A Long Week

When it seems like I get back into the swing of things, it all seems to slow down. Although I'm not complaining too much since Friday is only a couple of hours away, this week just seemed to drag on.

I'm finally starting to figure out our new "gradebook" systems that our school district just recently purchased. Although I haven't graded anything yet (since I really didn't know what the world was going on at first), I've kept the assignments at a minimum, so when it comes time to finally get some grades put in, I won't have so much to do!

My main complaint about the first couple of weeks of school is our network. I cannot fully blame the school's network, because over half of the problem is the students. Either they lose or forget their passwords (then I have to run down to the Tech Office and get them reset) or they do not have the proper "write" privledges to save their work onto the network (long story -- the school board decides to give each student 50 pages of paper for printer use ... anything after that they charge a student $5 for an extra 50 pages ... so I decided instead of printing their work off, they submit it digitally). It's always quite the hassle, especially now that I'm teaching 5th graders and they ALWAYS seems to lose everything, including their minds.

Football practice has also been long and unrelenting -- coming up with my new strategy of running three different plays a day (also in different formations) really has taken a toll on my energy levels at the end of the day. We're currently gearing up for the annual South Dakota Football Jamboree against teams across the border, in which we'll probably get our butts kicked by some bigger schools. But through today, we've successfully learned (and retained) 5 different running plays (also with variations, such as motion and reverses) and added 3 new plays today that require pulling of the guards.

We also learned 5-6 passing plays, since our players seem not to know what routes they should run, but we've got them down COLD. But again, we're a run-first offense and that'll probably take up 80% of our plays down the stretch.

Overall, our team conditioning is getting better, but we're still a long ways from making to where the players can play through the 4th Quarter.

Tomorrow night is the big rivalry game for our varsity boys, playing a town 25 miles away and on top of that ... playing for a traveling trophy. There's always something about playing for a trophy that makes the game a little bit more special. Unfortunately, our boys have been without the trophy for the last 4 years and based on what I've been hearing, we won't be bringing it back to the friendly confines of our own school in the near future.

Then sometime Saturday, I'm going to have to write up a Week 2 Analysis for the MN Fantasy Football League. The all-new AKE Polls is a hit, along with Sean's new Coaches Poll, in which I was surprised how close they were in comparison after Week 1. We must be doing something right!

I'm actually using a mathematical equation for my polls, but I may have to do some more tweaking to it for a nice, easy transistion after the Week 2 games have been played out. But, I think I've got it narrowed down where it will work throughout the season, all the way up to the Championships.