Sort of a Schedule

I hope to finalize the REAL schedule by the end of the week. Sorry, but I have some balls in the air that are making it unrealistic to assign real times as yet, but they should clear up soon.For now here is a loose guideline of the potential for work out dates through the winter.

We have rented RIPS, down by the airport in Burien for the following Sundays from noon to 4:00. Our team will have rotating 2 hour blocks in this schedule and will perhaps have a weekend off in each month. We will go from noon to 2:00 or 2:00 to 4:00 the following weeks:


Nov: 7, 14, 21
January: 9,16,23,30
February 6,13,20,27

Don't Bet Against Him, EVER!

Ben Thomson, former multiple repeat batting contest champion of the world is now competing in the post season high school tennis championships.

You must know the story:

Cinderella story, relative unknown shrimp eater, now about to become the Washington State Singles Tennis Champ!

Calendar impaired (but because of this I DO get to park anywhere I want) Coach Cougan drove all the way out to Soundview field yesterday for the big football game and found the entire Soundview staff working diligently on preparing the field for TODAY"S game. Funny that the entire Soundview grounds crew resembled a bunch of 12 year olds playing a pick-up football game, but who am I to judge how Soundview gets their field ready for a big game.

Anyhow, seeings that I was close to the Thomson home, and as always optimistically wondering whether 10 lbs of shrimp, delivered to his doorstep might entice the future rival to Ichiro to come back to baseball, I gave the Thomson's a call and found that they were not home.

But I did discover that they were out at the UW watching Ben (Ballard High's freshman AND #1 Tennis player) play his first post-season match. Ben won the match in triple-dipple overtime and will continue on his quest for state supremacy.

Good luck Ben, we all know waaaaay better than to ever bet against you - we have scene it too many times.

In related news, Campbell Queen played another meaningless soccer game somewhere. Yes, that is right, he now plays a game in which you cannot use your hands.

!!!!!!!Final Football Showdown!!!!!!!

Game on! This Thursday, October 22, 3:30, Soundview, BE THERE.

No holds barred, no rules, no mercy, one team will win, BE THERE.

Tino and Jake; Quin, Ethan, Nick; Mano un Mano, BE THERE.

There will be blood, there will be guts, there will be cheating, BE THERE

My world will stop, my plans on hold I am going to the showdown of the century, BE THERE

Why this might even be better than the Cascade Jr. High vs Puget Sound Jr. High (the 1970 equivalent of freshman football) show down between two undefeated teams, two teams that had not given up ANY points to ANY other opponent all year, meeting for the final game of the season. (and to ALL you piss-ant Puget Sound Jr. High School readers of this blog, {if you guys can read} Chris Humphries from Cascade Jr. High DID cross the goal line and the game DID NOT end in a 0-0 tie, and you guys know it)

This should be fun, and hey guys, be careful only put the big hits on non MBC players, ie Pierre is up for grabs!, unless he changes his mind!!!!!.

Did Ja Know??

Do you know that you can leave comments on my blog. It is real easy. You click the comment button, a little comment box comes up, you click anonymous, write your comment such as:

"You are all wet Cougan, where do you come up with this drivel"
or

"Wow, I am going to quit school (or my job) and sit around a write poetry for the rest of my life"
or
"Hey Coach, can you post some poems that can help me score with hot chicks?"

After you write your comment you have to type some mystery words into a box and hit "post comment"

Just so you know, if you sign your name to a post similar to the first example I will see to it that
you never play baseball in this town again.

Looking forward to hearing from you,

Coach Cougan

Another Poem and Poet to Consider

God bless google. I read many poems as a young man. I loved to read, and surprisingly I loved to read a good poem. But like the people in my life, I am not too good with names. I read things, get into discussions about them and am at a loss when one asks me who the author is. And now, as an older man, a man in such awe of those who write so well, for those who capture life in words so well, I am embarrassed that I typically do not know the author.

But google has changed that for me. Now I remember just tiny pieces of what I read many years ago, type the phrase into google and I get the author, complete works, and I even get things they wrote that I neglected to read at my younger age.

As a young man my reading was undisciplined, haphazard in both what I randomly got my hands on, or what some wonderful English teacher put into my hands; thank you Miss Pesnell (of Memphis), Mr. McCamey (misspelled I am sure of Seattle) and Mr. McFarlane (of Seattle; and who in order to suck up to my wife Peggy not too long ago pretended that SHE was his favorite student and not me).

But I have now discovered that Carl Sandburg wrote many of my favorite poems, and here is a good one.

Thank you Carl Sandburg!

A Father To His Son

A father sees his son nearing manhood.
What shall he tell that son?'

Life is hard; be steel; be a rock.'
And this might stand him for the storms
and serve him for humdrum monotony
and guide him among sudden betrayals
and tighten him for slack moments.

'Life is a soft loam; be gentle; go easy.'
And this too might serve him.
Brutes have been gentled where lashes failed.
The growth of a frail flower in a path up
has sometimes shattered and split a rock.

A tough will counts. So does desire.
So does a rich soft wanting.
Without rich wanting nothing arrives.
Tell him too much money has killed men
and left them dead years before burial:
the quest of lucre beyond a few easy needs
has twisted good enough men
sometimes into dry thwarted worms.

Tell him time as a stuff can be wasted.
Tell him to be a fool every so often
and to have no shame over having been a fool
yet learning something out of every folly
hoping to repeat none of the cheap follies
thus arriving at intimate understanding
of a world numbering many fools.

Tell him to be alone often and get at himself
and above all tell himself no lies about himself
whatever the white lies and protective fronts
he may use against other people.

Tell him solitude is creative if he is strong
and the final decisions are made in silent rooms.
Tell him to be different from other people
if it comes natural and easy being different.

Let him have lazy days seeking his deeper motives.
Let him seek deep for where he is born natural.
Then he may understand Shakespeare
and the Wright brothers, Pasteur, Pavlov,
Michael Faraday and free imaginations
Bringing changes into a world resenting change.

He will be lonely enough
to have time for the work
he knows as his own.