Now Serving...

It's blue skies and 76 degree temps this morning as Team Striker awaits the serve...

Team Picture

Side Out!

Ready to Receive the Serve

It's Saturday, so that means vball time for us out here.  Our "game" this week was an intra-squad game.  It's pretty low-key and I'm okay with that.

The first game we didn't even bother to keep score.  But our team did really well.  I told R. that if he served underhand perfectly 10 out of 10 times, he could move back and work on an overhead serve.  And I'll be danged if he wasn't 10 for 10 in that first game!  He was so excited to be able to serve like the experienced players do.

R Serves an Ace!

I think the final score of the second game was like 25-11, in our favor.  Trust me, it's not the coaching!  Our kids are just pretty good players.

One of the mom's actually came up to me to apologize for taking over at the last practice.  Her daughter is on one of the other teams and this mom always comes decked out in vball gear for the practices.  As I suspected, she played in high school and junior college and then coached some high school.  I told her not to worry--I was more than happy to turn things over to her!  (I had some errands to run, including getting a haircut!)

Some things are just not getting upset about--and that especially goes for youth volleyball practices.  Trust me, I have more important stuff to worry about.  And I was only too happy to get to leave practice early thanks to her volunteerism!  :-)

S Serves Up A Winner!

As you can see from the pictures, it was yet another gorgeous Fall day here in SoCal.  We really are lucky to live in such a beautiful part of the world.  After our "game", the boys and I went to Mickey D's for our traditional post-even treat. It was a pretty good start to the day.

(Now if only BYU can play as well against Oregon State!)

One More Gratuitous Shot...

It's Fall, It's Time for...Volleyball?

S. and R. are ready to receive the serve...

For the first time in many years, our family is not playing soccer or football this fall.  Instead, we're playing volleyball.  I'm not sure why I'm so surprised by that.  But volleyball is not typically the sport I think of when the leaves start to turn colors and the days start to shorten.

Love you, Nueve!

My sister was an incredible college volleyball player and I'll never forget the year that I got to travel all over the country to see her team play.  Her team had an incredible, magical season.  I was there when the season started in Iowa and I saw her team play that season in such "exotic" locales as Washington state, New Mexico, Las Vegas, Utah, and California.  I always brought the team fresh Sprinkles cupcakes for every match and I'd like to think that that was a fun tradition for my sister and the team that year.

So I was supportive when I heard that S. and R. wanted to play volleyball this fall.  I had little idea of how "supportive" I'd actually have to be, however.  Neither one had a coach for their team, so I got "volunteered."

The only problem is that I don't really have any qualifications for coaching volleyball.  I never played on a real volleyball team as a kid (I don't count church volleyball).  My only claim to fame is that I've watched dozens, if not hundreds, of my sisters' volleyball games over the years, so maybe I manged to pick up something of the claim through the process of osmosis.

Our first practice was last Saturday.  As you can see, our practices our outside.  There is essentially no shade.  The practice was an hour and a half long and the mercury hit over 100 degrees!  Yikes!

This week was a little better.  It was only in the low 80s temperature wise, but we had another marathon practice session of 1.5 hours.  I'm looking forward to next Saturday when the practice will only be an hour!

My main duty as the coach seems to be shagging a lot of errant volleyballs.  That's okay, because I can do that.  I also get to cheer for and encourage the kids quite a bit.  Luckily, they are pretty good.  Heaven help them if they had to rely solely on me

Maybe the best part was that after practice, the boys and I got to hit up McDonald's for a beverage and make a trip to Costco for some food and treats.

R. took the pic and his photography skills are getting really good!

I hope everyone had a great Saturday!