I have the distinct honor to live with Bruener, Chad, and Cory Elenio. The young single man apartment, depressing, yes.
Chad and I passed out pretty early last night. It has been more mellow than usual, because it is pretty crazy with us most of the time.
We both just lock ourselves in our room because Bruener just plays "Call of Duty" all the time. Apparently he is saving the world, well that is what he says, nice life Bruen's.
I am an outcast I feel like, because I do not play video games or play poker. I gave up on video games, because I started sniping people in my sleep and could not get on with life, thanks Halo.
On a different note, something interesting that I am doing is that I am growing my beard out for a year straight, keep me to it please. Right now I have the distinct ability to shake my head like a dog and completely wet a team mate with sweat. I know, it is awesome.
Chad and I have talked about getting a tattoo while we are down here. We saw a place, but I think they are trying to recycle and do things better for the environment. We decided it is not good to go to a place that recycles their needles, that is straight shady. Still have not tatted though, will spill the beans when we do.
Chad and I room together. I have always thought I was a one man wolfpack my whole entire life. But, then I met Chad, well Sigi forced us to become friends and my wolfpack grew by one. I was a one man pack, now I have a wolfpack of two. We have a similar sense of humor so we click. Our wolf pack is very strong and I hope for it to grow. (the Hangover)
Now, back to the day at hand, sorry. Breakfast is compiled of Special K, it is cinnamon flavored with pecans in it. I also grill up some turkey breast's and have coffee, always coffee. The turkey breasts are high in protein and I gotta get that protein in. (Tim the tool man Taylor grunt,ohhhh ohhhhh ohhhhhhh).
Training this morning, hmmm, honestly we were pretty tired, it is the seventh practice in a row. Personally, I am just excited to be back, because I had a scope in my knee after the season and have been rehabing ever since. So, it is just sweet to play. We played 11 v 11, very uneventful, 0-0. The coaches have been great to notice our sluggishness and have given us tomorrow afternoon and sunday off to recoup. Thanks boys.
During practice though Esteban (Steve) and I got into it. Well, I saw what Steve and Adam got into the other day (Blog post Day 4) and I decided to step it up a notch. Steve and I both are firey guys. To start, he is a big guy who is 3-4 inches taller and about 100 pounds heavier than me. When I mark him I have to be pretty physical. So I bulldozed him once, then he threw me on the ground and I tripped him. Then he gave me this eye gouge. It was seriously a pretty heated one. But, Steve looked at me a minute later and asked if I was okay and I asked him the same and we both gave each other a nice long hug, no kidding, but made up and got on with it. Those things happen, well a good amount with Steve and I. If you want to see a battle royale, come to our trainings. It can happen a fair amount while we play.
After lunch Bruener, Chad, and I went out and did the most masculine thing you could do, yep we went to Petland to look at puppies. I wanted to buy a cockapoo that was white with tan spots, oh man that one went straight to my heart and melted it. Ha, so masculine, but I ain't ashamed to say I love to do that. Say something, go ahead, I eat turkey breast for breakfast, uh huh.
Then I went to Starbucks with Frankie and Duncan and chilled there playing crosswords, talking about some new fitness workouts, and taking about 3 espresso shots; that will wake you up. ohhhh ohhhhhh ohhhhhhhh
Then dinner as a team. Now, I am chillin' in Jed's room hanging with Moffat and Esteban. We are blogging it up and then I plan to whoop some booty in "Settler's of Catan".
Still alive...and thankful.
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This is Jed, I will tell you more this afternoon about Sergio Herrera. After scrimmaging the U-17 national team.
On January 9th at the clinic we had some funny kids. Let me tell you about some of our stories.
Here I am preparing the kids for sharks and minnows and I was trying to get them to learn how to dribble in different ways. I am telling the kids to dribble and do different kinds of cuts and fakes and then I tell them to sit down. Romalis is one of the older kids of the group- the kid with the blue socks and in the front of the first pic...Romalis chimes in as we are sitting down, "I ain't fit for dis." His timing was impeccable as it was completely quiet and the rest of the kids seem to wait on his funny words. The kids and I just busted out laughing!
Next, and the funniest of all the comments. Emily, oh sweet Emily, oh so pure in heart, haha. She had Romalis's group and she said they were being very silly, in her words. Well, at one point she yelled, "Keep your balls to yourself!!" and the kids were rolling on the ground repeating what she said to each other. You could imagine a woman coach saying that to a bunch of 13 year olds who are already off in their own world. Well, even if you are not 13, it still makes me laugh every time. Thanks Emily for your awesome story and all your help!
Waking up in the morning was pretty hard. Yesterday was pretty exhausting and well when you walk outside and it is 28 degrees it is not fun either. I mean, come one, we came to New Orleans for a Filleo Project. We were not planning to come here for a nice beautiful trip, we came to help the kids. But, in the back of our minds we did think, "Sweet! We get to spend a few days in New Orleans in warmer weather." Well, "Earth to Jed!" it is not warm out here- it is freezing!
I was glad though that the day started with a laugh. Jared Emily Montz who were our drivers and host family were having trouble with the defroster. When they tried to turn the dial to defrost the dial broke and they could not defrost the front windshield. So, we are sitting there watching Jared and Emily use their hands and rags to wipe the windshield down so he could see while he was driving. They are not used to cold weather at all. We fixed it with pliers the next day though, atta boy RadioU Jared.
We pull up to our event at an inner city school and see a sweet soccer field that has the new turf on it. Also, there are about 30 kids playing on it. I immediately thought I was in the movie "The Big Green." The things these kids said only added to my perspective, oh what a laugh, but I will get to that later.
The night before our big event Jared Montz had us all sit down and we planned out the event to a "T." It took a couple of hours, but we thank him for wanting this event to go as smooth as possible, which it did.
We set up the table and all the kids start to bring over their registration forms we sent out to them. We thank God so much because come six days before the event we had 0 kids registered, yes ZERO. But the day of our event we had around 30 kids show up. For an event planned with few staff and little time it was a HUGE success. We brought them all in and separated them into groups. We had stations for the kids to go to every 12 minutes. Then at the end we would play a big scrimmage.
My station was sharks and minnows. It's my favorite because I love the "log roll." Yes, it is a sweet technique in this game. All the kids get on a line and they have to dribble across to a line that is about 20 yards away. The curve ball is that you have to get past the shark-- ME. I had to kick their ball away and I did that with the "log roll." I would get on the ground and stretch my hands and legs as far as I could go and roll at the kids. There was only one kid who beat this dangerous roll and he flicked it over me and ran. Touché my friend! Touché!
We also had a shooting station with a radar gun that showed the mph that the kids kicked the ball. This was a huge hit, thanks Emily. Jared Montz did a fun passing game that he made into soccer bowling; I never had seen it before but will use it now, thanks Jared. Then a volunteer named Grant helped with World Cup. That is a game where each child gets a partner and those teams pick a country they will be named after. They then try to score against the other teams on one goal, let's just say "CHAOS" but still very fun chaos.
We then ended with a scrimmage that was pretty crazy because the field was 40X25 and we played 11 on 11. Well, I kinda cheated and threw on a couple extra kids and played 13 on 11, that may be the reason why my team won 2-0, sorry Jared...
Here are some pictures from our clinic, I will have a video of the clinic posted in the next couple of days and part 2 of our day Saturday to follow after that. Thanks for spending time with me.
