Friday, August 29, 2003

SENIOR PLONKEY, I PRESUME

As I was yelling at the seniors on the team on the second day of "informal" practice it was pointed out to me that we, in fact, have only one senior on the team right now. I guess I’ll have to come up with a new schtick. That one senior is Mark Plonkey (#17). How can he be a senior already? He just got here, and already we are coming around the clubhouse turn. Oh well, no one will ever be able to say we didn’t ride this pony for all he was worth.

If possible I plan on seriously going to the whip down the stretch, too. Other teams won’t need to scout us to see our intentions this year. We will be the ones coming after you, whoever you may be, and you will recognize us because we’ll all be riding up on the back of the Plonkster, our own little Sea Biscuit. Our team goal will be simple, and it will have to do with trying to help your horses become just a little "Unglued", or, if possible, future glue.

FOREVER YOUNG, or JUST BABY STEPS, BABY

The original point, as I started writing today, was supposed to be that if you look at us on paper we are extremely young as a team. However, with the incredible variety of "kid" that we get here, I do not feel like we are really young at all. I think I have said in prior years that we were both young and not, but we never had just one senior before. We will have to see what kind of new leadership will emerge.

It is my plan that ultimately we look neither young nor old, but rather as a team and program ongoing, and always on the rise.

We have experience in all positions, except in the goal, where we have depth, but where we are, in fact, very inexperienced. I have always enjoyed, painful as it might have been at times, watching young goaltenders develop. I can really test that "always" part of it, because we now have three eager beavers, each dying to get in the cage, for me to watch grow. The goalie thing started for me the other day as Pete Jokisch (#3), last year’s understudy, began to take charge of the defense a bit. Then he had a save-and-clear combo that brought a tiny, little smile to my lips.

I'm just looking for short steps on a long path. Right now, learning how to take the steps is far more important than where the journey might lead us.

WEST NILE WITH A TWIST

I do not mean to make light of serious situations. Lyme disease was all pretty funny, too, at least until I got it. However, there seems to be a new "handle" for the college hangover. "Coach, he might have West Nile" actually means that "he" drank so much last night that he has "flu-like symptoms", perhaps accompanied by a rash similar to mosquito bites from the alcohol poisoning. It’s nice to see the young people jump back into college life so quickly. If they knew as much about their geography class as they do about where to go for the full keg or the Soco and lime specials we would really be getting somewhere, but then it probably wouldn’t really be college, would it?

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