Weekend Notes

HS Football

Week two of the season started better for CHS, but ended with another loss. Up 13-7 on Loyola Academy at the half, the defense fell apart in the second half and the Irish lost 33-19. It could have been worse. Loyola had a long touchdown pass called back on their first offensive play of the game because of a penalty. And one of CHS’ scores came after Loyola fumbled a punt inside their own 5 yard line and the Irish turned it into a one-play scoring drive. It’s the first time in a decade CHS has started 0-2.

It gets no easier, as CHS travels to play Cincinnati power St. Xavier this week. Ohio high school football rankings are impossible to figure out but St X is right around #10 in the two composite rankings I came across.

Practicing For The Future

L worked Saturday afternoon, then had plans in the evening (more on that in the next section) so S and I went out to dinner on our own. We wanted to go to one of our favorite spots, but as it was last minute, we could only get in at either 5:00 or 8:00. We never mind eating early so went at 5:00. We even sat in the bar area, which allowed us to observe there are some interesting folks at restaurant bars at that time.

L’s Weekend

L had a throw-back weekend sports-wise. All CHS seniors have to do a St. Andre Project, which often involves raising money for a cause. L has been collecting books for nearly a year to donate to a children’s charity later this fall. One of her St P’s friends decided to organize a kickball game to raise money for her cause. Seems like she chose more wisely than L!

Anyway, that girl’s event was Saturday. Not many people showed up but L and several of her St P’s friends used it as a warm up for what came on Sunday…

…which was a senior kickball tournament hosted by our old rivals St. S. Originally four schools were supposed to be represented but two dropped out, which left L and her Panther pals to take on the hosts. We did not realize parents were invited so did not go, but were pleased to hear that L kicked three home runs, including a grand slam, to help St P’s romp to an easy win.

Sounds like it was a lot of fun. A St S mom organized the whole thing and had food and drinks for the girls, printed up t-shirts for everyone, and then had Chick-Fil-A gift cards for the winners. They also brought the old St S gym teacher who used to be a CYO official out to umpire the game.¹

It wouldn’t be a CYO event without there being some dumb parental behavior. The ground rule at St S is if you kick the ball to left field and it goes into the grass, which borders the football field, that it becomes a ground-rule double. We would use that to our advantage on defense, putting slow girls in left so balls that might be homers turned into doubles when the balls got past them.

Anyway, L’s grand slam went into the grass. Everyone froze for a second but the umpire told her to come on home. Some of the St S parents started bitching about his ruling. I loved him back in the day because he would stop games and make it clear why he ruled the way he did. L said that he turned to the complaining parents and told them, “If this was a real game, you would be right. This isn’t a real game.” Also L kicked it into the grass on the fly and deserved the home run.

Sounds like the girls from both teams, who all go to either CHS or BCHS together, had a great time, which was the most important thing. And none of the high school athletes got hurt!

Tonight is L’s final shift at the ice cream shop before she hangs it up for the fall. Thursday morning is the first basketball practice of the preseason. Beginning next week they will go twice a week at 6:00 AM.

US Open

The Open began yesterday. I missed the daytime action but hoped to watch Venus Williams’ return in the late match. Little did I know that her match would not begin until after midnight thanks to Novak Djokovic’s shocking loss in his first match. When I turned that one on, he was on the verge of losing the opening set to unknown (to me) Argentine Mariano Navone. Djokovic was clearly struggling physically. Soon he was vomiting between points into the towel bins. He somehow won the second and third sets but then fell completely apart, losing the final two 6-2 and 6-1. I had to bail after the fourth set. Had I know the fifth would pass so quickly I would have kept watching.

So The Joker is out. Jannik Sinner is not playing. Carlos Alcaraz is in his first tournament in four months. What we are left with is perhaps the rarest event in sports this century: a wide open men’s grand slam tennis event!

Blog Update

These Monday posts have become less newsy as our lives slow down, and I’ve been thinking about the future of the site. What will I do once L is done with school and there are no more high school sports to talk about, senior events to cover, and so on? Obviously I can still write plenty about college and pro sports, music, and other stuff. But the kid content is one of the biggest poles holding this tent up.

Also nudging my thought process along are some random changes in WordPress I have not been able to identify that have changed how I publish to the site. For years I could write in a specifically formatted text file, click a button, and the words would be sent to the site as a live post. That quit working a few weeks ago. There has also been a change to the WordPress blog editor that makes it a much more tedious process to get things to look how I want them to look after I’ve copied/pasted my words into it.

Put those two things together and I’ve started exploring other ways to share my words with the world. I believe I have found one that is pretty easy to use and will cost less than WordPress hosting. Now the catch is can I import my 23 years of history into it? I believe I can, but further testing is required.

My current hosting package is good through next June, so I’m not in a rush to get this figured out. Meaning you won’t notice anything different until next summer. I’ll keep you updated, because I know you care.

1. He is still a high school ref and we’ve had him a few times. His sister is a retired teacher at CHS who still volunteers at games when needed. It is always funny to see them interact when he is officiating and she is keeping the book or running the clock.