You can just forget about 23, because I don’t think it has a chance. Kelly has her sights set on breaking 23 minutes for her 5K run, and based on yesterday’s run of 23 min 17 sec, her trend to keep breaking personal best, and the way she tends to just keep improving, 23 doesn’t have a chance. In fact, Kelly spends more time talking about 22.

Saturday was Kelly’s second meet and third “official” time of this year’s cross-country season (including the qualifying trial race.) To letter, this year as a sophomore, she has to break 23 minutes. As a freshman, you may recall, she had to break 23:30 and did it in the “Run of Her Life“. The problem for this meet is she woke up sick Friday morning, could hardly eat, and stayed home all day. I was surprised she even wanted to wake up Saturday morning and run. My hope was she would just finish.

Not only did she finish, she lost a shoe sprinting down the last stretch to pass a girl, and achieved another personal best of 23:17. She was surprised, because she did not feel well and was worried while running that she was not running her best.

Kelly’s other goal is to achieve Varsity status, which she also did in her last meet last year. Varsity is defined as the top 20 runners. She is currently around #23 (not to be confused with 23 minutes.)

Go Kelly!

Claire made the county swim meet this year which was at Georgia Tech’s Olympic Stadium, which has since been enclosed since we last swam down there.

I took a movie with Canon digital camera just to see what would happen. This is Claire’s medley team with her leading off backstroke. I used Movie HD to export it to a web QuickTime movie then posted on YouTube. I do not necessarily recommend watching the entire thing, but you can see where Claire gets a good lead at the flip turn. (She is 4th lane from left.)

Danny heads back to Spring Hill facing a busy school and baseball schedule. Here is a link to the schedule:

www.shcbadgers.com/baseball/

We’d like to make some of the weekend games, so I copy pasted the schedule into a Google spreadsheet and highlighted the Friday / Saturday / Sunday games:

docs.google.com/Badgers

Good luck D.C.!!!

Nicole and Danny competed for the first time on the same athletic team tonight. Nicole missed the first swim meet of the season because of her trip to Washington D.C. with Grandad and Gramalie. At that meet, Danny swam freestyle and backstroke. He came in a very close second in freestyle. Then he swam a very graceful backstroke (much to my amazement) and beat everyone else. In fact, his backstroke was two seconds faster than his freestyle! Danny’s backstroke time was best in the county for the week.

Tonight, Nicole got a second place for swimming on a relay team. She scored 4th in both freestyle and backstroke, which is pretty good since she is on the young side of her age group. I was impressed with how she maintained a good stroke for both laps. She has a little work to do on not smashing her head on the turn (ouch) and not touching the bottom towards the end! (She didn’t get caught.)

Danny (who is on the old side of his age group) got a first place in freestyle and backstroke. This time his freestyle was faster.

It’s good to see them pull for one another. Brothers and sisters don’t always do this day to day. Sometimes it takes a little pressure or competition to get them working together.

The Cardinals had a very good second-to-last game. They went into an extra inning (6th) tied 2 to 2 with the number one ranked White Sox. Though they lost in the end, it was an exciting game.

Danny made a terrific catch playing second. He does a good job going after pops. He also did a good job standing up against the canon the White Sox brought in to close the 5th and 6th innings to hold the Cardinals. He does a good job reading pitches.

Nicole hung around with Sally. I think she can’t wait for baseball season to end. Kelly on the other hand had a very good time standing in the dirt on her head. She enjoys trying to turn the same color as Charlie given the short amount of time she has to apply dirt all over her body. (Five innings normally.)

Kelly made good use of the sixth inning.

Nicole and Danny also got their new Speedo swim suits. They both tried them on to show me and ran about the house very excited about the whole thing. Of course, they would never think of running around in their underwear.

The Cardinals won their second game. Danny made a terrific catch running across the in field. He caught a pop up after stumbling across the pitcher’s mound. Kathy wanted to see a replay.

Danny and the Cardinals lost their third came in a row yesterday. Danny got to pitch the 4th and 5th innings, and did a good job until his arm tired out. He didn’t allow many runs.

The Red Sox have some great hitters and fielders. The score was something like 14 to 4. Kathy scored the game in the keepsake scorebook she is making for Danny. I’m not sure if he’ll want to look back at these games to get any accurate statistics.

Kathy got very excited watching Danny pitch and yelled and jumped with every strike he threw.

Kelly didn’t care at all. She played in the dirt, watched a big dump truck, and tried to sneak away as many times as possible.

Nicole did not get to run the scoreboard this game, but she did the last game against the Brewers, which was the best game so far. In that game, the first 11 at bats all got hits! Danny’s old Tiger buddy, Jeb, is on the Brewers.

The roughly annual touch football game had two firsts this year: Danny joined the usual four horsemen, and it snowed during the game. In fact, the wind and snow got so strong, that we didn’t complete the “First to Five.”

Grant and Dad stood myself, Ted, and Danny. The last time Dad and Grant were on the same team, Danny had ridden his big wheel around the school parking lot while Ted and I got trounced.

No trouncing this year. Dad said that the slippery Livsey Park field helped even things up, but it may have been that Danny was enough of a secret weapon.

The real highlight of the game came when I lateraled a ball to Danny, who then threw it sideways to Ted who then passed it to me for a touchdown. This was not planned. In fact, I’m not sure that all rules were obeyed in this improvised plan, but Dad and Grant were so amazed by the whole thing, that they never considered it was anything but a perfectly executed razzle-dazzle play. We have yet to confess.

The game was called because of snow, Dad and Grant up 3 to 2. We hurried off the field to escape the biting wind and snow and all squeezed in Ted’s Honda Civic.

As we pulled into the driveway, Dad came up with the idea that the boys carry him in pretending to be wounded. We carried him in moaning, and laid him at Mom’s feet in the kitchen. Neither she nor Kathy fell for it, but of course Nicole was very concerned. Kelly thought Grandad was funny laying on the floor.

Danny’s blue all-star team put up a good fight, but lost to the red team 3 games in a row. The odds were against them with the other team having players from the #1 Cardinals. The Cardinals had fudged the assistant coach rules to get 4 #1 draft picks at the beginning of the season. And the villainous “coach” Pat Swindall didn’t help matters coaching from third base his team to bend every base-running rule.

The blue team played with honor, though, and lost the last game by a slim difference of 15 to 14. Danny made us all proud the whole season. He learned a lot and applied what he learned. He has an excellent throwing arm and the fiercest most determined batting stance in the league.

In the 9th inning of the last game, down by 5, with 2 men on and 2 outs, Danny stepped up to the plate. His mother began saying prayers that the season would not end on Danny’s bat. SWING. Strike 1.

Danny had some terrific stats. He almost always got on base. And I was amazed at how often he would get a hit on the third strike. He has nerves of steal. The praying continued. SWING. Strike 2.

Kathy started jumping up and down in a kneeling position. I started gritting my teeth. Certainly it hadn’t all come down to this? I was afraid he had used up all the 3rd strike hits any kid could expect in one season. SWING. CRACK!

He hit one of the longest balls he had ever hit out to left field. It dropped between two red-stars. One blue-star scored and Danny landed at second base.

I was relieved. Kathy immediately went to the restroom after climbing down from the fence.

The next bat would be the moment of glory for the blue-stars when terrible fielding allowed the batter, Danny, and the other base runner to score. Pat Swindall looked exasperated. The game was tied and the blue-stars were delighted. They wouldn’t win the game, but it was a good day for baseball.

Opening day for the all-stars featured a field decorated by Kathy and Marian and the Star-Spangled Banner sung by our own Nicole Cashel.

Nicole had been practicing all week. The original plan was for her to sing along to the music blaring over loud speakers. When we arrived at the field, though, we found out the speakers had blown. The commissioner offered a bull horn if Nicole was willing to sing sans music.

Our brave and confident Nicole, with a full year of drama training fresh under her belt, did the carpe diem thing and said “sure.” The commissioner took her behind the backstop to practice towards the woods.

A combination of nerves, of having to sing one of the most difficult songs in the world, of having to set her own pitch and beat without music, and of having a lack of backup from a bunch of t-ball boys, led to a rough start for Nicole. She started too high, making it impossible to reach the early high notes. Standing at home plate behind the bull horn, t-ballers up both base lines, I was helpless to help her. Her eyebrows went up in desperation. But she had gotten the crowd singing, so she paused through a line or two, and found her proper notes. She finished well, and held back the tears until she cleared the field.

It was a tough moment, but Kathy and I told her we were proud of her for doing it, and I told her I was proud of her for not quitting and having the guts to finish.

Nicole and Danny both have a lot of character. You don’t always get that by getting the most points.