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Tomorrow I have to work up the courage to (mostly) finalize the junior basketball team that I am coaching. I have to admit, it’s consuming me. On one hand, I’m very excited about working with the players I have, but I am also dreading the cutting process. I am going to go with face to face, break it to them gently, and go from there. I’ve had great help in deciding my team. I have an assistant coach, but she’s also assistant coaching 2 other teams so she keeps pretty busy. What we were able to do at the end of last week was break the list down into “yes”, “yes/maybe”, “no/maybe” and “probably not.” This was very helpful, because I learned to stop looking at the “yes” players, because they had already made the team. Before long, the yes/maybes became a lot clearer and for the last 2 practices I’ve really only had to keep my eye on 8 players.  It’s so tough and it makes me reflect back on to my high school basketball experience. I didn’t start playing basketball until grade 10, and this was mostly because I grew 8 inches between grades 9 and 10. As they say, you can’t coach someone how to be tall, but you can coach a tall player how to play.

Junior boys are competitive, and once the team is made I want to make them more competitive.

The difference between Thorold high sports and where I work, essentially, is that if you tried out for a team at Thorold high, you typically made it. This school is larger, more kids try out, and thus, I have to make some cuts. As it stands now, I plan to keep a roster of 15 players, 11 who will travel and play, 4 who won’t travel, will practice, and (hopefully) get better. 8 guards, 6 forwards, 1 player who I’d feel comfortable putting anywhere. I started working with him as a forward tonight, but when we were scrimmaging, he carried the ball up the court as good as my top guards do.

Tonight, I’ve spent my time at work, and walking around the house, spouting off motivational phrases and hard lines I need to use with my players to take themselves seriously and eventually win games. I am excited.

A big motivation for me to get into teaching was to have the opportunity to coach (basketball, specifically.) So far, I can’t think of a better way to be spending my time.

Cry of Love - Too cold in the winter - Theres nothing out there, but concrete, steel and snow

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Sunday night and I’m ready for bed. Clothes are ironed, lessons are planned, coffee is ready to be plugged in, in the morning.  I am going to have to get used to the sub-zero temperatures because I think it will be that way for another 5 months. I don’t mind the cold. I can anticipate that I will be buying more cold weather wear in the coming months.

This is what the set-up looks like for parent teacher interviews.  This is what I look like at around 5pm after a day of work. One of my co-workers took this photo “so we could send it to our mom.” I’m not shy, I’ll share it with everyone.

As a testament to the epic volleyball program I had the chance to coach in this fall, the Senior boys team won the North-Western championship on Friday and will be traveling to Stratford this week to compete for the Ontario “AA” championship. They won gold 3 years ago, I’m hoping they do the same this year.

I drove 15 minutes southeast out of Dryden on Saturday to explore some new terrain and check out the Wabigoon government dock. It’s in need of some repair.

The sun was shining and it was a beautiful sub-zero day.

I got bored with Wabigoon and decided to check out Aaron Provincial Park.  It said “park closed”, but there was obviously people there hiking. I left my fishing rod in my truck and took a little hike.

It was a beautiful Saturday afternoon and the fresh air did me a lot of good. I wandered around and found new trails until daylight faded enough to make me the slightest bit scared that I should find my truck before I was lost.  All new terrain for me, and it gets dark at 4:30 right now.

The water was still open in most places, but as you can see the freeze-up is only a matter of time.

I Mother Earth - Another Sunday - There ain’t no control of things you take for granted

Counting Crows - Daylight Fading - When we see the early signs that daylights fading We leave just before its gone

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Today was remembrance day. Government officials in Dryden had the day off, which is a new thing to me. Apparently from manitoba to the west coast, it’s a holiday for everyone, schools included. I have to admit I got pretty emotional at the assembly we had at school today, as I did during coaches’ corner on Saturday night when Don Cherry broadcast the photos of some of Canada’s casualties. No tears, I just welled up.

I remember when Canada’s military engaged almost entirely in peacekeeping missions, wearing the blue berets of the United Nations. For teenagers these days, 9-11 happened when they were 7 years old, and war overseas has more or less been a fact of life since then. It only takes about a half a generation’s time to become relatively complacent and I wonder if that’s the case. I wonder what it would be like to be a cadet in 2008, if the general mood or tone of things has changed any. I remember one of the aims of Air Cadets was to “instill in youth an interest in the air element of the canadian armed forces.” Is that taken more seriously now? I wonder. Of all of the people I knew in cadets, 4 of them have a career in the Canadian forces right now. I also know (through facebook) of two people who probably never would have considered being a cadet, who are working in the forces. I guess it does work.

Life is skipping along at a feverish pace. I can honestly say right now that things are going the way I want them to. I have control over some elements of my life, there are others that I might never have control over, but in general my mood is good. I’m not the same person I was when I moved here. When I moved here, I wasn’t the same person I was a few days earlier. A year, two years, five years ago, different once again.  A lot of me is the same, the tangible aspects that you can’t take away from someone, my education, my family, my values.  At the same time though, I learn something new every day, and the process of how I deal with these lessons, if accept, reject, or adapt, is what makes me an ever-changing being.

I had a bunch that I wanted to write about tonight at around 8:00, then I played basketball for an hour and pretty much wiped the slate clean.

My Dad is currently on his annual deer hunting trip and I can’t help but think of those november sundays as a child when my dad would come home.  That week without dad was always quiet. Sometimes my grandparents would come visit and paint a room in the house in his absense. We would have to do morning tending to any livestock he may have had at the time, with the hope that he would be happy with our work when he got back.  But ultimately when he returned, he always wreaked of deer blood and camping and would proudly plunk a hockey bag full of frozen venison on the kitchen floor. We’d get to hear stories of how his friends were doing in Alberta and tell him how he hadn’t really missed anything while he was gone. We’d ask him what he’d shot and what the group had shot, and he would slowly recount, day by day, along with location, any game they’d bagged. It wasn’t about that for him though, it was just getting away, time with friends, getting back in touch with his hunter-gatherer instincts.  I hope he’s having a good trip.

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