a blog by Ian Kennedy
Last Sunday was the last day of the Alameda Soccer club season. Tyler’s coach, Jim Koermer, was amazing. He went out of his way to bake a cake (with little soccer men on it) and on his own dime bought all the kids a trophy; everyone was beaming.
Thanks Coach!
The site that hosts this video tries to pawn this off as a shot of someone surfing Hurricane Ivan but the comments seem to agree that this 70 foot plus monster was off the coast of Hawaii at a place called Jaws and that the guy did make it after all. Still, the video has to be seen to be believed – you don’t really realize how big the wave is until it begins to break.
Amazing!
Today was Tyler’s first day as a member of the Alameda Soccer Club. I have to say that they take things a bit more seriously here. It certainly isn’t Pee Wee soccer where the kids basically all run around chasing a ball or picking dandelions when they get bored. The uniforms are the first indication but there’s also a full set of rules and a very enthusiastic group of parents as I found out when I volunteered to play referee for the one of the games. In the photo Tyler’s in a drill but during the 10 minute games (they played two) he did quite well and the team got the hang of working the ball down the field and basic concept of zone defense.
UPDATE – a summary email just arrived from the coach.
We’ve completed our first game. It was definitely a little chaotic out there. As the season progresses, it will hopefully become a little more organized. Each week I’ll try to introduce a new skill. For this week, I will be focus on dribbling the ball. In addition, emphasize which goal our team is trying to kick the ball in.
Subject of the note was “Stinging Wasps” which reminded me of the vote on the team name at the end of practice. We narrowly missed being called the the “Singing Bears”
Big race coming up for two Olympians that I used to work with at Factiva. Pete Cipollone and Mike Wherley are racing in the Men’s Eight Finals on Sunday.
Wish them Godspeed!
The 101st Tour de France started on July 3rd and Lance Armstrong will be going for an unprecedented sixth consecutive win. It’ll be a sprinter’s race for the next two weeks (yesterday’s finish of Stage 2 ended was clocked at speeds of 67 kms!) leading up the mountains where the men are separated from the boys. In the meantime, here’s a post on the latest gadgets at use in the peleton.
I’ve already signed up for SMS pages of the daily results.
From the more than you ever wanted to know department, here’s this posting about Vile acts in the sport of Rugby
