On Friday I checked out of school to leave for an overnight cross-country meet in Charlotte, NC. It was a trip for top 25. I’m number 26. One girl was not able to go, requiring me to take her place. I was really nervous because this was a varsity meet and the girls on my team all ran a pace about 2 minutes faster than me. When we ran the course the day before the race, I was having a bit of a tough time. After all, the girls had assured me it was really an easy course. I disagreed. Saturday we ran at 12:15 pm. EVERYBODY was expecting to get their personal record, including me, but I expected to get a 22:45 at best. The ground we ran on was extremely dry and gravelly and the weather was over 80 degrees. We went out and I was passing all these really good girls on my team and I was getting afraid that I would not be able to keep it up.

My first mile was a 6:48 pace and the night before coach told me my first mile should be a 7:30. Of course I slowed down but not drastically, actually I kept it in relatively the low 7’s (minutes) I wound up getting a 21:38. Only 3 girls on my team improved on their times and I was 4th for my team in the open race.

What does this mean? I’m now on varsity! As for the girl who’s place I took, I ran faster than she ever has… and I think I may have just pushed her out of the top 20… Oops!

I know that this is a little out-dated, but I thought I would show Eric the similarities. I’m sure you all know about the Brookwood Parkview rivalry. This was an article I found on AJC’s website. Parkview and Brookwood are like twins. The rivalry between the two is legendary, and never fails to make the front page of the newspaper. Anyways… Here it is.

BROOKWOOD 35, PARKVIEW 14: Broncos in a rout!

Pittman, Curran lead the way

Carroll Rogers – Staff

Saturday, October 1, 2005

A year after being shut out by Parkview, the second-ranked Brookwood Broncos showed Friday night just how dangerous they can be with a little speed.

They moved David Pittman from receiver to quarterback, welcomed blue-chip running back Cameron Smith from Meadowcreek and voila, a 35-14 thrashing of No. 6 Parkview, the most lopsided Brookwood win in the rivalry since 1990.

“This is the best team they’ve ever had,” Parkview coach Cecil Flowe said afterward. “They’ve always had good teams, but now they have speed at two spots; that helps them.”

One spot is quarterback, where Pittman rushed for two scores and passed for a third on a 74-yard spiral to P.J. Katz. No. 2 is running back, where Smith rolled up 118 yards and a touchdown on 28 carries. He outdid Parkview back Caleb King, who got most of his 103 yards after the game was decided.

Ask Pittman, and the difference Friday had more to do with emotion. Teammate Greg Mercier, a backup offensive linemen, lost his older brother Thursday night in a car accident. Mikey Mercier had played on the 1996 Brookwood state championship team.

“We had a loss in our family, our football family,” Pittman said. “So we came out here, and we played strictly for him.”

Emotions of a different kind always run high in this rivalry, and Friday night’s Brookwood celebration left Flowe upset after Broncos fans poured onto midfield, where the Panthers meet at the stenciled “paw” after the game.

A Brookwood fan wandered into Parkview’s huddle and called out Flowe. After the third time, Flowe interrupted his talk and followed the fan across the field. He said afterward that he’d had words for the fan, and spoke to security about him, but Flowe eventually came back to the huddle.

“He walked up a third time; you reach your limit,” Flowe said. “[I told him] ‘If you’ve got something to say, say it right here.’ He was drunk. I could smell liquor on his face. . . . I’m trying to run my team.

“Somebody needs to control a guy who’s drunk and disorderly.”

On the field, though, Flowe knows his team was outperformed. “They whipped us,” he said.

Brookwood held the Panthers to 173 yards of offense, including 50 in the first half. Quarterback Patrick Witt was sacked four times, twice by linebacker Rennie Curran. Curran was a huge factor in limiting King, too, and was still up in King’s face on Parkview’s final series.

A 62-yard pass from Witt to Steve Esmonde set up Parkview’s first score nine minutes into the third quarter. But Brookwood answered with the Pittman-to-Katz touchdown to take a 28-7 lead.

The Broncos followed that up with a 55-yard punt return by Patrick Moran to score their third touchdown in less than six minutes.

“We’ve been waiting for this game right here,” Smith said. “It’s just another game . . . on the way to the state championship.”

With the way 6-0 Brookwood looked Friday night, that’s a hard point to argue. Parkview (4-2), which hasn’t lost more than two games in a season since 1998, has some things to overcome.

For starters, lineman J.C. Brignone — the Division I prospect who moved in from Mississippi after Hurricane Katrina — broke his left arm in practice and is out for five weeks.

Yesterday was the 1st soccer game of the season. I am back with the team I was on the season before last, playing U14. There are a lot of new players that came, but a majority of them are in the 8th grade at my school. We had a lot of the girls come from select (really advanced soccer, kinda like travel ball), so our team is pretty good, it balances out because we have some girls who have never played soccer, or only played it for about a year. This saturday, we had a game at 2:15, but coach wanted us there at 1:45 to warm up. We had to leave early since the game was in down town Atlanta. It was about a 45 minute drive. The game before us ran on longer than expected, so we only had 10 minutes to warm up. The game went great!! Coach put me in defense (which I normally don’t play), where I didn’t have to much action at all, because I was at like, the last line of defense (next to the goalie). we were doing a real good job of keeping the ball up with the offense. In fact, in the first half, our goalie didn’t even touch the ball once and we scored 3 goals. There was this one girl on our team though, and she is really good at soccer. she asked the coach to take her out because she wasn’t feeling well, and it was hot. The ref. wouldn’t let Coach Tim sub out though, because we hadn’t had a throw in on our side of the field with us throwing it in. She wound up crying and they had to take her out. She could not see anything at all and wound up fainting and hitting her head on a tree while she was sitting with her head in her arms drinking water. It turns out she had a fever over 100 degrees. She should be able to come to the next game. Coach will be sure to take her out whenever possible. A police, fire-truck, and ambulance had to come. We had a really long half time. Coach said we did better in the 2nd half. We scored 2 goals, and the other team only had 2 chances on goal. I played Inside Right Mid. (You’ll be able to figure this all out when I have a chart with the coach’s playing positions up), which is still defense. I got to play a little more forward, but there were no chances on goal for me. the final score was 5 to zipparoonie. I can tell this is going to be a great season.

[NOTE: This was written on Saturday. I just didn’t post it. The day I posted this was Monday. Coach burst our bubbles. Those are all new U14s, so most of them are in 6th and 7th grade, and they only had one practice before this. Oh well, I still say we’re good… although we had trouble beating these U12 boys in a scrimmage. That says something…]

Today I had soccer practice at Bethesda Park. There were these two mexican boys that were around 10 or so (who knows, they could have been at least three years older or younger) on the other side of the fence. We were doing drills and they were hooting at a girl named Destiny on my team. She is a good soccer player and is very pretty too. although, sometimes she can be a little too… I do not really know how to put it, but she can be kind of rude. I do not think she really means it all the time though. They were saying all these things like “Woah baby!! You are very pretty!” and after drills they would say things like,”Good! That was very good!” Everybody who heard was cracking up she and she would yell “BE QUIET!!” Then she would turn around and crack up herself. Also she would yell,”I HAVE A BOYFRIEND!” turning around she would say,”Not like I would go out with those youngans.” They kept yelling on anyway, and soon they were starting to like another girl Andy. Then they said,”I do cartwheels for you my love!” They started trying to do cartwheels and laughed heartily. “Aaaaw,” Andy said sarcastically,”how sweet!” We were all cracking up when Destiny yelled,”FREAKS! WE HAVE OUR BOYFRIENDS ALREADY!!!” They started whispering to each other than just stared at them. Andy turned around and waved. “HOT MAMA!” they both screamed so we could all hear them. One guy acted like he was about to faint and they both tried to climb up. Fortunately, they were too heavy. When Andy and Destiny waved together they whistled and said,”Whoooo!” Then they ran away together. I thought that was just so funny. Then I said,”If I were you guys I would have said,’I have an older brother who works out. Do you want me to call him, I am sure he is around here somewhere..'”

I have had quite a few close ups with Black Widows. This is the most recent one and the only one I have a picture of. This was at one of Danny’s baseball games. I turned over a rock (don’t even think about asking me why, I just do these things) and saw a Black Widow. Quickly I jumped back and calmly said, “Dad, I found a Black Widow.” I said it calmly because it was the 4th time this has happened to me. He came and took 2 pictures of it. You can tell that this is indeed a black widow, because you can see it has some red on it’s belly. If you saw it at another angle you would see that the red part of it is in the shape of a hour glass. You may not see it, but around it were many baby black widows who were brown. The big brown ball you see is a sack. Either the baby spiders were new borns or there were about to be more. We did nothing with the spider, but left the rock turned up.

2 of the other times I saw black widows were at school. Once was outside during recess. We had to finish up our work at this table and I saw a Black Widow on its web 1 foot from my leg. Another time I was next to this inch wide crack in the wall where there was a black widow. The closest I have ever been was touching one. At camp I signed up for a class in camping out skills were we learned how to make a fire with sticks (I really do not remember how to do that one) using a knife, using matches, making knots, and some of these other things. We were having a talk about a scavenger hunt we were going on the next day. I was sitting at a picnic bench sliding my finger through the spaces between pieces of wood when I felt something strange. I jerked my hand away and screamed,”A BLACK WIDOW!!!! AAAAAH!! I JUST TOUCHED A BLACK WIDOW!!” All the girls screamed and we ran away from the table. A ranger guy came and caught the spider in a jar. He came and asked me if it bit me and if I was all right. It didn’t bite me, and I think it was sleeping because it did not move until it was in the jar trying to get out. He said he was gonna give it as a present to his nephew. What a weirdo!