Football is Back

The week is winding down as we head into what is the traditional last real weekend of the summer. After Labor day, the kids will be heading back to school. While i don't have any more in the school system, it does sort of set the rhythm for the neighborhood as the school buses return and the three schools close to out house fill up again. I've already seen the high school marching band practicing in the school parking lot.

The first football games are this weekend. Friday nights while walking the furry kids, I can hear the PA and the band during home games. I went to a college where football rules. As they say there are two seasons - fall football and spring football. If nothing else, Auburn taught me that on Saturday afternoons you watch football. Preferably in person. The University of Maryland is only a 40 minute drive from our house in northern Virginia. The Virginia schools are two hours (UVA) and four hours (VA Tech) away. Consequently, we have season tickets to UMD games. We've had them now for over 20 years. Originally we bought four seats with my sister and brother in law. He being the only one with any connection to Maryland at all. They ended up divorced and moving away so we ended up with all four seats. For over ten years now we've sold two of the season tickets to friends we know from work. The wife having been one of the bridesmaids in our wedding. The first game is this Saturday evening against Villanova. The weather is suppose to cooperate and it should be a fine time for tailgating before the game. There is something about being on campus and watching the game. You can feel the energy. I'm looking forward to going.

Practice on Tuesday was a little different. The first 30 minutes was spent watching video of us rowing from Saturday. Its so much easier to make corrections when you can see what you're doing wrong. We all seem to have something wrong with our stroke although in my defense, our coach didn't specially address anything with my stroke as he did with several other of our rowers. So that's a good sign. We then split into an 8+ and a 4+. The 4+ having four of our strongest rowers. We did some drill work up to Fountainhead Park and spun the boats. the 4+ was given a slight lead and we on the 8+ were suppose to run them down. We never did over a almost 3 mile row. I realize they had a lead and probably cut some of the corners, but an 8+ should easily track down a 4+ and we didn't do it. That's pretty embarrassing. We need to get better and fast.