Good Sports.

Aussie Sportsmen and Sportswomen

We thought we'd get a lot more time to relax and kick back around a couple beers and the bbq when we moved here, but we're back to chasing the kids around every weekend to and from their sporting events. Instead of Washington, it's New South Wales. They just keep qualifying and winning and being invited and they keep making our lives complicated. How dare they! Don't they know we've got books to read and naps to take and beers to quaff? I thought I'd write a little update to let you know how they're going, as they say around these parts. It is a dad's perogative to be proud of his kids, isn't it?

Jakob's soccer team has remained undefeated in a very balanced league. They are 3-0-2 and have tied the 2 teams that they thought would be the top teams from previous years results. Jake is playing left midfield to take advantage of his left footedness. He bats left handed, golfs left handed, kicks left footed and does everything else with his right side. Go figure... He's an odd duck. He also does tennis lessons/activities every Friday night in town. He seems to love that sport, too. His primary school track carnival is on Friday and he plans on entering multiple events. They don't have time to go to school down here due to the time constraints of traveling to all the sporting events. He doesn't seem to mind.

Mariah won the school cross country carnival and qualified for 'zone'. She finished 2nd at zone to qualify for 'regionals' and finished 3rd at regionals to qualify for 'state'. I reckon she should finish 4th at state with that progression. The state meet is in Sydney in July. She continues to play on multiple soccer teams. Her girls school team is still alive in the loser out tourney after 2 wins, her club team won twice 2 weekends ago for their first victories in that league, her 'rep' team hasn't played for awhile but still practices in Taree, and she just finished playing for the boys school team in their comp. today and was the only girl out of all 9 teams there. She got a special invite as a couple of the boys had to miss the comp. She scored twice and had 2 assists in their 5 mini (20 minute games). They finished 2nd in the comp.

Kyle and I went west to Tamworth last weekend for his first rep. basketball tourney. He plays on the U-18 team as he missed out on the U-14s by 3 months and our town doesn't have enough U-16s for a team. At 14 he's being challenged by the 6-5, 200 lb. 18 year olds that each team seems to have. His team is young and small and not very experienced. Other than that they turn the ball over a lot and take massive amounts of bad shots! They almost pulled out the first game and got beaten very soundly in the other 2 games. He's getting great experience and is probably the most basketball savvy kid they have. It's hard to assert himself as a 14 year old, though. He does like it. He's having to play roles on the team that are a bit foreign to him. It's pretty fun watching him play post defense against the big boys. You gotta love the follow through on that free throw picture! He continues to surf casually and occasionally gets up at 6 a.m. to surf before getting ready for school. Apparently the waves are best at that time...I can't tell the difference, but I'm a middle aged American-what do I know.

So now you know more than you may have cared to know about those 3 and their Aussie sports careers. Karen keeps running and is now doing some Yoga and boxing, as well. I'm getting a little leery about the boxing. She'll be able to catch me now and know what to do to me once she does. I'm playing golf 2-3 times a week and am even playing a bit of basketball, too. Tomorrow I leave with some friends at work to do a weekend of wild boar hunting up in the mountains. That will be a new experience for me. I think the only thing I'll shoot will be my camera. Do you all recall the scene from the Thornbirds miniseries....Let's hope for no repeat of little Stuart's mishap.

As always, we love to hear from all of you, so e-mail us whenever the mood strikes you.

Mike( msteen62@msn.com ) and Karen (marathoner64@hotmail.com)