Sports and more sports...

We've been in 'sport mode' again for the past couple of weeks. Kyle just had a fun basketball tourney weekend followed by Mariah having a wet state track meet on Wed./Thur.

Kyle has spent most of his time here playing in the under 18 age group and has had mixed success. He finally got to play in a U-15 tourney and it went very well. Fred Olness was here and he accompanied Kyle and me to Coffs Harbour for the weekend. It is a town about 3 hours up the coast. Kyle's team had 7 players on it, but 2 of them were 12 year olds and they hardly played at all. In fact, Kyle and one of his teammates, Nick, didn't leave the court for one second in any of the four games. Luckily for Kyle, he has been doing track workouts with Karen and Mariah as she trained for her state meet. He had to be in great shape as the games had 10 minute quarters. The team won all three of the 'pool' games and qualified as the first seed into the semis. Kyle scored a lot as he scored mostly from the inside. He was the second tallest player on the team and played inside and outside. He probably had about 60-70 points in the four games. He definitely had a lot of responsibilities. Scoring and passing and bringing the ball up when their point guard struggled. He had to guard past guys and be there main rebounder, too. He is a very versatile player. One of the pictures attached is of him taking a charge. The coach in me loves that! The team lost in the semis to a pretty big and deep team, but they had a real nice tourney. It was great to watch him play with such confidence.

Two days after getting back from Kyle's tourney we packed up the car and went 3 1/2 hours the other direction to Sydney for Mariah's races. She had qualified for the State meet in the 200 and 800 meters. The races weren't at the Olympic Stadium as we had been led to believe. It was at the Olympic 'site' , but at the stadium next door to the one that had the actual Olympics. The site has all the summer Olympic venues like the pool, equestrian facilities, soccer, track etc...

Mariah's first race was the 800 prelims. 39 runners were split into 5 heats with the 5 winners and the next 4 fastest times qualifying for the finals. Mariah led her entire race until the last 1 meter. She ran a PR of 2:29.48, but was beaten by .04. Since she didn't win she could have been left out if other races were faster. Luckily (or skillfully) her time was faster than all the other heats except one and she had the 3rd fastest overall time. After the race she convinced us that she should save all of her energy for the 800 final and she dropped the 200 which had prelims, semis and finals to run. We reluctantly agreed and came back the next morning for the final.

It rained quite a bit on day one, but day two was ridiculous. It poured. Then it poured some more. Then it really started coming down...The top 3 finishers would qualify for the national meet in Tasmania and that was Mariah's goal. She was in 4th most of the race and finished in 6th as she struggled down the stretch. She ran a 2:32 and the 3rd place time was 2:26 so she needed to lower her PR by 3 seconds and ended up going 3 seconds in the other direction. She was disappointed. We weren't! She ran great and seemed to regain some of her enjoyment of the sport. She trained hard and it payed off.

I should probably share some sports story with little Jakey in it....I took him golfing the other day after his touch 'footy' game. His team got thumped pretty good and he was feeling down. He is a lefty when it comes to baseball and golf and several other things. I don't have any lefty clubs so the coordinated little bugger played with my full size right handed clubs. He drove a 130 meter par 3 and 3 putted for his first legit bogey. I thought that was pretty good for a 9 year old lefty!

Karen is going to do entries about her parents' visits as soon as she can get away from the sports fields and party planning.