Oaks of a Thousand and Goals for the season

"The main ingredient of stardom is the rest of the team"- John Wooden

Had another great Condor weekend with practices on both days. This year the majority of our practices are in Thousand Oaks, a quaint little suburb about a half hour (with no traffic) outside the city that is so picturesque that it makes me want to puke. But it's a perfect location as it's about equal distance from both SB and LA. The team has done a really fantastic job of making things easier for us LA kids, as all the Santa Barbara weekends can sometimes wear you down by the end of the season.

Funny note about TO, we used to play them for the season opener every year in HS football. It was an f'ing trek out there on the bus, used to take an hour and a half. That's a loooong time to be sitting in your football pants, especially when you're SO jacked up for the season to start. But since it was an upper-class suburb they had an amazing plethora of smoking hot rich girls there, so that gave us something to look forward to. Nothing better than beating a team AND stealing their girls. So when our JV game was over and we had to stay to watch the Varsity team play my boys & I would take our jerseys off and go over to the other side to hit on the girls, telling them that we were from nearby Agoura, or Malibu, or whatever else we could think of at the time. Some great memories of making out with a girl and getting a tap on the shoulder from my coach telling me it was time to get on the bus and asking where my jersey was. Needless to say I didn't get her number. :)

Saturday practice was great, full of fundamentals n' drills for the first couple hours, then we ran through the O plays and finished with a solid scrimmage of Broken Home kids vs. Nuclear Family's (their cheer of "mommy loves daddy" was only slightly better than our "we get 2 Xmas's") I started out sloppy, continuing my retarded trend of doing 1 dumb thing for every good thing I did. After getting off a nice forehand huck for the first goal I proceeded to turn the next 3 forehands over the course of a few points (1 bad decision, 1 bad throw, and 1 that Robbie Gillies had the sickest layout D on to get the turn. If you've never seen a 6'4" guy get completely horizontal at full speed, trust me, it's pretty f'ing amazing. Robbie is also my pick for the blow-up player of the year. That guy is going to turn some heads this season. Just you wait.) But I managed to clean it up after that, scoring a few goals, playing solid D, and no other turns as we won the scrimmage. Chalk another one up to the dysFUNctional latch-key kids. But my parents still love me, right? right?

Sunday morning brought tons o' marking drills, hucks drills, and a whole bunch of endzone work, for which we definitely needed. I felt great by the end of it, felt much better about my timing, and worked with Dugan a bunch on endzone cuts. SO good to have that guy out there with us. His calm demeanor and ability to translate his knowledge of the game makes a world of a difference. And he's got some ok breaks too.

My goals for the upcoming season:

1. Take the other team's stud receiver, D him up, and shut him down/contain him enough that we get the W.
2. Move the disc as fast as possible when it's in my hands with a high-percentage throw.
3. No drops. Ever.
4. Improve my mark tenfold. Which would move it from god-awful to just plain mediocre.
5. Be a supportive & positive teammate always.
6. Be super-vocal and active on the sidelines always.
7. Score goals when we get the turn.
8. Be a resource for my teammates to help them achieve their athletic potential.

Going to do another Xfit workout in about an hour. Will post on it and let you know it goes. My prediction is that I'm going to be exhausted. Just a hunch.