Writing Redux: Update

Not sure if this can be called a redux yet, if it is only one post without any likely to follow anytime soon... but ho hum.

Life is good. Really good. Girlfriend is down in Oregon, which isn't great, but the positive is that it gives me all of the time I need to focus on being the great teacher I intend to become. People keep praising me for doing such a great job teaching, but I feel very underwhelmed about my performance these first few years. I've tried my best, and I'm not sure what else I could be doing better, but there is just so much more to do.

I talked to a friend earlier this week about just being amazed at how some of my students can succeed with the hand they've been dealt. Parents who are so busy their children are neglected, or more commonly with my students--parents are involved with drugs and neglect their children. This seems to be a big factor in students that do poorly in school, and understandably so--but then there are these diamonds in the rough that are at or near the top of my classes and they get very little support at home. I'm not sure how they do it. Maybe they want to be the opposite of their parents, so they try that much harder? I don't know, but it continues to amaze me and excites me to keep their dreams going.

I'm coaching ultimate frisbee again this year at my middle school, and boy what a difference a year makes. Last year we were defeated... don't think we won a single game all year during the regular season, and I think we won one playoff game (every team got a playoff game), oh, and we also won a game by forfeit. This year, we just finished the regular season undefeated, with playoffs coming next week. The only thing I've done differently this year is institute a spirit award.

My league frisbee team won the spirit award this summer, and received new discs as a reward. Everyone on my team donated their disc to my middle school team, and instead of using them (we have about 10 discs that are already cut up from our concrete playground area next to the tiny grass field) I decided to reward them as a spirit of the game award. I decided that my team captains each game would be responsible for picking a player on the other team who we would give one disc to (and I never interfered on this decision), and then I had the ridiculously tough decision to pick a player on our team to give a new disc to. Every week this was my most difficult decision, as almost every player deserved one. We were cheering for good plays from either team, we were letting contested calls go the other way, we were helping players up no matter which jersey they wore.

The game I coached today was the last game of the regular season, and we entered 5-0, playing the second-best team in the league at 4-1. We got out to a quick start going up two points, but then as the substitutions began we lost the next three points. We traded points to 5-5, and then the opponents took half 5-6. We had a great talk at halftime about playing hesitantly because we didn't want to lose, instead of that, we needed to open up and get back to our ways of having fun. We took the next two points to get up 7-6. This lit a fire in our opponents, who won the next three points to go up 7-9. We were down two points and only had five minutes left before the horn would blow. The lineup I had out on the field wasn't our greatest by far, and they had just been quickly scored on. Some of the better players on our team were pleading with me to let them play, but I didn't think it fair to take the group on the field out after such a short point. I hadn't done so all season, and I wasn't about to now.

The kids stayed on the field and eventually won a very hard-fought point, and the seven kids I had spoken to about playing the next point RAN onto the field, because they knew we only had one minute to score the next point to tie the game. If the horn blows when the game is tied, you play a winner-take-all sudden-death point, which is just what happened.

We had to throw the disc off, which is usually seen as a disadvantage because the opponents get to be on offense first. After a few turnovers and jitters from both teams, one of our new girls got a great "D" and we worked the disc down and scored the final point to finish the regular season undefeated. For the third time this season, a player was carried off the field on the shoulders of other teammates. The season has been storybook thusfar, and I can't wait to see what next week and the playoffs bring.

From a coaching standpoint, I have no doubt that we can beat any team in the league if I play my best players. I won't just play those players though, and I need to make sure all of the players know that we will win and lose the championship as a team, not by just a few of our players.

Other than coaching, I've been playing a little Everquest on the Fippy Darkpaw progression server, and I've had my first real brush with being interested in learning guitar. GF brought her old guitar up to Seattle for me to practice on, and I really like messing around on it. I don't so much like learning the chords and the way my fingers ache.

Rare Blissful Moment

I've talked about it before, but when I have high expectations and they aren't met--I'm at my lowest. This comes in the form of relationships ending, plans being canceled and I generally go from being excited about life one moment to questioning my entire existence the next.

Before I get too morbid, conversely, I'm at my highest point when I have poor (or no) expectations, and the planned or unplanned event knocks my socks off.

Today was one of those days.

For the last month I've been quietly dreading today. One of the first matches we had was against Bothell. I wrote a recap about the match, but even though both teams had an amazing time that day, their coach warned me about Inglemore High School. How that team was full of snotty kids who made bad line calls and had terrible tempers. On the bus ride home, I checked our schedule and found today's date as the day of our match. I was glad we were playing them on our turf.

As the tennis season progressed, we had our share of rain outs, but we got the majority of our tennis matches in. I would usually spend at least some time talking with the other JV coaches during our matches. We would talk about our successes and failures, but whenever we talked about which teams we had played thus far, opposing coaches would always single out Inglemore and warn me about them. I must have heard from three or four different coaches in the league that they had enjoyed all of their matches--win or lose--except for their match with Inglemore. The Inglemore coach doesn't have any control over her team and their players are just terrible sports.

I let my team know at practice yesterday what to expect from the Inglemore team. We joked about fighting fire with fire, and calling out line judges to the court and returning their bad calls with bad calls of our own. But if you know me at all, I'd never let my team do that. I had been hoping for rain, but the forecast just looked cloudy for today. Damn.

3:20pm rolls around, and I have about 16 guys who have been at the courts for nearly an hour. The match is supposed to start at 3:30pm, and Inglemore is nowhere in sight. Could it be? Might there be a forfeit today? Please God, let them not show up! But of course, the next second a yellow school bus rumbles up the steep Laurelhurst hill, carrying the Inglemore squad. Their school colors must be Black and Gold, because moments later a swarm of yellow and black buzzes its way from the bus to the courts. Since they are late, I tell my guys to get off the courts and let their team use all of the courts to warm up (it is customary to give them two courts, while we warm up on the other two).

I had been told that their coach was Asian, but a Caucasian woman introduced herself as the coach. After chatting it up for a bit, then later hearing some of the remarks she made during the match, I'm sure that this is the lady the other coaches had been talking about--but at the beginning of the match I thought the crazy Asian lady may have gotten the ax.

Their team didn't seem overly cocky or bad-mannered. Sure, they were cocky and had bad manners, but not more so than any other east-side high school tennis teams. We got the games underway and I watched all four games like a hawk.

Hmm... no bad line calls during the first few games. No mumbling. No cursing. No throwing racquets. No questioning of my players' calls. And another interesting thing was that all of the matches were close. The first match finished at 6-8, with Inglemore taking the number four ranked singles match. A minute later, Nick walks off the court with an 8-6 victory for us at #1 singles. A few moments later Thomas storms off saying, "Coach. I lost six-eight I'm going home now." OK Thomas, whatever you say, buddy!

Lucas finished up his match 9-7 at #3 singles. This match was a fun one, because Lucas is pretty much the bully on our team. At practice, he whacks balls over the fence and refuses to get them, he hits other kids with balls and is just a menace in general. But today, against a presumably hot-headed team, I decided to let him play singles for the first time this year. Up until now, I was a bit gun-shy of what might happen with him alone out on the court.

He turned out to be playing a mirror-image of himself. Lucas is easily the most powerful person on our team. Fastest first serve by a good 20mph, and the hardest ground strokes when he chooses to wail on the ball. He was up against another brute, and during the warm-up, they both just crushed the ball. Of course, once the match started, they both dinked the ball, not wanting to mess up. I did the exact same thing when I played. On a rare point, one of them would hit a very good shot, even by varsity standards.

I decided to finally go over to their court during a change-over. I think the match was at 5-4, and originally I was just going to go give Lucas a little pep-talk, but as I watched them play, I decided that talking to both of them just felt like the right thing to do. Here is what I said:

"OK you two, this is a very even match-up. Both of you are capable of hitting amazing shots, as you've already proven. This could be a varsity-level match. There is only one thing I want to see change: when you have the ball in your wheel-house, I want you two to go for it. If you get to the net and have a chance to end the point, do it! If you aren't in the best position, by all means, just get the ball back and play defensively, but both of you will get plenty more put-away opportunities. You two can make shots that no one else out here can, show us what you got."

The doubles matches finished in the same fashion as the singles. I think we ended up winning the overall match 7-5, but only because their team was deeper than ours (which I think is a first), so we had our #1 and #2 doubles team play a second match against their lowest ranked doubles teams at the very end of the match. Those two matches ended up being 6-0, 6-0, which I felt a bit bad about, but I couldn't really do much about that, seeing how our lowest ranked doubles teams were still playing when courts opened up.

Towards the end of the match, while the last few matches were finishing up, I invited players from both teams to play King of the Court. They looked like they were having a fun time, and the one team that held King-ship the longest was actually a mix with one guy from Roosevelt and one from Inglemore, so that was pretty cool. I got a request to switch the game to Graveyard, and did so after explaining the rules to the Inglemore team. They were excited to play a game they hadn't heard of, and even gave my team a few players because they had so many more than we did. I didn't play, but from what I watched, I saw lots of smiles and heard lots of laughing, so I can only assume that they were having a good time.

Being the last home match, I had quite a few parents show up that I hadn't met before. They all took the time to personally thank me for coaching this year, and I think every one of them mentioned how much fun their son was having with tennis this year. I think maybe four or five parents came up to me at various points in the day's match and thanked me. I hadn't expected that at all, and it was an amazing feeling.

While I was driving home from the match, all of the smiles, and all of the thanks I received finally caught up with me. This isn't really work. I know teaching won't be all peaches and cream, but I also know this won't be the last time I'll feel this way if I continue to coach and begin teaching. I don't think I'd ever get this experience working a 9-5 desk job.

Down with the Sickness

Last night was the first noticeably chilly night for me in Seattle. I tossed my sleeping bag on top of my covers, and quickly fell asleep in a cozy cocoon of sheets, blankets and the sleeping bag on top. This morning was no fun though. I awoke just before 6am in a bit of a sweat, then had trouble getting back to sleep. The alarm clock woke me up just before 8am, and by the roughness in the back of my throat, I already knew the flu was going to get me.

On the way to school, I stopped by Safeway and picked up some Airborne, which I really should have gotten yesterday. I felt like something might be coming on after tennis practice yesterday, and the beer with Sara probably wasn't the smartest way to fend off a flu... nor playing racquetball. I only lasted one class at Eckstein, after sweating on my walk to school, then about an hour later getting the chills. I've never sweated on the walk to school before, so I had my reservations about how long I would last observing today. I decided to take it easy, because of the tennis match against Juanita this afternoon. When I got home from Eckstein, I promptly put on pajamas and crawled back into bed.

Three hours later, I woke up and decided getting some food in me would be a good idea before the tennis match. What better food than spicy Indian to thwart the flu?? I cooked that up, and it did the job. I'm not feeling 100% now, but at the tennis match I was fine doing everything I normally do. The match didn't actually happen, because the Juanita team got dropped off at Lower Woodland instead of the Laurelhurst courts, and neither team had transportation. They eventually arrived at Laurelhurst two hours late, but by that time I had sent the majority of my team home.

The guys decided to play Graveyard for Butts Up to see which team would win the match. Graveyard is a fun game where you have two teams on opposite sides of the net, where each hit moves you to the back of the line. If you miss, you sit on the court at the service line. If your whole team is sitting, you lose. When you are sitting, you can swing at balls, and if you connect and get the ball onto the other side of the court, you are back in the game (much like catching a ball in dodge-ball brings a teammate back from the sideline). If you miss, the person who's turn it is has to sit on the service line. Playing for "Butts Up" means that the winning team gets to serve one ball each at the opposing team, who lines up on the service line, turns around and presents their ass to be hit. Good times. RHS lost the first game, won the second game, and had 3 people left alive to Juanita's one, but a few timely shots from the graveyard, and Juanita stormed back from the dead to win!

I'm planning on getting quite a bit of sleep tonight. Sleep, lots of water, tea, Indian Food, and Airborne should hopefully do the trick on this cold...

Seattle, she just keeps you guessing

I don't see how people get depressed in Seattle. I was walking to school this morning, and it was a bit chilly and overcast. No rain, just a big shroud of gray over the city. When I left school this afternoon, the exact same shroud of gray was covering the city... it was like I hadn't missed anything at all! In California, when I went in to work in the morning, the sun was just starting to wake up on one side of the sky. When I left, it was ready to go to bed on the complete other side! Talk about a wasted day...

But, as much as I love Seattle, it really is one of the worst possible places in the U.S. to be a high school tennis coach. I must have checked the weather report a dozen times today. Our tennis practice got rained out at the last second yesterday, and I really didn't want to have to hop onto a yellow bus, drive 30 minutes, only for the tennis meet with Bothell to be rained out. The most reliable weather source out there had a 30% chance of rain in the greater Seattle area from 2pm through 8pm. The tennis match was from 3pm-6pm. Three hours, each with a 30% chance of rain. I didn't like my odds of staying dry this afternoon!

But, I did! I got all 20 of my guys a match, and we ended up losing 4-5 in the nine matches that counted. It was pretty brutal, we were tied at 3-3 after the six singles matches, and it came down to the doubles matches for the second meet in a row. Two of the doubles matches were tied at 5-5, playing a pro-set to 8, and we were up 6-1 in the third doubles match. So we only had to win one of the close matches to win the meet.

We ended up losing the #1 doubles match 6-8. So we then had to win both of the other matches, which were at 7-8 bad guys and 6-3 us. The tight 7-8 game we end up getting to a tie-break at 8 all, and my guys end up pulling out the tie-break 8-6! I was really excited for the guys, because the tennis meet result was pretty much based on their match... but the match we were leading 6-1 was now tied at 6 all, no!! We end up losing that match 6-8, and lose the meet. Their opponents rallied from a 1-6 deficit to win seven straight games to take the meet. Depressing on our part, but I won't lose any sleep over it (that is the good part about coaching JV--wins and losses don't matter, whee!).

After the match results were done, we ended up playing a huge game of king of the court, while we waited for the exhibition matches to finish up. Their coach and a few players joined in, and we were having a great time. Tennis coaching is a blast when everyone is good sports and having fun. Their coach told me about the Inglemoor team, and the terrible calls they were making--so I'm not looking forward to that match.

In writing news, I'm going to make a healthy effort to get something I'm proud of over on Fun With Words each week. For the most part, I don't want it to be something I've just written up and posted right away, like I do here. I want to think it out and maybe write it the first few days of the week, give it a few days to settle, then go back and edit it and have it posted by Monday night. I have a few ideas, and I'll possibly be branching out into poetry and song writing, which I haven't really attempted before. I have a story idea for a topic given to me by my 11th grade teacher, Mr. Grosskopf: "Create your own Utopia." There were a few prompts, but it sounds fun to begin with, then gets extremely overbearing very quick. I can already feel myself slowing down and shying away from finishing whatever I start on the topic, but I'd rather hurl myself blindly at the topic than just ignoring it.

Coach Roach, Bleacher Teacher

Tennis coaching has been a lot of fun the past few weeks. We started our league matches this week. On Tuesday, we played Garfield, which won all of their JV matches last year, and they promptly crushed us. Today, we took the school bus down to Rainier to play Franklin, traditionally a pretty bad tennis team. I decided to mix the roster up a bit to get a few kids on the lower end of the ladder a chance at playing a competitive singles match.

After the six singles matches had finished, we were all square at 3:3. The winner of the meet would be whichever school won two of the next three doubles matches. I was confident in our number one and two doubles teams, but when the matches were at 5:4 and 6:5, respectively, I got some goosebumps. We ended up winning not only those two matches, but all of the other doubles matches! The entire team definitely needs some help in both the serve and volley departments, so that is what I'll be concentrating on in the next few weeks. The guys are really starting to get in great position to dominate their matches, but they usually whack the ball out of the court, or dink it into the net--that's where I come in!

Observation of the middle school math class has been amazing this week. I've already been invited to play in the teacher's basketball pickup game on Friday's, which I'll start next week. I can't really think of a better and more fun way to network with teachers than to let them win at play basketball! From my 20 or so observation hours so far, becoming a middle school math teacher seems like a perfect fit. Every single class of every day, at least one of the students brings a fresh perspective to a problem we're working on. That freshness seems like it would keep me alert and young for many years to come :)

There are a few more hoops I have to jump through (instead of just shooting them?) to become a middle school math teacher than to be a middle school english teacher, or a high school business teacher--but I just don't think I'll like the high school age as much in the classroom as I do at tennis practice, and getting a job as an english teacher is about 100x harder than getting a job as a math teacher. All of the math graduates go make a lot of money with their degree. Mr. Howell had a Bachelor's in German. So even though I already have an english minor, and I'd be able to start on an english-emphasis degree right away, it'd probably be worth it to take a few math classes at NSCC and do the math-endorsement to be set later.

I have fond memories of middle school, and to me that age is just a lot of fun. For the most part, the girls are bigger than the boys in 8th grade, which I find to be pretty darn funny. It is sort of like the relationship between my older sister and I, where I was the small boy who'd make fun of her, then she'd pummel me. There are a good amount of runts in the class who poke fun at the girls, the same girls who I bet they hide from at lunch break.

I've also been able to help both Mr. Howell and the student teacher describe things better to the students. It is easy when I'm sitting at the back of the class observing, and I can see making a few of the mistakes I see while trying to keep track of all the little nuances that go into making a productive learning environment for the students.

Today, we were working on a problem where we had a pool that was both indoor and outdoor. We knew the area of the indoor portion of the pool, and the equation for the entire pool--and they had to find what parts of the equation were for the outside portion of the pool, then graph what they thought the outdoor portion of the pool looked like. There were many different possibilities, and some of the students made it much more complicated than they needed to, but that just reminded me of myself doing it the exact same way when I was younger.

The equation had X^2 somewhere in it, which wasn't used in the indoor section of the pool, so it had to be part of the outdoor section. But they couldn't for the life of them figure out how to sketch a figure with the area of X-squared! It is pretty much just a square with X on all sides, but you can't just tell the student that, so we had to come up with a way to try and describe what X-squared might look like sketched.

Mr. Howell came up with a good idea of having a rectangle with a length of 5 and width of 3. He asked the class what the area of the rectangle was.

15!

"OK, good, so length times width to find the area of a rectangle. What happens if the length is 5x and the width is 3x?"

15x!!

"Hmm... almost, you multiplied the 5 and the 3, but did you multiply the x's? I think you're leaving out an X..."

Bewilderment, no hands.

"Hmm... OK, say X=2, we've got 5 times 2 times 3 times 2, right?"

yes...

"So, we can simplify that as 5 times 3 times 2-squared. How can we use that knowledge to answer our 5x times 3x question?"

15x-squared!!

"Right!"

The kids hadn't been taught factoring yet, which was pretty essential to this question. We went through the first two of his four Integrated One classes, then I realized that they knew how to multiply the length and width to get the area using a variable (albeit uneasily), but they didn't know how to get a length and width from a given area--especially when X is involved.

I suggested that for his 5th period class he do both the 5x-3x example, but also give them an example with a given area and work backwards. He loved the suggestion, and it seemed to work out pretty well for the 5th period class, although they are a bit sharper than the other two classes--so we couldn't tell if the reason why they seemed to grasp the content better is because of their innate sharpness, or the different teaching method--argh!

I have to give it to teaching though, I sure use a lot more of my brain in a week observing than I did in my six months working for an insurance company in Portland. And I'm having a whole lot more fun!

Long Day

Today started at 7am for me, which isn't necessarily early for most of you, but I started making a habit of staying up late and waking up around 11am. It is much easier to do than it sounds, given two weeks of nothing to do before 2pm. But that life is over. It was fun while it lasted, but today marked the beginning of three weeks of observation for me.

I started my observation today at Eckstein Middle School, my old stomping grounds. I walked the ten or so blocks to school this morning at 8am. I had on a fleece, but the second I got to school I shed it. Today ended up being a beautiful day, maxing out at around 75 I'd guess. I observed Mr. Howell's 8th grade math class until about noon today. He was one of my favorite math teachers growing up, and I was able to get in contact with him back in July about observing his class when I got back to Seattle.

He remembered me after about a ten-year absence, because I was one of the kids on his first "math team" trip up to Blaine, WA. It is just south of the Canada border, and I was only there because my math-genius friend, DTran, wanted someone there he knew. The most memorable moment of the trip, besides not knowing any of the math questions, was skying Mr. Howell playing ultimate frisbee out on the grass during one of the breaks at the math competition. I think we ended up doing fairly well at the comp., no thanks to me!

We talked a lot during his break period, and it was kind of cool to play connect the dots with old friends and family friends who had taken math from Mr. Howell. I would mention someone, then he would say if they or their siblings were in his class, then I would update him on what they were doing now. One of the craziest crossroads was that his daughter is now at Nathan Hale, and is playing ultimate frisbee. Her coach is Sammy CK, who I played ultimate with growing up and is in my fantasy football league! Again, it is pretty nutty being in a city where I actually know people--still awkward, but I'm sure that'll pass soon enough.

I only observed until lunch, because it was pretty much get-to-know-you day and go over the syllabus. After four runs through the syllabus, I had it down water-tight, and didn't really need to hear it two more times. Another cool thing about observing Mr. Howell's class is that he has homeroom, then he has his prep period until 9:10am. So I don't have to come in until then to observe! I observe three classes, have lunch, observe two classes and the day is over! Well, then I head to Greenlake and coach.

Today, coaching was a lot of fun, and I finally got to run the kids a bit. It wasn't bad really, but got their blood pumping. I hit some really soft balls at them today, which was a change of pace. I noticed at our match yesterday at Issaquah, that they were getting a TON of floaty balls back, due to their really good groundstrokes--but once they got the floaty balls, they couldn't put them away! It was frustrating as a coach, to have a team dominate from the baseline, but not be able to put anything away!

So I pretty much lobbed balls at them, hoping they would smash them for nice shots--sadly they smashed them... into the net, or into the fence behind the court. Not many hit their intended target--so I'll have to work on that. The team is really above average at hitting nice, hard groundstrokes, but realistically, at the JV level, they aren't going to get into that many good rallies--they will more often get into loopy-ball rallies that need to be put away.

We backed it up a bit and hit a little harder, then I got a couple double matches going before calling it a day. Tomorrow should be fun, and I hope to make Friday the fun days to come to--play some fun games like monster king-of-the-court, and graveyard (where once you miss a ball, you sit on the court and stay there, like a zombie--and you get to hit any ball that comes your way).

After practice, Tyler and I tossed the disc for a bit, then watched the first football game of the year. Saints at Colts, and the Colts just whooped em'. For the most part, the game was a push for me. I could have done a lot, lot better, but in my pick'em league I had the Colts winning, and in my fantasy league I had the Colts D. Unfortunately, Tyler, who I'm playing this week, had Peyton Manning, who went off for 230+ yards and 3TDs. Drew Brees and Marques Colston combined for 8 whole points--Brees had 2INTs and zero TDs, and Colston only caught a couple passes for 40 yards or so. I think the Saints duo is going to wreak havoc this year, just not against Indi. The big bright side was the Colts Defense, who I picked on purpose in our fantasy league, because I think they are way underrated. I also have the Saints D, who I knew couldn't really contain Peyton--but they had me second guessing my Defensive choice after the 10-10 halftime score, with the only Saints Touchdown a fumble-recovery touchdown! Both Defenses are looking great, Peyton and the Colts were just too strong at home.

Looking forward to the rest of the NFL games this weekend, observing tomorrow, the UW/Boise State game this weekend, and grilling up at Marc's for the Seahawks game on Sunday!

Fun in the Sun

Well, OK, it hasn't been very sunny lately in the Pacific Northwest--but the rain is supposed to hold off for the rest of the week. It drizzled a bit today, but it cleared up for the first tennis practice post-cut. There were 15 guys who showed up to practice, even though it had rained only an hour earlier. I expected fewer to show due to the conditions, but I was pleasantly surprised.

We had some fun hitting balls for a few hours, and I look forward to practicing the rest of the week with no rain outs. We start matches next week, and I think the JV squad looks amazing already. I'm sure a few of the schools in our league will give us a run for our money, but I think we'll just steam-roll a few schools.

Thursday I start my three weeks of teacher observation, then at the end of those three weeks I start two pre-req classes at community college. I'll be taking Geography and College Algebra. I'm not too worried about either class, and I think they should be a good way to get me back into school mode. Once the spring semester rolls around and I'm pulling full-time work plus part-time school, the challenge begins. It is looking like Middle School is where I'll end up, but I'll know for sure in three weeks, after my observation is complete.

Fantasy football begins this week, and I am starting to get giddy again. I've re-installed Madden and plan on doing a little fantasy draft in the old 06' game. I've got a good fantasy squad in the draft I did with Seattle buddies and the Scott crew. I'm playing Tyler in the first week, and that boy is going to get whooped! We've got a few side-bets going already. $1 between four of us for the most fantasy points the first week. I might lose this one because Drew Brees is up against the Colts, and I think their D might be a little tough in Indianapolis. When Brees lines up against a terrible pass defense, and Steven Jackson gets a cream-puff team to run over, I'm going to pile up a ton of points. We've also got a nice bet going between the same four people, a last longer bet and the three losers buy the winner dinner. I'm hoping to get a few more bets in before the season starts, then have a slew of bets during the season!

The Pick'em league also starts this week, and I am spell-bound for this first week. Almost all of the games could go either way in my book, and I pretty much just picked at random. I'll of course be leading the league after this week! I shipped my $10 to Skidoo for that league and can't wait for the season to get going. I'll root for the Seahawks this year, but I think both the 49'ers and the Rams have a shot. Arizona... meh...

Dying? Never fear, MHG is here!

You are reading a walking, talking, CPR and first aid certified tennis coach. So if any tennis balls get lodged into high schoolers, I'll be able to save the day! Or, as I learned, I can just walk away. As long as I don't start CPR, I can leave... OK, I wouldn't do that, that is the mean side of happyguy.

Tennis practice went alright, I've gotta make some cuts tomorrow, and I'm still not sure who to keep and who to cut. Some of the kids I'm thinking about cutting have won more than other kids, but they're winning by lobbing the ball back into play, not hitting good, solid strokes. Lobbing only gets you so far, and I'd really like to see solid strokes that aren't as consistent... which is contrary to how I played tennis in high school--which makes it a morally difficult decision. I might not have made the team using my own logic!

After tennis practice, I made a quick trip to the pool. I swam a season's best 3 laps, then hit the diving board for a few minutes before heading back home. I really suck at swimming when it comes to stamina. After only three laps, my head was spinning, which makes jumping off the diving board much more difficult. When I was nine years old we would swim dozens of laps a day at swim practice, and I fancy myself in better shape now than I was then. Weird.

At least tomorrow after breaking hopes and dreams of teenagers, I get to go over to Jeremy's house and fantasy football it up! We've got a draft at 8pm, and he's got wireless internet, so a few of us are heading over there to drink and talk shit. Ah, how I love talking shit about sports. Especially with Jeremy and Marc, because from the bottom of my heart: YOU SUCK!

Friday morning Dad and I head out to Spider Meadows for an overnight hike, expect some more hiking pictures. We'll be back Saturday night for a few post-hike brewskies and a soak in the hot tub. Rough life.

Sunday: pool party!

Coaching is a go

This JV Coaching job isn't going to be easy. I've got about 20 new tryouts that are vying for about 4 open spots on the team. Ouch! The whole goal is to get the JV players lots of competitive tennis under their belts, and in turn improve to contend for a varsity spot next year. There are a dozen JV returners from last year who probably aren't going to make the nearly-full varsity team, and there are four really good new freshman that might even bump down some varsity players from last year to JV.

I feel bad for a lot of the kids, because when I was playing tennis at RHS, they would have definitely made JV, and possibly even varsity. But this year our team looks to be a real competitive one, and they probably won't make the cut at the end of this week.

I am looking forward to the coaching gig once we get past the cuts though, because they all have plenty of room to improve, and I think I will be able to help them get to that next level. Whether it is footwork, forehands, backhands, second serves or their return game--there are holes in everyone's game that I've seen so far, and it is going to be fun to try and mend those weak spots in the players' games. I think our JV team will do amazingly well this year too, with the amount of talent I've seen so far. Winning isn't really a big part of my job, getting them prepped to win at the varsity level is what it is all about.

Tyler and I are going to head over to Sand Point tonight to go play some racquetball, then head back here for some hot tub therapy. Living at home ain't all that bad.

Coaching Opportunities

I've had a pretty relaxing first few days back in Seattle. Got to hang out with Tyler and Mike over the weekend, which was good fun like always. We tossed the disc, played some Mario Party 8 on the Wii for the first time, and saw the Bourne Ultimatum. Didn't get to see Andrew or Marc, Andrew is over in England and Ireland for the month and Marc was off camping in the rain for the weekend.

I've been playing quite a bit of WoW, and I finally got a guild started up last night with the help of friends and a few other interested parties. The guild is based around exploring all of the content and starting from scratch, much like the Everquest guild I helped create last year. Been playing a druid and I'm having lots of fun dancing in bear form.

Outside of WoW, I've also been getting a lot done. I visited my old high school about observation hours and an open assistant coaching position with the tennis team. Tennis was the only sport I played in high school, and I am very interested in helping coach this Fall. It turns out that the old assistant coach is now the head coach, and he is an incredibly funny guy. His nickname for my 6'6", 150lb friend is "MEAT!" "Hey Meat, get over here!" He'd teach us the proper fly-fishing technique whenever we'd meet in the hall during school... he was just a guy that made me laugh. Tryouts started yesterday, but it was rainy. I rode my bike over to the courts during a break in the rain, but they were empty. It looks a bit rainy again today, but I'm hoping to get ahold of Mr. K to see if I can grab that assistant coaching position.

On the way back from the high school, I stopped by my old community center, where I played basketball for a dozen years growing up. I've talked to Tyler and Brandon about helping out assistant coaching if I try to coach a team, and they both seem interested (although Brandon would be on a temporary basis due to travel). Filled out some forms at the community center for the basketball position, which I won't find out about until mid-Sept. As I handed the packet back to the guy at the desk, I noticed an Ultimate Frisbee sign up sheet on the counter. I inquired about it and it turns out they are looking for coaches there as well! So I wrote "Basketball and Ultimate Frisbee" on top of my coaching submission and had a fun chat with the coordinator at the front desk.

I could have a very full plate this Fall and Winter, assuming I get a part time job as well. I was thinking tutoring might be perfect for me, seeing how I want to get into teaching, it would provide a little insight into what teaching might be like. I've got to wrap it around my two classes at NSCC and coaching though, which might prove difficult. We'll see!

Agenda for the next few days is to get a WA license plate for my motorcycle (Yesterday I also signed up for a MSF course in October) and to contact teachers at both elementary schools and high schools about observation hours. Wednesday Tyler and I are planning on playing some handball/racquetball. Thursday my Dad and I are heading up to the cabin to get some work done up there. Then Friday or Saturday I'll be heading out to Lake Tapps to have a fun weekend with some old familiar faces!