Wednesday, April 4, 2018

A Birthday and a Disappointing Night at Practice


Tuesday, 3 April, 2018

Today was our son Michael's 42nd birthday . . .

That is him on the right in the 
authentic white Westlake H.S.
Nick Kormanik game jersey

Our older son Andy, in the blue jersey, has a much better hitting stance at this age.

I would guess that Andy is about seven years old here which would make Mike about five.

Nice Rams helmet Mike!

Mike and his son Jacob

This photo was taken last Spring when Mike received his Masters Degree from California Lutheran University.

Still a Los Angeles Rams family

This was taken after last Fall's Rams-Redskins game.

Our sons are now 44 and 42 years old . . .

How did that happen?

Meanwhile back in Venegono Superiore . . .

A new spot for my morning
cappuccino and brioche

 Lots of temptations as usual

Amazingly strong again, "No Grazie."

I drove north towards Varese after my Italian breakfast to do a bit of shopping at the IPER Supermarket Center.

Rustic Home For Sale

Don't let the signs saying "DO NOT ENTER, DANGER OF BUILDING COLLAPSE!" scare you off.

It's still a fixer-upper bargain I'm sure!

IPER offerings today . . .

Fish of some sort

LOTS of octopi

More . . .

 . . . temptations

I was strong for a second time in only a one hour time span!

Who would have believed it?

Certainly not me.

On the drive back to the Villa Sklorpion, I had to pass through the village of Vedano Olona.

They have a small chapel just off of the main road that is easily visible to motorists like me. Today, for the first time, I saw that the door was open.

Exploration Time!

Quaint is a good word

Fading Frescoes
always interest me

More colorful ones in
a side chapel

 Nice Candle Holder

 More Colors that caught my eye

Me, in about six hours, when
I found out that only two
Offensive Linemen were at practice

 The gophers had enjoyed digging
up Skorpion Field over the
Easter Weekend

 A sharped dressed
U17 Flag player

Part of our nightly
Three Ring Flag Circus
from 6:30 p.m. to 8:30 p.m.

Tonight I decided to roam continuously between each of the U13, U15 and U17 practices.

I saw lots of good, patient coaches and young boys and girls hard at work improving their skills.

And then came the Senior team practice from 8:30 p.m. to 10:30 p.m.

QB Gianluca Arena going DEEP!

This entire season the Senior practices have been marred by one consistently negative thing, our Offensive Linemen's lack of attendance.

It has made many of my practice plans mute, forcing the coaching staff into Plan B, C and even D modes at times.

With the Sant'Agata Knights game now just four days away, we only had two Offensive Linemen show up tonight and neither one was a starter.

The shame of the situation is the tremendous work ethic and positive attitude that the players at all of our other positions show at each and every one of our workouts is somewhat wasted because of the OL.

Is there any wonder why our Offense has struggled in our first two games?

PLAN B: LOTS of 7-on-7

We did Team Defense as well as possible with Wide Receivers and our even our starting QB filling in at the non-snapping Center and both Tackles spots.

When it came time for Team Offense, I sent all of the OL and DL home. Team Offense is all about timing and we were not going to get any under these circumstances.

Thus we turned to Plan B that called for about 40 minutes of 7-on-7.

We will probably have to use smoke and mirrors Saturday night in order to . . .

BEAT THE KNIGHTS!

FRUSTRATING!

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