D's Notebook

Tag: high school (Page 2 of 3)

Finals Week

December 15, 2022 /

M and C start their first semester finals today. I’m pretty sure that CHS has changed their finals schedule all four years that M has been there, which she finds annoying. This year the days are split between two morning exams and two afternoon review sessions. So, technically, finals began yesterday with two reviews after lunch. We’ll see what the girls think of this schedule when they wrap up next Tuesday.

This could be M’s last time taking high school finals. CHS seniors are excused from second semester finals in classes they have A’s in. She has one A- in nearly three and a half years of classes, so she’s pretty confident this is her last go. The senior-itis has started to kick in, though, and we’ve already started reminding her that she can’t slack off too much between January and May.

I freaked the girls out a little last week when I told them that I loved finals in college.

My friends will recall that I wasn’t the most focused student in my extended college years. But finals week always got me locked in. I loved getting the exam schedule and sitting down to plot out the days I had tests, when there were review sessions, when I had papers/projects due, and when I would be done. There was something about that tight schedule, without regular classes, that got me super-focused. I was stressed, to be sure, but it was the good kind of stress. I know I wrote some of my best papers then, sitting down at the typewriter with a general idea of where I wanted to end up and, two-three-four hours later, finishing with something I was excited to turn in.

I shared this with the girls in an effort to relieve some of their stress. I wanted to try to get them to view the week the way I did: as a chance to prove that they learned something over the semester rather than just another set of tests that can affect their grades. Finals, and the essay questions that came with them, were an opportunity for me to dazzle my professors not just with my knowledge, but with my writing ability. I know there were years that B’s turned into A’s because I could organize and clearly communicate my thoughts, while I had friends who couldn’t make the same leap because their essays and papers were a mess.

I’m telling you, if college was nothing but finals, I would have graduated on time with straight A’s!

I don’t think any of that worked. The girls looked at me like I was crazy. M especially seems stressed out. She is very smart, smarter than I ever was, something she for sure gets from her mom. But she also got her mom’s tendency to stress out over tests. I’m glad M got my writing ability; her teachers are always telling her how good she is at it. I just wish I could have passed on some of that finals zen to her, and her sisters, as well.

It was kind of fun for me to have her come down and sit by me last night while I watched the Pacers beat the Warriors. She said she needed a change of scenery. As I watched the Pacers try to blow the game, she was on the other end of the couch with her AirPods in, banging away on her final paper for her English class. It made me think of those nights I was cranking out papers late into the night. It was also a reminder that this time next year she’ll be doing this in a dorm room or at the library on whatever campus she is living on.

Weekend Notes

October 31, 2022 /

Friday

L had the day off after our DC trip (more to come on that tomorrow), although I still had to get up and take C to school. Why did I have to take her? M was on her senior retreat Tuesday through Friday.

Friday evening was the welcome home ceremony for the seniors. That was interesting, as all the kids (40-some) had to stand up and say something about their experience. A few of the speeches were super emotional. Some were funny. But most were about how good the week was, how they connected with people they didn’t know well before, etc.

This stretched out long enough that I didn’t have any interest in going to Cathedral’s football sectional opener against Lawrence North, who had a really talented young quarterback but not much else. M did run home then head back to the game. It was a tense one. CHS was down 10 in the first half, jumped ahead by 10 in the third quarter, but only led by two with LN driving late before they forced a fumble and got a late score to win by nine. Survive and advance, I guess.

Kid Hoops

L had two CYO games this weekend.

Saturday they played St S, a team they torched in a preseason scrimmage back in August. L and her best friend both scored about 20 points in that game. We knew St S was missing a girl or two that day. This game was not a repeat of that scrimmage.

You could tell our girls hadn’t played or practiced in nearly two weeks. It took a long time to get comfortable on either end, we had two players get three fouls in the first half, and once the girls remembered the plays, they were ice cold from the field. We were down six at half, 12 at the end of three. Not looking good.

We started pressing and trapping in the fourth quarter and the girls ripped off a 13–0 run to steal the win. L played like crap on offense – she had six points on about 3–12 from the field, 0–3 from the line – but she had two steals, forced two more turnovers, and a couple of assists in that run. The win moved our record to 3–1.

Worth noting that this was the first week that her game(s) did not coincide with a KU football game. KU being on a bye week made that easy. But, naturally, this game was played at 9:00 AM, when it did not interfere with any college football games. Next week her games will again fall in the exact time KU is playing.

Sunday we faced a team that was 2–2, St O. Based on scores, I expected a close game. We got that.

St O just killed us on the boards and grabbing loose balls. While we were one-and-done on the offensive end, they were getting 3–4 chances on each possession. It felt like we were down 5–7 the entire game. But we got it to three late and L hit a 3 from the top of the key to tie it. Seconds later she stole the ball at mid-court and got fouled on her layup attempt. She hit one of two free throws to give us the lead.

They came down and hit a shot to re-take the lead. On the next possession L had a great look from behind the arc that rimmed out. St O knocked down a few free throws and we lost 32–28. L finished with a team-high 10. The coaches and I were lamenting our inability to grab any loose ball afterward.

Tuesday we play the undefeated, first place team. Hoping we can keep that one close.

Colts

The team that can’t get out of their own way. During the week they benched Matt Ryan and elevated Sam Ehlinger as the starting QB. Ehlinger only fumbled once and didn’t throw any interceptions Sunday, so that was an improvement over Ryan. He wasn’t all that special otherwise, though. His fumble came at a key moment, as did Jonathan Taylor’s later in the game. This team LOVES to give the ball away deep in the other team’s territory.

Indy native and Cathedral alum Terry McLaurin made a fantastic catch on an under-thrown ball that setup the winning touchdown for the Commanders. At least Carson Wentz wasn’t the winning QB.

It is starting to feel inevitable that the Colts coaching staff and front office will be cleaned out after this season. I think Frank Reich is a good coach, if perhaps too reluctant to move away from under-performing players. Chris Ballard has done a lot right as general manager. But this team should be better than its record, and some key moves the past three years have failed to deliver expected results. The pass that Reich and Ballard got for Andrew Luck’s sudden retirement can’t cover their failures anymore.

Pacers

Who knew the Pacers might be the best team in the city when the calendar flipped to November?

My interest in the NBA has been increasing lately, mostly because I found a few good podcasts that I’ve added to my gym playlist. I really figured this would be a lost year for the Pacers. They are trying to rebuild, they seem perpetually bit by the injury bug, pretty much everyone knows that Buddy Hield and Myles Turner will be traded at some point, and any minor injuries will be used as excuses to shut players down in March in order to squeeze out every loss possible to increase their lottery odds.

The Pacers swept a road back-to-back over the weekend, including an embarrassing (for the Nets) win in Brooklyn Saturday. Rookie Bennedict Mathurin seems like the real fucking deal, dropping 32 on the Nets and averaging 21 a game coming off the bench. After losing an important game to the Spurs – another team expected to be deep in the lottery next spring – the Pacers have won three of five. Through seven games the Pacers have the same record as the Warriors. They need to stop winning!

I’m sure this team success won’t last. But at least with Mathurin and Tyrese Haliburton and a few other young guys the team is fun to watch. I hope they won’t regret these early wins when lottery time rolls around. They need the maximum number of ping pong balls in the Victor Wembanyama sweepstakes.

Holiday Weekend Notes

May 31, 2022 /

The first weekend of the summer is in the books. We were busy.

M and C finished classes on Thursday. Unless there’s a surprise coming we don’t know about, they both had really good semesters with just one B between them and a handful of A+’s. And now M is a senior. Yikes!

I took C to finally get her driver’s permit on Friday. She wrapped up the written portion of driver’s ed over a month ago, but, for a variety of reasons, we never made it into the BMV. She’s still a month or two out from taking the in-car portion of the class because of a backlog in the system, but we can start working with her and getting those hours logged.

Friday was also L’s last day of school. She was bummed because rain last week ruined a lot of the end-of-year, outdoor activities that St P’s kids usually get to enjoy. And now she’s an eighth grader. Yikes!

Saturday night C had nine friends over for a late birthday celebration. They swam and took 10,000 pictures then sat around the fire pit and commented on each other’s social media posts. As kids do, I guess.

Sunday was Race Day. Thanks to some brisk ticket sales the IMS allowed the race to be shown live locally, if only on Peacock Premium. Which, thanks to being Xfinity customers, we have. I didn’t get to watch a ton of the race, as we were prepping for our evening plans, but seemed like a good race. Better, it was an absolutely perfect day for all the folks who were at the track.

That evening we had friends over for dinner and swimming. I don’t think I’ve shared that we got a Traeger grill a few weeks back. This was my first time showing off my skills for others. I cooked steaks and shrimp. While I’m still getting used to the differences between the Traeger and a gas grill, I have to say these were some of the best steaks I’ve ever made.

C went back to our old ‘hood with her buddy to spend the night. As they left they were talking about waking up early to watch the sun rise That made all the parents laugh, as both C and her friend will sleep all day if you let them. They showed us, though. They pulled an all-nighter and went to a local park to take pictures as the set came up just after 6:00 AM. Apparently there was an old lady there getting her morning walk in and she came over and checked on them. She was worried they had spent the night in the park, which also made us laugh. Anyway, in this case, Kids 1, Parents 0.

Finally, Monday we hosted a sixth birthday party for one of the local nephews. It was another near-perfect day, warm but not humid with a refreshing breeze. The first time this season all the nephews have been in the pool together.

S was also on call all weekend, which meant she had to go into the hospital in the morning to do rounds. Between her getting up, the cloudless mornings, and the early-rising sun, I was still awake before 7:00 most mornings. At least the girls can sleep in. I either need to get more motivated to do things early in the morning or insist on us finally getting some drapes in our bedroom.

Weekend Notes: Prom and Sports

April 25, 2022 /

Prom

We survived our first prom weekend with pretty much zero drama.

Well, I should say prom night was pretty easy, but there was plenty of drama leading up to it. M found a dress quickly and easily, got it altered well ahead of time, and had most of the basics squared away several weeks ago.

But the planning for prom night itself was a little tense. That’s only because the plan was constantly evolving and those changes were often presented to us as “Here’s what we are doing now,” instead of “Is it ok if I do this?” M’s choice in how she opened these conversations caused most of the tension. But teenagers are gonna teenage, I guess.

She was in a group of nine couples, eight of which were just partnered up for the night. She was going with a kid we had heard of before, but they were not/are not dating. We met him for the first time at the pre-prom gathering and he seemed like a good kid. S and I were laughing at how comfortable he seemed in the whole situation, intent on having fun, where a couple of the other dudes looked exceptionally uncomfortable in their formal attire and perhaps feeling stress about the night in general. One of M’s best friend’s dates looked like he might puke from nervousness.

One of the families hosted a big gathering for kids and parents, complete with a professional photographer, a chartered bus, and a big dinner for all. It was awfully nice of them to do that, and I appreciate families that have this in their DNA.

Pictures went well, the kids ate, got on a bus for the dance, and we took off to watch L play basketball.

One other element of the pre-prom gathering that was fun was that a former local/regional celebrity was in attendance with her daughter. I won’t identify this person, other than to say she used to appear on TV commercials across the midwest hawking hot tubs, pools, spas, and outdoor furniture, among other things.

I told a few friends that this person was at the gathering, and they insisted that I get a picture. Which was a little awkward because for much of the evening I was standing 10–15 feet from her in the kitchen/dining area. Her husband is also a lot bigger than me and I didn’t want a confrontation if he saw me trying to take surreptitious pictures of his wife. If S had a few drinks in her she might have made it happen. But we were both sober and not pushing any boundaries. Which is kind of a bummer.

I must say, whoever does the plastics work for her family does very good work, for both mom and daughters (chef’s kiss GIF).

We gave M more freedom than she’s ever had, but still limited her compared to several of her friends in what her after-prom activities would be. There was a series of three parties that we knew of. We gave her permission to go to one and then S would pick her and a couple friends up sometime between 1:30–2:00. We know some of the other kids were bouncing around parties, which seemed like a terrible idea, even if parents were driving (and we weren’t sure parents were driving).

M and her crew got to our house at about 2:30. They didn’t sleep super late before heading out for breakfast, then she went to a pool party with a bunch of other prom kids Sunday afternoon. She crashed around dinner time for a bit, but I could still hear her FaceTiming with friends when I went to bed.

She seemed to have a great time and was pleased with how everything went. That set a pretty high bar for future prom nights in this house.

LB Hoops

As I said, we ducked out of the parent portion of the pre-prom party (holy P’s!) to watch L play ball.

We missed the first game of the day, which her team won by 36 and she scored 8. We got there just in time to watch game two, against a team from Evansville with a couple tall girls, one of whom was probably the best player they’ve faced all year. She could score from anywhere, handle the ball, and got any rebound she could get her hands to. She was a load.

We were down by as many as 10 midway through the second half but our girls worked incredibly hard and only lost by 3. The players and parents all left thinking that was a great step for the team, playing against a bigger and better team and staying in it until the final horn. L scored seven, including two long jumpers from the left wing that helped kick off their second-half run.

We got home at about 10:00 Saturday night and had to be back in the gym at 8:30 for a 9:05 game Sunday morning. AAU life!

Game one was against another team with size, but these girls were kind of trash. Yet they uglied-up the game and made our girls afraid to shoot inside. We were up 14–10 at halftime after they banked in two 3-pointers late in the half.

I’m not sure what our coaches told our girls at half, but they played like KU against Miami in the second half of their game. The final was 36–15. We just ran them off the court. It was fun to watch. L scored four.

On to the semis, where we faced the team we lost to Saturday again. The seeding in these tournaments is dumb. The tiebreaker is points allowed. So another team that played two mediocre teams Saturday and went 1–1 got the two seed because they gave up 44 total points, where our girls, who played the best team in the tournament and thus gave up more points, was seeded third. Strangely the first place team gave up 30 more points than the second place team.

Our girls flipped the script a little Sunday. They led from the beginning. It was never a big lead – constantly bouncing from tied to +4, but it always felt like we had the Evansville girls on the back foot. We hit a 3 with about four minutes left to go up four.

And then things kind of fell apart. Not that we got blown out or anything. Just that we made a ton of bad passes and errors both unforced and forced. We missed some easy shots. We let them get multiple offensive rebounds. We took two absolutely terrible shots that didn’t need to be taken. And we just kept missing free throws, going 2–14 for the game.

We lost the lead, tied it, got the lead back, lost it again. In the end we lost by two. Unlike Saturday the girls were really down about this one, because they knew they let it slip away. But that’s a good coaching point and area for improvement. The Evansville team won the championship game 49–11; our girls were the only group that challenged them all weekend.

L struggled scoring in the semifinal, going 0–2 from the line and 0-fer from the field. She missed a tough, contested layup on a run-out late, and then had another layup where she did everything right – was in the perfect spot on the play, made the perfect cut, went hard to the rim, jumped at the correct time off the correct foot, put the ball up off the glass – and it just rimmed out. She was super frustrated after the game. But she battled when she was in there, getting a couple big rebounds and playing solid D. It just wasn’t her team’s day.

Other Kid Sports

M finally played her first tennis match of the year Friday. She got moved up to JV #1 doubles somehow. And she actually did ok, which was surprising since she refused to take any lessons over the past year. They lost 6–2 but every game competitive unlike many of her matches last year.[1] I wouldn’t say she’s made leaps, but she gets her serve in most of the time and can hit the ball halfway decently on returns. Good enough to win a few points in JV, even against a better team.

Because of prom a lot of girls were unavailable for Saturday’s match, so M was given a chance to move up to varsity for #2 doubles. But since junior class officers had to do prom setup, she had to decline. That was a nice ego boost, though.

The varsity team had a great week, winning three matches, including two over ranked teams. I don’t think they were ranked last week but should be this week.

C has run in two track meets after having two rained out. She’s run the 100 and 200 both times. Her times are faster than her CYO times, but there are A LOT of fast girls in high school, even in three-team meets. She’s generally run a later heat and been pretty far back in the overall standings.

I think she’s a little frustrated by that. Still, she enjoys being on the team and is always in a better mood on the days she has practice compared to the days she just comes home and takes a nap after school.

I must say, I would be happy if we could have a track meet when it wasn’t 52 and windy. Those were the approximate conditions for both of her meets so far. The 200 usually doesn’t get run until 7:30 or so, at which point it gets pretty nippy.

  1. There were 26 matches, so everyone played a single set of no AD tennis. TWENTY-SIX!!! Good on the coaches for making sure everyone gets a chance to play.  ↩

Weekend Notes

April 11, 2022 /

That was a weird weekend. No big sports of any kind. No basketball or football on the TV for the first time since Labor Day. No kid sports.

Sure, I watched some of the Master’s, but we were often busy during the peak watch times so I wasn’t able to give it a ton of attention. Plus it wasn’t a super interesting tournament this year, so when I did sit down to watch, I did not feel compelled to remain seated for hours.

Baseball has begun, but I’m in one of my baseball moods right now and not ready to dive back in. Out of protest at the owners’ bad faith during their lockout of the players, I cancelled my MLB.TV subscription rather than let it renew annually as I’ve done for at least a decade. A few days later MLB automatically put all accounts on hold pending a resolution to the labor conflict. But I still felt like I got one over on them, withholding my $120 on my terms.

I have yet to go back and re-up.

A big piece of that is the dishonesty and unfairness that the owners built their entire lock-out argument on. They wanted to prevent the players from taking their fair share of the revenue pie in a moment when said revenues are skyrocketing.

And as soon as an agreement was made, MLB started trotting out all these new ways that baseball will be broadcast. Each of which is a new revenue stream for owners but which also makes it harder for fans to see their favorite teams. National broadcasts that wipe out local broadcasts and require a subscription of some kind to see. Added to a refusal to adjust the existing, ridiculous MLB blackout rules, these are just another example of how hostile to fans ownership and the MLB office are. Throw in that it’s damn near impossible for a family with more than a couple kids to take the entire household to an MLB game without dropping $500+ and I can’t help but be soured on how the game is run and where it’s headed.

My little protest won’t mean a thing to any organization’s nor MLB’s bottom lines. But it’s hard to get interested in a game that really doesn’t seem interested in the fans in any way other than finding more ways to get money out of us.

Of course, if the Royals are playing well in a month I may cave and start watching again.

We did have one big family event on the calendar this weekend: M got inducted into the National Honor Society. The ceremony was Sunday afternoon and we drug her sisters along with us. They were thrilled. We told them we expected to do this again in two and four years for each of them, so no pressure.

That was the first moment in a big month for M. Prom is two weeks away. She has a dress, a date (a friend, they are going with a large group), and as a class officer is responsible for setting things up the morning of the dance. We’ve also told her to get serious about what colleges she wants to visit so we can start making plans to get on those campuses between now and September.

So This Is The New Year…

January 3, 2022 /

Happy New Year, everybody! Let’s kick off another calendar year of discussing random shit, shall we?

Our New Year’s Eve was rather quiet, as usual. M went to a party, which was a first. That meant we had to stay up until we were sure she was safely at the home of the friend she was spending the night with. What did our parents do before the Find My app? Just worry until we showed up the next day? Fortunately she had a good and safe time.

Our neighbors invited S and I out for an early New Year’s toast at 10 PM. We met at the end of their driveway, shared a drink, and caught up about how our respective holidays went. It was a humid 55, so we all had light jackets on. Those were the final hours of both 2021 and our balmy stretch of weather. It got cold New Year’s Day, snowed a bit overnight Sunday, and the windchills are down below 20 now. 2022, January, and winter are all here.

L had a couple games yesterday, her final of the early winter session. They won the first game by 34 and she had her highest scoring game of the year, dropping in eight. She also had a half-court shot rim in-and-out at the final buzzer. They played the team of a St P’s classmate in the second game. This team was tall and athletic and play together year-round. We hung close for about 10 minutes then gave up a 12–0 run that we could not come back from. We were down 20 in the fourth quarter before a little run turned it into a respectable 10-point loss. L didn’t score but played solid D and probably had her best rebounding day of the year despite facing the big girls.

Her team will now transition to a different league for the winter. Those games will be closer to home and usually just one per weekend. She will also start playing in an occasional single-day tournament with the travel team she’ll be a part of in the spring and summer.

After her games we got all the Christmas decorations taken down and stored for the year. As always the house feels a little emptier and colder this morning without the tree up.

I also watched a certain 10-episode Netflix show over the weekend. More about that later this week.

M and C went back to school today. Cathedral is doing a two-week elective thing; they call it J-term, I know there are other schools that do a similar thing. M is taking an art appreciation class, which includes a day in Chicago going to museums. Hopefully Covid doesn’t wipe the out. C and all the other freshmen have to go through the same set of courses that are a mix of leadership/mentorship/future planning stuff and some fun sessions. Neither of them is super excited about any of this even though this means no homework for two more works. They both said they’d rather be in their regular classes with their friends. L has two more days of playing Xbox before she goes back.

So now I guess we start counting down for spring break. Only 82 days…

Kid Stuff

December 20, 2021 /

Today is a strange day in our house. M and C wrapped up finals on Friday, so (as I begin this in the morning) both are still in a deep sleep. Hell, C probably finally went to bed somewhere in the 2–3 AM range.

L, on the other hand, has class through Wednesday. So the two of us were up at the normal time.

That feels weird because it’s the first time we’ve had a schedule like this. Last year, of course, both schools were locked down and the girls were e-learning for the final month of the semester. Two years ago I’m 95% sure M’s last day of finals coincided with the last day of the year for St P’s. I picked her up at noon, we went to lunch to celebrate the end of her first semester of high school, then I picked her sisters up an hour or so later.

Not sure L is super happy with how this works out for her. Although she goes back two days after the high schoolers in January, so it evens out.

Seems like finals went well for both high schoolers. M complained about how the finals schedule this year. Instead of having two finals a day for four days, they had three finals the first two days, then two on Friday. So they had pretty normal days those first two days, starting at 9:00 and finishing at 2:30. So told me how that was so unfair compared to the old system. I rolled my eyes and ignored her complaints.

We signed C up for the written portion of driver’s ed on Friday. I’m hoping she gets a lot of work done over the break and can knock out her 30 hours of “class time” quickly. We haven’t got her in a car in the high school parking lot, yet. But that is coming soon.

Two more weeks of basketball in the books for L’s team. They’ve split games each weekend.

Last week they lost game one of the day by five. That was a bummer because they led by six pretty much the entire game. The other team threw a half-court trap at us to start the fourth quarter and we gave up the lead in about four possessions and never got it back.

The true highlight of that game, though, was one of the refs. First, he called the game like a first grade game, stopping to explain every call to the players, giving them visual demonstrations of what they did wrong. This got tedious quick.

Worse, he also enjoyed lecturing the coaches and parents about his calls. If there was any complaining, he would stretch these lectures out for a good 30 seconds, speaking loud enough for all to hear. He was in control of the gym. Or at least giving that appearance.

Example: “Ladies, you can reach as much as you want, but if you displace the player you’re guarding, that’s a foul.” He would wave his arms around to give a visual of how you can reach as he spoke. “Until the offensive player is displaced, it’s a legal defensive play.”

The displacement thing became very important. Both coaches complained that their girls were getting hacked. But, as he said, as long as you don’t displace the girl with the ball, you can hack the hell out of her and he won’t call it.

Sadly it was our coaches who lost their patience the most with him, and there were a couple lengthy, and uncomfortable, “conversations.” The word displacement was thrown around a lot. Eventually even parents were sarcastically yelling “Displacement!” from the stands any time there was contact on the floor. Our assistant coach asked the ref, loudly, if he was proud of himself.

None of that was necessary. Refs can explain calls to coaches during breaks in play, quietly. There’s no need to carry on for everyone in the gym to hear.

Thanks to all his pontificating – plus the other team shooting about 25 free throws – the game took 90 minutes to play. Which is just ridiculous. More so since we played immediately afterward. On the same court. With the same refs. Sigh…

Fortunately we got matched up with a team we had crushed in week one. We crushed them again. L and a girl almost got into it. They ran into each other once and L got the best of it. Then they were fighting for a ball and both refused to back down, even after the refs called a jump ball. This other girl was a little rougher than L, and the second time they tangled a friend of mine said, “I think she is going to look for L after the game and try to kick her ass!” I laughed, but made sure that girl left first just in case!

I think the score not being close and the refs realizing we were starting the game about the time it should have ended forced Mr. Talker to blow his whistle less often. Although one of our coaches yelled “Displacement!” at his partner when she let the defense shove one of our girls without a call.

L’s team is in what is supposed to be in a seventh grade league. The team they played first yesterday had girls that looked like they belonged in high school. And they were good. Really good. We heard after the game they hadn’t lost a game since third grade. It showed. They were better everywhere on the court and smoked us by 30.

Sadly, again, the highlight was our coaches losing it with one of the refs. Our head coach got a warning then two technicals and an ejection for complaining that the other team was grabbing our guards when they tried to run the offense. Which they were. Also the fouls were 8–2 against us in the second half despite our girls being totally checked out while they were getting mauled on the other end. Still, never a good look for a coach to get tossed.

Guess what? Once again we had the same court, same refs for game two. This time our opponents looked like fifth graders. So we beat them by 30. An even-Stephen day. There were no referee issues.

L played ok in all the games. I think she scored six total points last week. She had two in the first game yesterday, then six in the second. Which came despite her barely being able to run thanks to her knee issues. They subbed her out more than they have in any game this season since she could barely walk at times. I was worried about her when she scored the first bucket of the game then immediately went to the bench. But she came back in early in the second quarter, hit a 15-foot jumper, and flexed as she ran up court. OK, then.

She has been frustrated because she’s not scoring much. She was really down after the games last week because two girls who almost never score both dropped 10+ in the second game. The two girls who lead the team in scoring also do it by being very aggressive and taking super-unorthodox shots. One girl just kind of heaves it from her hip, yet she’s probably averaging 10–12 a game. L is always trying to set herself up to take a perfect shot.

I told her as a point guard, it isn’t her primary job to score. She’s supposed to set up others to score. But, I made clear, she turned down some scoring chances. A couple times she had wide-open paths to the bucket that she passed out of. The mom who has coached her for years was sitting beside me and even yelled at her a couple times, “L, what are you doing?!?! Take that shot!”

I added that it’s not being selfish if she has a good, open chance to score and takes it. And, as the best dribbler on the team, she needs to take advantage if she can take two dribbles and get in the lane instead of someone else taking a guarded jumper from the perimeter.

She did better than that in the second game yesterday. Even though that team was awful, I give her credit since she was moving at about half speed. She got to the baseline several times and had three runners spin out. She was aggressive. She made some good passes. I also reminded her that as she gets older, the game changes. Forget her knee issues. At this age, the games aren’t just about being faster down the court than the defense. It’s great when she can get out on the break. But she has to learn to run and play within an offense. Learning to be patient and run the plays how the coach wants them run will pay off one day.

Holiday Notes + Kid Sports

December 6, 2021 /

It seems like most of the family has re-acclimated to being in the eastern time zone, but our days are still all messed up. A full, five-day school week this week will surely get us back on track.

Our holiday schedule is all out-of-whack from normal, though. The day after Thanksgiving is normally our decorating day. Since we were hiking through Waimea Canyon ten days ago, that wasn’t possible. L and I got a bunch of the decorations out on the Friday before we left, placing them around the house as we listened to the Cathedral semi-state game on the radio. But we left the tree for when we got home. S and I got that put up last Thursday night, completing our decorating for the season. We didn’t put up any outside lights this year. The five big spruce trees in our front yard we lit last year that remain dark. I’ve heard from several friends who are disappointed that they don’t see them shining brightly as they drive by. We also ordered our Christmas cards yesterday, a week later than normal.

These little things shouldn’t be such big mental hurdles. But everything does seem just a little off. Again, a normal week should rectify that and we’ll all be freaking out that Christmas is just two weeks away when next weekend rolls around.

Saturday was Cathedral’s winter formal, back after a year’s Covid-induced hiatus. It was a much more hectic night that two years ago, when we had just one girl going and she had friends over to our house to get ready.

C asked a guy friend of hers from St P’s to go with her (this is a girls-ask-boys deal), but just as friends, and she was awfully casual about the whole thing. Since it was the first time she went to a dance with a boy we had to give her a little slack. They were going with a big group of kids, and the plans were constantly changing, which was annoying to S and I, who like to have details locked in. We texted another parent Saturday afternoon to see if she knew what was going on. Her response was, “Good Lord, I have no idea what the plan is!” Kids…

M went with a group of girls and left our house before allowing us to take a picture of her and C together in front of our tree. When S learned M had been gone for 20 minutes, she was not pleased.

We took C to the gathering point for her friends. We stayed about 10 minutes and got a few pics before leaving. Before the group departed for the dance, there were something like 46 kids gathered at that house. Bless those parents!

We left early because the family who was hosting M’s group was having a parent party and we wanted to get there before the girls left. This group was only nine girls and not all the parents stayed, but it was hectic for a bit. We laughed later at how the ladies stayed upstairs all night while the guys were downstairs. I guess we can’t complain about our kids acting weird when the parents won’t mix. It was cool to get to meet a few new dads, though. We stood around and watched football while having stilted, guy conversations until the group thinned to a more manageable number and the dialog got easier. Meanwhile the ladies were upstairs getting into the wine and having a good-old time! The juniors all left the dance early and when they came downstairs, M said, “They are so loud and you guys are so quiet!” Facts.

It sounds like the dance went well. Both girls said the music sucked. I don’t think C and her “date” spent a ton of time together, but that was true for most of the “couples” who aren’t actual couples. Ahhh, the awkwardness of youth! I can’t judge: I didn’t go to a dance until my senior year because I was too nervous/lacking in confidence/fearful of rejection to ask anyone.

Speaking of CHS, I should note that the football team won the state title while we were away. I was able to listen to part of the game while we were getting ready for our luau. They fell behind 7–0 early and were struggling to move the ball. But the QB snapped out of the mini-funk he had been in and a junior wide receiver went off, racking up over 220 yards on the night, leading the Irish to a fairly easily 34–14 win. That wraps up a 27–2 run over the past two years, with the only losses coming to Center Grove who went 28–0 over the same stretch.

L started her first winter basketball league yesterday. She’s playing on a team that has girls from four different parishes. She was super excited when she heard a friend of hers, who is probably the best seventh grader in our part of the archdiocese, would be on the team. That girl is on crutches, though, and may not play until the second session begins in January.

The team has practiced a lot but Sunday was their first time playing together, and you never know how that will go. After her practice Thursday L said, “We are soooo bad!” She was wrong. They won their first game 44–21 and the second game 39–20. They are really good on D and have two girls who are fearless going to the hoop and can convert. We jumped on both teams early and neither game was in doubt after the first quarter.

L played solid. She scored six in the first game. She missed a couple shots late and I told her she deserved to miss them since her coach told the team to stop shooting. She only scored two in the second game. She moved the ball well, though, and played decent D. She had a couple steals both games and got some tough rebounds in the second game. Once she tried to back a girl down in the post and shoot a turn-around jumper. She didn’t come close to hitting rim. I was running the clock and a mom from the other team was keeping the book. I started laughing and said, “Not strong enough to do that yet!” The mom said, “That was a sweet move, though!”

I think playing with these teammates will help L’s game, as she’s running with legit scorers and will have to hone her distribution skills. They have three more weeks of games – two before Christmas, one after – and then I think most of the girls will stay together for the second winter session.

Early Summer Catch Up

June 15, 2021 /

Mid-to-late June is my favorite time of summer. It’s usually not too hot yet, or if it roasts for a day or two the heat will eventually break and you’ll have a stretch of pleasant days mixed in. The rhythms of the summer are still developing and the season holds seeming endless promise.

At least that’s what it felt like to me as a kid, and I’ve never really lost that sensation. It sure helps that my life has revolved around my daughters’ schedules for nearly 17 years, so summer still feels like it did to me 40 years ago. I’m guessing those of you who spend your lives in offices and meetings and traveling (when allowed) have developed more mature feelings for the warmest months of the year.

Last week the girls watched two of their cousins. Daycare was shut down for a week because of vacations and M and L were recruited to watch a five-year-old and a 18-month-old. Which meant I ended up helping out a lot. When there was complaining about diaper changes, I reminded them that they were getting paid to do it and I wasn’t, so they needed to stop whining and get their poor nephew out of his soiled Pampers.

They did a pretty good job. They mostly had the mornings on their own. When I got back from dropping C at summer school, I would get the kitchen cleaned up or run a few errands before I had to return to CHS to grab C again. In the afternoons I was a little more involved. A couple days the rain held off and we were able to open the pool. I took over getting the younger one down for a nap, which meant I often got to close my eyes for a little while. It’s nice to have a doctor’s excuse that napping is ok for my minor medical issues if anyone gives me side eye about drifting off for a bit in the afternoon.

It was a fun week. The boys were good and the girls enjoyed taking care of them. We are especially happy that the younger nephew has finally warmed up to us. Because of Covid, he wasn’t around us nearly as much as his older brother during the first year of his life. So it has taken young K a long, long time to realize we are family and he should relax around us. In the last couple months he’s finally started proactively interacting with us instead of sitting and watching us with a look of mistrust on his face.

He’s also super affectionate and loves giving hugs. We laughed every afternoon when, after his nap and a snack and time to fully wake up, he would go through a stretch where he would walk around and give everyone hugs. After we got basic hugs, he would start smothering his big brother. It would start with a hug and some pats on the back. Then the hugs would get bigger. Eventually he would crawl right up on his brother’s lap, snuggle into him, wrap his arms around and give squeezes. His brother would calmly pat him back while he kept his focus on the TV. Little K would do this for 5–10 minutes at a time, and it always made us all laugh like crazy.

C is over two-thirds of the way through summer school. She’s taking gym so it’s been pretty easy. The biggest struggle, other than the heat last week, has been the cicadas. The CHS campus was absolutely overwhelmed with Brood X bugs. They would swarm around the kids while they were running on the track. They pelted anyone who walked near a tree. One kid in C’s class would throw his water bottle at trees and stir the thousands of them that were resting on its branches. Twice last week C got in the car with one stuck to her clothes.

We lucked out around our house, at least so far, and have only heard a few of the Brood X cicadas. That whole area over by school was just overrun by them. You can hear them with your car windows up and music cranked. As you drive they dive-bomb your windshield, leaving nasty messes when they splatted. On the interstate in that part of the city, the road looks like we had just had a brief hail storm because of all the cicada carcasses that were bouncing around on the tarmac.

I love annual cicadas, but I’m not sad that our neighborhood seems to be somewhat immune to Brood X. It seems like they might be tapering off this week, so we could be on the backside of their brief visit before their children set their clocks to return in 17 years.

We had encouraged C to run cross country as a freshman, partially for a fall activity and partially as a way to get to know more people before fall classes begin. But C wasn’t interested and said she would wait for spring to run track.

A few of her best friends decided to start running XC, though, and that changed her mind. We got all her paperwork in order Monday and this morning we both set alarms for 5:40 so she could get up and get ready in time to make 6:30 practice. She said it went well, but it had to have helped that it was only in the low 60s and breezy when she ran. She was smart to avoid last week. I’m sure the heat will catch up with her if she keeps running through July.

Big Steps Ahead

February 4, 2021 /

We have reached the point in our home where college is not some far-off thing in our kids’ lives that we are casually planning for. It is approaching rapidly, and we are beginning to think much more seriously about the concept.

M took the PSAT in the fall and ever since has received daily multiple brochures and letters from colleges. At first she was thrilled. The modern touch of the school creating a custom URL that included her name was an especially flattering. But she’s grown bored with them – “They all say the same thing” – and barely looks at them anymore.

Yesterday she met with her school counselor to plan out her last two years of high school and start putting some thoughts on paper about college. In addition to the PSAT, which she did really well on, she took a personality/preferences test recently that spit out some areas of employment she might want to explore. Her results suggested kindergarten teacher, therapist/counselor, and CEO. That’s quite a range! I like to think it demonstrates that she is both empathetic and can get shit done.

When we ask, she never really expresses an interest in a particular direction. I’ve said for years she should go to law school since she loves to talk and argue. She’s always rejected that, “I don’t want to be an attorney.” I pointed out our many friends with law degrees who don’t practice law, and how law school can be a tool to open up pretty much any career track.

But we have to figure out undergrad before we can think about post-graduate work or career path.

The sheet we got back from the counselor also had some early ideas for what colleges to research. M’s been saying for a couple years she wants to live in a true college town and go to a bigger school. Yet the first schools on the list were Marquette, St. Joseph’s, and DePaul. None of them are big schools and none of them are in small college towns. There must be some bias in the test toward Catholic schools.

After those was listed a group of Big 10 schools – IU, Purdue, Wisconsin, Ohio State, Illinois, Michigan, Michigan State – and Ohio University.

To this point she’s only mentioned two schools that intrigue her: Alabama and Wisconsin. There is a surprisingly large swath of kids from Indy who end up in Tuscaloosa. I wouldn’t be thrilled about out-of-state tuition in the south, but it would be fun to go to a football game down there. One of her best friends has family in Wisconsin, and her older sister just decided to go to school in Madison, thus the attraction there.

When I was her age I pretty much knew I was going to KU, so I didn’t invest much time or effort into the process. That got upended when we moved to California during my sophomore year. UCLA was my dream school, but locals told me A) unless I had a perfect GPA (I did not) there was no way I would get in and B) living in LA was crazy expensive, so I should be prepared to have no money if I went there.

I adjusted and ordered some materials from a few other UC schools. When I saw the pictures of dorms a few yards from the beach at UC Santa Barbara I knew that’s where I wanted to go. Had we stayed in California, I’m guessing that’s where I would have ended up, although I wonder if I would have explored public schools in neighboring states to combat the cost of living price of Cali.

Fortunately we moved back to Kansas City after a year and going to KU became plan A, UMKC plan B.

M has rocked her first year-and-a-half of high school. She has a >4.0 GPA, she’s in student government, and has a couple extracurriculars that she enjoys. She has a weekend job and does most of her service hours at a food bank. It seems like she knows just about everything that’s going on around campus, too.

She already has a better resume than I ever had. While I would prefer she end up at IU or Purdue for financial reasons, I’m proud she has a lot more options than I did.

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