. And now they just won first place in Eau Claire. Or they split first place in Eau Claire, which is great. You know, great for our under our belts, for our background, you know, for pretty much our resume in a way. So the next question that I have here, the question was, who are the team captains for Crusaders? And Chong replied back to me, and I will make it as professional as I can. He says, we have multiple captains. Captains who make those tough decisions. Captains who lead by example. The captains who usually have to make those tough decisions would be Tomei, Aaron Vang, Tyler Anthony as an AP, and Chong. Those are the guys that make the tough calls and those plays when needed to. But the captain that really sticks out a lot is AP. That guy is a monster. He's a beast. And he's a guy that, you know, a lot of guys would be scared to go one on one against that guy. But most of the time, he's an amazing guy. You know, he's easy to get along with. And the positivity that he brings to practice, even during game day. But there are times where, you know, frustration gets to him. And the negativity gets to him. You know, that's the hard part about having a guy like him. You know, he's to me, like I said, he's a guy that kind of shows me he's like a Troy Panamalu type player. An amazing player. But the thing, the downfall of him is just, you know, the negativity. And like I said in the last episode, I think that's one of the reasons why a lot of veteran players or retired players were talking about our team. Saying that, hey, you guys need to get rid of that kind of negativity. You know, keep him there. He's an amazing guy. Keep him there. Just make sure that he understands that negativity will only bring the team down. You know what I mean? So I am grateful we are a team. It's a team. We are grateful to have Anthony in there. Same with the other captains for sure. But besides all the captains, Anthony Aspa. Amazing man. Up next is question number three. What were the expectations during the first year when the team was formed? Expectations year one were that we win in place in many tournaments. But unluckily, that wasn't the case. We still needed a lot of growing to do before that happened. And that's agreeable. Everyone knows that. It's like when you start a new team. It's like the NFL, right? You want to rebuild your team. Because you know that before, the team that you guys played with were pretty good, right? Now you start your own team. You want to rebuild your own team, right? So with that, it's usually the first year. There's not a lot of expectations besides just winning games. That's the expectation. Just winning games. And because in the Hmong flag football, it's kind of weird because we play two or three games depending on how many teams are in the tournament just for placing records for the bracket. The next day comes in, we lose the first playoff game. It sucks. It really does. But if you win the first playoff game, it's like going from the wild card to the division round. That's amazing. That's a great accomplishment. That's what the process is. And let's say you lose, right? If you lose, come back next year. Come back to the next tournament game, right? Or let's say you win that game. You win the wild card. You win the division round. Now you're heading to the conference finals, the conference championship game. And that's amazing still. Lose or win, it doesn't matter because that's still a great accomplishment as a team. There's no failure or there's no such thing as failure in life, in football. People may think when you fail at something, you just got to do better. No. To me, it's more of there's no failure. We're just so short. That's the only thing that I can say to my team and to the captains, that we just fell short. And that's literally how life is. And you guys want to use Giannis or Kobe Bryant as a perfect example of what is failure. Giannis and Ducoupo commented saying this season wasn't a failure. No. Are you saying that just because MJ won six straight in 1990 to 97 or 98, and you're saying that the rest of those other years were failures? No, it wasn't. There's no such thing as failures in our team, in our system, anywhere. We don't want to get close to that. And so now moving on to question number four. And I know that in the last podcast, I say, hey, I'm going to go through questions every episode. But this one here is really short. The first question was how everything started. That took a long time. That took the whole entire episode. But the next three questions, four, I can get through them pretty quick. So again, number four here, when the team got their place for J4, what are the expectations of this year? So basically what Sean replies is the expectation after placing in fourth and third in J4, the expectation this year is to do better, to win or take second place in the championship round. And guess what? We won Eau Claire last week. Amazing job. And that's the expectations of what we have to do. There's always room to improve on. Do I give this team a one out of ten? Are they perfect? No, they're not. I'll say right now they're number eight, as in rating-wise. A good, solid B plus A minus team. Amazing team. And like I said though, just because I gave them that rating does not mean they're not good enough. No, it just means that there's more room to improve on. When there's more room to improve on, you improvise yourself to make better decisions. When you go work out at the gym, what do you do? You work on your biceps, work on your bicep, tricep, tricep, chest, legs, whatever you want to work on. And guess what? No matter what, your body will always keep on growing. And that's the reason why when I hate a lot of people saying, I'm old, or I'm 27, I'm old now. To me, no, you're not. You're not old. You're still young. You still have the age of you're hitting into your prime. And that's my dad. My dad is a really good lecturer guy. He told me that, hey, once you hit your 30s, that's when your prime hits. So going back to the expectations here is just, like I said, do better. That's the only thing that we can do. We had to do better than last year. And we won first, or split first, in Eau Claire. Amazing job, my guys. You guys did a great job. I know I wasn't there, like I said, but I wanted to make sure that you guys know. You guys did amazing. After that, question five. What would the fans be expecting from the team this year? Just like Charles replied, just like us fans, expect us to put on a show and show out and make a championship round, or better yet, get to the championship. And that's amazing. Just having the fans back behind us, and our sponsors too. Having those guys behind us is what we need to kind of give our guys hope and the motivation, dedication to play. Bench, starters, or whatever you are. Thank you so much for coming to the games. Thank you so much for supporting us. And that's what we need. Thank you so much. And since we're almost done here, I just want to go on to finish the rest of the questions. And I know before I just said, hey, I'm going to go through each question. Maybe I have three left of me. But you know what? Let's finish this podcast together. Let's go, right? So one of the questions I asked is, how good of an offensive or defensive play caller is Coach Aaron? Charles replied saying, Coach Aaron usually doesn't call plays. But when he does, he does a great job. He usually trusts me and Timmy to make our own plays on the field. What he does the best is to help us adjust us and make certain rotations on both sides of the ball and helping us to put us in the best position to succeed. And also a shout out to Coach Aaron for allowing me to make this podcast for the team. And the last two, seven to eight questions left, well, which is the number eight and seven, the question is was, how efficient will the offense will be and how efficient will the defense will be? And Charles replied saying, I think for this question, I think both sides will be efficient, especially with the guys that we have now. We have a lot of really good players. And when you have a lot of good players, you expect it to perform at a high level. And that is straight up 100% fact. We have a lot of tons and many playmakers on our side. They know their job. They know their duties. And they know what to do when it comes down to something big. And this is why I'm agreeing with them because I've seen it. I've seen it with Elijah. I've seen it with Jonathan. I've seen it with AK. I've seen it with AP. I've seen it with Tomei. I can name anyone that you think who is amazing. Because some people may not agree with me that, oh, AP is not great. Or Tomei is not great. Or Bobby Vane is not great. No, fine, that's not you. But in this podcast, on a team that I support, that's who I believe and see. And I've made standouts. And if you guys went back to my standout episode where I was talking about Keegan, Bobby, and Kevin, those are the perfect players, like I said, that makes those moves, standout moves in practice. So this is what I've got for today. But thank you for tuning in to Team Crusaders Podcast. I'm your host, Tony. Until next time, see you in the next one. ♪♪♪