This past week started on the 3rd of June, a lovely tuesday. After work I started to go through my tee shirt drawers. I definitely have way more tees than I need, so I started to get rid of some. I even got rid of some of my Championship tees from high school. Check out how many I had. All Vintage Lacrosse America Champion Tees. We won so many in Indoor or Fall Ball, but when it came to the season, we could never pull out a state championship, let alone win a playoff game, except for one year. Also important to note, about 1/2 of these shirts are XLs, the other have Large. Ahh the life of a champion. I have known it as a player, but never as a coach, the weekend will give me another shot at it. I also have to give a little nod to my 14 year old DARE shirt that I received in 5th grade, year 2000. DAREing 2BME since 2000.
Later that night I loaded up Anchorman 2 and watched it in bed. Squid joined to watch, I fell asleep, but caught most of it, great movie.
Wednesday the 4th of June was the first day for me and Gio working out at the Gym directly behind us. Beyond Measure Training is run by a local guy our age, and I signed up for a month trial membership with Gio. So far we have been pretty consistent and it feels good to get back to working out. I really enjoy how they have the workouts planned for you and you do not have to do much thinking, however, I will most likely continue working out in my basement for free after the month of June, but this is a great kickstart to summer. Jacked and Tanned, summer 2014. For my second to last practice with my 8th graders, I set up a parents vs kids game for the last hour of practice. It was a great game and the parents who came out really enjoyed it and had a blast. The greatest part of the game was when a kid was heading toward the net and his dad was playing defense, just stood him up like a brick wall and leveled his son. It was a great hit. Awesome. Wednesday night I watched the movie Gravity with Sandra Bullock and George Clooney. It was a pretty cool movie, with great graphics, since I imagine most of it was filmed in a green screen. It was much shorter than I thought, just over 90 minutes, but had some great cinematography and soundtrack. I give it an A-
On June 5th, Thursday, Gio and I worked out again in the morning at 8 am. Had a decent day at work and then headed over to watch the 8th grade B All-Star game for a few kids I had nominated for the game. I was able to nominate 5 guys, so I nominated 1 from each position, attack, mid, defense, LSM, & Goalie. My kids played really well, despite their team not being the best. Their team also only had 3 long poles, 2 of them from my team. Like I told my kids, the whole team deserved to be there. That night I started the movie Jobs. From the first 30 minutes of the movie, I came to the conclusion which I already knew. Steve Jobs was a jerk. People claim he is a great business man, which I guess he is? but was a mean and terrible person. I didn't finish the movie, but I will some day.
Friday June 6th. After work, I headed over to my last practice with my 8th graders. I invited a handful of guys who had played with me 2 years ago and a few other high schoolers. Before I got there, I made a couple of pit stops. First at Sports Authority to buy a Bosu Ball. $120 dollars later, well only actually 80, had a gift reward thing for 40, I headed over to my coach from 8th grade, Doug's house. He had coached Gio, Sean, and I to a 8th grade championship back in the day. The blue middies beat the red team from Naperville. Anyways, I was buying an Iron Gym off of his son who is a freshman in HS and plays lax as well. I chatted with him for a bit and he told me a funny story how he had just found a condom is his son's backpack. His kid was going to a co-ed birthday party and had a backpack, so he searched it. His son claimed that him and his friends were going to fill it with diet coke and mentos and watch it explode.. Hilarious... but wow, freshman in highschool these days.
I then made it over to practice where I had a good start to the last practice before the championship weekend. The last half of practice that day, we had another little scrimmage, my team vs my previous players, some highschoolers, and myself. After the fun filled game, which went about 25 minutes after practice (sorry parents... but not really) a couple of the guys I coached 2 years ago (Xander, Brendan, and Jason) wanted to go to BK, so I drove them there and introduced myself to a couple of new sandwiches. The Rodeo Burger and the Rodeo Chicken Sandwich. Normal burger/sandwich but with BBQ sauce and Crispy Onions. Pretty tasty. Their ride was running a little late, so I drove them to my house where we tossed a lax ball on my driveway. This brought back some memories form high school, just playing under the lights on the driveway.
After they left, I quickly packed and headed to Chicago to visit Rachel for the night! John wanted me to pick him up from a friends place, but after driving in circles and making U-turns for some time, I gave up and headed to Rachels. GPS in the city by the tall buildings does not work very well. Rachel was with her mom and aunt, and after chatting with them for a while, they headed home. I was pretty tired from the day, so we just listened to music and talked, then went to bed.
On Saturday June 7th, Rachel and I spent the day hanging out until John came over. Once he was over, we did a bunch of Colorado planning, that trip will be coming in August. For dinner, we walked down the street to a bar called Sedgwick's. I had a burger of some sort which was pretty good. They also had the crinkly fries which were might tasty. I need better words to describe food. We picked up some white whisky and ginger ale to have whisky gingers for the evening. Rachel's new favorite drink! Later that evening, we went to a party for her friend Becca from work in Lincoln Park. After the party we walked about 2 miles home to Rachel's place, and also encountered either a homeless or very drunk or a combo of both, woman outside of McDonald's. Once we got back to her place, I went out to McDonald's to get us a late night snack as we loaded up Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 2. We both fell asleep watching after about 30 minutes or so.
Championship Sunday was finally here. June 8th, the U15 B division IBLA championships. I got ready in the morning and headed out around 10am with Rachel to Elmhurst where the games would be taking place. I was feeling good, had my All-American stick, and the weather was beautiful. My team was also ready to play. Coming in as the top seed, we rolled through the first 2 teams to get into the Championship game. We then watched the 2 and 3 seed play to see who would be playing us. The game went into 2 overtimes and ended with a couple of fist fights, where punches were thrown and kids were being tossed around. I asked, but somehow, no one was kicked out for the next game. I also told the refs I wanted to start right away, and that since we were the home team, we would be wearing white (the other team was as well). A couple of power moves and I knew the game would be ours. Here is the bracket, it would end with FV playing Bartlett for the championship. #1 vs #3.
We had a slow start and fell down 2-0. After 3 goals, one of my players took a pretty big hit with about 8 minutes left in the first half. We were up 3-2 and had the momentum, but now we had a 20 minute delay as an ambulance was called. The kid ended up being alright, probably just a concussion, but I did not let him go back in. To my fortune, the team got fired up after the hit and we exploded out and didn't stop. We kept at it the whole game, and as the seconds wound down and I looked up at the clock, it read 8-4 good guys. Right before the clock hit 0 I felt a rush of cold water hit my back. The gatorade bath was upon me. I didn't expect it, and my team got me good with a nice cold shower. We were champions. I had come close before, but now I finally had my first championship as a coach. I couldn't be more proud of my guys, they fought hard all year. We dog piled, got the trophy, took the pics, and celebrated. Below is a little gallery from the post game that Rachel was able to snap. Play the jam as the pictures roll. Amazing day, that would be followed up with a team party after the drive home.
The team party on Sunday evening was a great ending to a great season. We had bueno beef catering and I was able to get a few adult drinks in before getting up in front of everyone to give a speech. Before I started talking, all of the kids started chanting "Candyman, Candyman, Candyman" over and over which was pretty funny and awesome. They had gotten the nickname from my Apaches jersey that I had worn at Friday's practice. I gave a short recap speech about the year, then I talked about each individual player as I handed them custom handcrafted wooden shafts that one of the parents had made for each player. After talking for about 20 or 30 minutes I was done and the party ended. Many players and parents came up to me to thank me for the great year. It was a very satisfying feeling and I felt like I had made a difference in many of these kids and parents lives. Rachel was amazing and my good luck charm for coming to the games! She snapped a photo of me giving my speech in the crowded room. Such a loving and amazing girlfriend I have!
It is hard to believe the year is over. I will miss each and every one of my players, they all came so far during the season and will all do great things in the future. I ended my speech with a little piece on putting in work outside of practice. Hopefully some of them were listening, despite the side chatter. Each year I have favorite kids and really enjoy coaching my teams. This year was by far the most talented team I have coached, and my favorite team from a holistic approach. Many great memories and player/coach relationships. What a year!
After an amazing and tiring day on Sunday. Monday the 9th of June brought another big day in my life. My first photo shoot, which I had been prepping for for at least a week. Here are a couple shots from the photo shoot, which ended up taking 12 hours. It should have taken about 4 after my calculations... 3 hours to set up, 2 food breaks taking 2 hour total, and another 3 hours of moving the photo equipment around for unnecessary reasons. 8 hours that could have easily been knocked off, instead we spent 12 hours for the shoot, hopefully we got at least one good pic. I was diving on to some very thin and hard mats, there was fog that I tried not to inhale, and there was no smiling. I consider it a success! We will see in a few weeks once we get the pics back.
I leave you a pretty amazing video about a motorcycle. Enjoy it and enjoy life, as a champion.
Josh