Submitted by NASCAR Ranting and Raving Blog
1. Ford has guaranteed that all Ford teams will get to use the data acquired from Roush’s 7-post shaker. Marc at Full Throttle has the story covered.
2. My top 12 predictions will be up soon. To be honest with you I’m having a tough time narrowing the field down to 12.
3. I’ll probably precede my predictions the day before with a top 10 list of (?) - I’m not telling, you’ll have to tune in to find out.
4. I need to update you with a few changes to my site.
5. I feel great about today. Let me explain. As most of you I coach various sports and this past fall/early winter I had to coach both the girls and boys volleyball teams and I forgot to update you on their progress.
The Boys made it all the way to the City Finals, but unfortunately, couldn’t pull off the Championship - we had to settle for second. Not bad for a team that hadn’t even had their first practice until the day before their first regular season game. Heck, they didn’t even have a coach until then too - me. Their regular coach took ill and had to take a leave of absence so I stepped in. It was only supposed to be for a week or two at most, but I ended up coaching them for the whole season.
The girls team had much promise this year. I expected them to at least make the semi-finals but they folded in the 1/4 finals. Horribly I might add - they imploded and it wasn’t pretty - I couldn’t stop the bleeding. From a coaching perspective it was a real let down let me tell you.
So when the opportunity presented itself in late December for them to participate in a tournament for this month I took advantage of it, as we had some unfinished business as a team - I really didn’t want our season to end on such a horrible note and I thought this might be a more positive way to end the season.
I was again hopeful for them, but as the date drew near I was faced with more adversity than anticipated; 1) one of my players has developed a medical condition that does not allow them to play or practice right now for fear of major damage to her eye (ie. blindness), 2) another player is on holidays somewhere warmer than here, and yet 3) another player could not make the tournament due to family obligations today. All three were from my starting six.
So what could I do? Withdraw from the tournament? No. I instead took 2 girls from my Phys-Ed class and put them on the team in place of the two who were away and I kept my injured player on as a ‘manager’ so she could stay with the team. The new players had never played organized volleyball before outside of gym class and they had to learn more than just the basic skills offered in Phys-Ed as well as my system of play in only 2 weeks. My approach to this tournament with the team was “Hey, let’s go and have some fun and I really don’t care if we win or loose - let’s not even look at the scoreboard.” I only worked on 3 things in practice to make it easier on the new girls, serving, positioning, and passing - nothing else.
Well, we went to the tournament today and you know what? We finished with the silver! The Championship match was very tight too. We dropped the first game by 6 points, screamed back and took the second game by 10, and lost the third game in a nail-bitter in extra points by 2. What a way to end it! They finally played up to their potential, and they did it without 3 of their starters. Awesome!
6. Finally, my thoughts and prayers go out to drag racer Doug Herbert and his family right now. No parent should outlive their child. Go here for the full story as it really bothers me to write about it - it makes me think of my own kids and question my own mortality, which is something that I don’t like to do much.
I met Doug way back in the mid-90’s in Columbus Ohio, when he won his first NHRA Top Fuel event. What a nice guy, and I’m sorry he has to go through the loss of his two sons right now.
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