Financial Backing

I think that Brett Favre is finally retiring now. That would truly be the end of an era of a quarterback who has been embattled by controversy lately but had a brilliant career. We will see what the Hall of Fame says in a few years. Anyway, like I said yesterday, college starts today. That'll be fun. Yeah, I don't really have much else to say about that right now other than it is definitely time to get going; I am ready. So, for lack of anything else to talk about, let's talk about power soccer of course. I have been thinking about what a team needs to begin. One of the largest obstacles is financial support. I understand that most of the equipment available is solid and high quality, but the point does remain that the equipment is expensive. Some individuals are fortunate and have the means to buy their own equipment. Some people, such as our team, have the backing of a nonprofit to help them by the initial equipment which is incredibly helpful. I know that expenses are the nature of the game, but they are still an obstacle that teams need to address and develop a plan to play.

Photo by superstrikertwo on Flickr

Thought Training

I think that I want to go play power soccer again. The only dilemma with that is that it means that I need to wait until Saturday. The only problem with that is that there are four days of classes between then and now. Don't get me wrong, I totally enjoy college and seeing friends and all that, but I will say that vacation will be missed. It isn't like I do a lot of life-changing activity during break, but I will say that I pay a lot more attention to power soccer during it. I also can't say that I have had any brilliant revelations recently, but I can say that it does you good to just think over situations that might happen on the court and figure out how to react to the situation. Let me say that many of these situations might never happen because imagine all of the variables that would need to align perfectly to re-create one given scenario. Nevertheless, I think that you can program your mind to think a certain way. Just like you to learn to think about numbers in school, I think that you can learn to think about and process situations in power soccer. You learn the rules that govern the sport just like you can learn the rules that govern mathematics. All it takes is hard work, and I think that you can learn a lot about power soccer.

Photo by @boetter on Flickr

Drills are Important

So, practice went well last night. I think we are definitely improving, so that was good. We are working on the fundamentals through drills, which is 100% necessary, so I was very happy about that. Although running through drills might not be as exciting as scrimmaging, I feel like they are just as if not more important because you are forced to repeat skills over and over. During a scrimmage for example, I might never need to spin kick. If we ran a drill to work on spin kicking, obviously I would work on them and they would improve. With the right combination of drills to work on a wide variety of necessary skills combined with scrimmaging to execute the skills in real time, I think we are going the right way. I thought we had a pretty good combination going last night that being said. I thought we worked on a lot of different skills, and we did scrimmage at the end. As a bonus, I think we all had fun too. Fun is important. Honestly, whether we are running drills or scrimmaging, I'm having fun. How can power soccer not be fun? It is great to finally have a sport, so I enjoy all of it.

Practice Later

I'm going back to a tradition because most of what I do is based on some form of routine anyway. It is a blog post before power soccer practice, so here is my list of what I want to work on.

·         First, I did turn up my turn to speed a little bit more, so I will adapt to that and then utilize more of the speed that I now have hopefully. I still am nowhere near top speed while turning though because I wanted to avoid the jerking motion that tends to occur when you get too much speed too quickly.

·         Second, I want to improve my one-on-one play. Although power soccer is a game that relies on spacing, there is almost always one-on-one play going on. I think that turning up my turn speed will help me be able to pull the ball back better and make a stronger pass back, but my technique still needs improvement.

·         Finally, just like everyone else, I need to remember the two on one. We all mess up on that every now and then, but I would prefer at least for myself not to ever do it.

Well, there you go. You know what I want to do, so we'll see how I do!

The Curse is Broken

I was beginning to think that I was a curse for any basketball team from North Carolina. Why would I think this? Well, I was watching Duke the other night as they got beat by Florida State, a team they definitely should and could have beaten. I know that one loss does not constitute a curse, but then I was watching UNC last night as they fell behind by 10 almost immediately against Virginia Tech. Virginia Tech was dealing with injuries and the fact that one of their best players got in foul trouble right away. Therefore, there is no reason why North Carolina should have fallen behind. Another reason they were falling behind was because they were being outrebounded and outhustled by a smaller yet quicker and Virginia Tech team. Luckily for me though the Tar Heels did manage to pull out a three point victory in the end, so we can safely conclude that I am not a curse. Don't you just love superstition? I don't believe in a lot of that superstition, but I do enjoy how there is always the reason why the curse was started. Whatever you believe, remember that I am not a curse on nor have I ever been a curse to North Carolina sports.

Photo by Andersedin on Flickr

One Year Ago

Here is a fun bit of trivia. One year ago today I started writing my blog everyday (unless I happened to lose some pieces from earlier days). I know I have more than 365 pieces however and that is because I had written some last summer and fall, but it was not an everyday serious thing. Also, I know that I wrote twice on some days that I got really excited about something (the final four in the Aud). I made it my goal to write 200 words per day, and I pretty much always go over. However, assuming that I did write exactly 200 words every day for the last year, I have written 73,000 words in the last year. That is quite a few words although if I made into a book, it wouldn't quite be an epic novel. Writing is a good habit to get into for anyone, but it is even more important when you are a business and statistics major that doesn't need to write that much otherwise. I didn't want to lose my edge, so I thought and was right that it definitely does help you to constantly write and work at the craft.
Photo by fsse8info on Flickr

Translation Please

I figured out a new use for Google Translate today. Obviously, many people have probably done this before, but I finally thought about doing it this way. Power soccer is obviously a worldwide event. There are major organized leagues in several different countries, but as you might know, the 2007 World Cup was held in Japan. That is pretty excellent and a great place to hold the tournament, but that also meant that much of the information about the tournament on the official website was written in Japanese. Finally, I realized that Google Translate could do the job for me. I was a little disappointed because grammatically it did not make sense when Google translated it, but it was still very cool that I at least could understand the overall theme of what they were talking about. It is very cool how technology can do things like that for us. I didn't need to pull out my old Japanese to English dictionary which I don't have nor have I ever had. I was able to pretend I was a lot smarter than I was, and that is definitely a good thing. Just kidding, but I was excited when it finally dawned on me that I could do this. Incredibly basic, but it was something that I never thought about before.

Photo by Leo-seta on Flickr