Weekend Notes

A relatively laid-back weekend that saw the return of football at multiple levels and a glorious change in the weather.

High School Football

The high school season began in Indiana Friday. 5A #2 CHS took on Ben Davis, a traditional 6A power that won state two years ago but is in rebuilding mode.[1] I figured CHS would win fairly easily. I guess that happened. The Irish were never really challenged, but could only score once themselves for an 8–0 win.

A bizarre referring decision cost them at least two more points. The Irish blocked a BD punt that bounced around and eventually went out of the end zone. Which, after every rule I reviewed, is 100% a safety. For some reason BD a touchback out of it. I saw a replay and CHS never had possession so I have no idea how the refs decided it was a safety. Naturally BD took advantage and had their best drive of the night, breaking the red zone on the other end before the 4th Irish interception of the night snuffed that out.

CHS moved down to 5A this year but play their usual hella-difficult schedule. And they have the defending 4A state champs, who may be one of the 3–4 best teams of any class, in their sectional so I’m not sure this is going to be a super successful season.

L skipped the game. Hand, Foot, and Mouth disease, somehow, has been spreading around the school and she said she didn’t want to get it from high fiving “dirty freshmen.” Had she known they would only score once maybe she would have re-thought that. But she did go hang out with friends, so I’m not sure avoiding the disease was her true motivation.

Kansas Football

The whole “Week 0” moniker is dumb, and I’m not sure we need football a week before Labor Day, but I was glad that was an excuse for KU to be on regular Fox with no competition Saturday night. Especially with it being the unveiling of the (60%) new Booth Memorial Stadium. It looked fantastic. It made sense to do it in the order they chose, but was a bummer that the remaining old part of the stadium is what you saw in the standard camera shots. With the dearth of games, the stadium even got some run in a couple of the broader sports news roundup newsletters I get, all very positive. As a Kansas fan, I’m waiting for something horrible to happen to counter these good vibes. Like an earthquake that destroys the entire stadium.

Fresno State was a good opponent to open the season against. Not very good but not terrible either. KU won easily, 31–7. It could have and probably should have been a bigger win, but there was the standard “we’re holding stuff back so future opponents don’t see everything.” Which I also think is dumb.

Jalon Daniels looked really good, except when he got hammered twice and took a minute to get up. They have to find a way to keep him from getting blasted a couple times a game. The running game looked really good. I think the two new receivers were terrific. The D-line was as good as I can remember. Two of the transfers on D look like difference makers. My biggest worries are pass blocking and the defensive secondary. The D was great on first and second down, but struggled on just about every third down.

Lots of time to get better, and I’m sure there are more complex schemes waiting to be rolled out once the competition gets tougher.

Arsenal

OK, American football wasn’t the only football I watched. I’ve been a casual follower of Arsenal for nearly 20 years, 20 years in which they haven’t won the Premier League. They still are not favorites this year, but after making a series of massive moves in the transfer market, they have their best shot in decades to win the league. So I decided to try to watch more matches this year. Which means when events warrant, I’ll roll them into my weekend updates.

I watched a solid chunk of their 5–0 win over Leeds Saturday. They are obviously still working in some of the new players and their biggest signing was announced just before the game so wasn’t even on the field, err, pitch.

They go to title holders Liverpool this Sunday, which will tell us a lot about whether they are truly ready to challenge or will be finishing second for the third-straight season.

Weather

LET’S FUCKING GO, MOTHER NATURE!!!!

Those storms that passed on Tuesday took us straight from brutal summer to glorious fall. It did take a couple days for the heat to fully slide away, but by Thursday afternoon it felt like early October. Highs in the 70s, lows right around 60, no humidity. This morning when I woke up it was 55. The forecast shows this pattern sticking around for at least a week.

It will surely get hot a couple more times – there is nothing better than an October heat wave – but the past five days have been amazing. We deserve them after the previous six weeks.

College Girls

We FaceTimed C on Saturday. She seemed to be doing well. She’s reconnected with a girl, E, that was one of her best friends in grade school but who she drifted away from in 7th/8th grades before E went to another high school. They are in the same major so will have classes together. E also took a class that started in early August so she had already met a few girls which opened some doors for C. We got a message from E’s mom, who we love and spent a lot of time with back in the St. P’s days, saying how happy it made her that our girls had linked up again. C said she had run into a couple other girls that were at St. P’s before going to public high schools, one of whom lives just a couple blocks from us. I don’t know if those two will stick, but it is funny that she’s already run into several kids she grew up with on a campus of nearly 50,000 students.

She also told us she walked her schedule on Friday and her classes weren’t too spread out. IU is a big, sprawling campus, but luckily in the older core, you’re never more than a 15–20 minute walk from anywhere you need to be.

When I go to bed at night I have a Focus setting on my phone that blocks all calls except from numbers I have cleared. I don’t need those sports threads I’m in making my phone buzz once I call it a night. When I woke up Saturday morning I had a bunch of texts from IU that came in between 2:30–3:30 AM telling kids to shelter in place and, eventually, that it was safe but to avoid a certain area. I hustled down and turned on the news and saw there had been a shooting right off campus, an 18-year-old girl apparently shooting her boyfriend in the leg. Neither of them were students but it was still pretty close to where students might be on a Friday night/Saturday morning.

Luckily C was back in her dorm and safe. M joked that there was a shooting just off campus at UC her first night in the dorm her freshman year, so she still had C beat.

What a time to be alive. 😬

Sunday was Bid Day at UC. This year M was in the role of helping girls who are going through rush, rather than vetting them for her house, so she saw a different side of it. She had told us her Little was “obsessed” by one of C’s good friends from high school.[2] We found out yesterday that girl is going to be in M’s house. The formal Big-Little relationships get locked in later in the fall, but there’s a chance C’s friend will end up being M’s “granddaughter” in the house. Small world.

IU and UC both start classes today. And with that begins the most expensive two years of our lives with two in college and one still in private high school. As a bonus, since M is going overseas in the spring, her tuition for that program is due in three weeks. I may need to go sell some plasma. Do they still buy your plasma?