Miles's soccer season

Miles signed up to do soccer again this year. This time he got to be back on a team with more of his old teammates, plus some of his school friends that used to be on other teams.

The team was pretty good and won most of their games.

He missed out on several games, either because they got rained out, or because of other activities like Academic UIL and a school trip to Six Flags.

But he still had fun, and he's been getting better and better.

He even tried out for the school team. He didn't make it, but I was proud of him for trying.

Damon's and Miles's track season

Damon transitioned to the track team after cross country, joining the freshman boys team.

He mainly did the 1600m, except for one meet where he did the 3200m. He improved every week and was very happy to hit his goal time by the last meet.

Miles wanted to do track also, but the middle school meets had limits on how many 7th graders could run per school, so he only made it to one meet.

Amber at work

Amber successfully finished the first half of the school year and has been liking it so far. She has liked getting to know the students and be a positive influence in their lives. One of them must like her, because she gave her a giant calculator.

The school finally implemented Texas's stupid 10 Commandments law, so she now has to have this in her classroom until the law is overturned.

I thought it would be funny to have a 10 Equations poster to go with it, so I made this for her.

One fun perk of the job is that she gets into most sporting events for free. Her students will often ask her to come to their games, so sometimes we make a date out of it. We recently went to the boys varsity basketball game, because she has two students who are starters on the team.

Miles's soccer season

Miles did Texas Heatwave soccer again this fall. His team was a little different this time.

They didn't win as much as the last team, but they got to the playoffs and Miles had fun.

He also felt a lot more confident, and had some great defensive plays.

Cross Country Season

Carmen, Damon, and Miles all did cross country this year.

Carmen and Damon started in August before school even started.

It was Miles's first year doing it and he did great.

I think they all were a little frustrated that they weren't as fast as they wanted to be, but I was proud of them for running their best.

Carmen and Damon finished the season with the Cross Country Banquet. Coach Earvin did a great job taking over the team this year.

Miles's soccer season

Amber signed up Miles for soccer this year, and he had a great time.

This is the first time he's played on a team, and they were the nicest boys. He mostly played as a defender, which he prefers anyway, and got better and more confident as the season went on.

The official team name was the Hornets, but one of the dads got everyone calling them anything yellow we could think of (rubber duckies, bananas, daffodils, etc). They played in the cold, heat, and rain over the course of the season.

They won every game except one in the regular season (the one game Miles missed, coincidentally), including a nail-biter against the other really good team that was won on literally the last kick of the game. They ended up in a rematch with that same team in the championship, but ended up losing and getting 2nd place overall.

Carmen's track season

Carmen ran track again this year. It started in February with a really, really cold meet.

She switched between the 3200m (which she hates) to the 1600m (which she prefers).

The highlight of the season was probably the last regular meet before district, when she was feeling good and finished a 1600 in about 6:45

Carmen's cross country season

Carmen ran cross country again this year.

She didn't take the class, which means that she has to leave morning practice early to be able to get to her first period. In spite of this, she was more consistent with training this year and improved her times over the season.

We got more involved too. We hosted a pasta night, got her a poster, and volunteered at the Atascocita meet.

She participated in six meets, but she's going to miss the district meet because of our upcoming vacation.

The team has some great girls on it, including some new freshmen that Carmen has become friends with.

Track season is coming up next!

Cross country season

Both Carmen and Damon did cross country this year, so we went to a lot of meets. Carmen didn't do cross country last year, and because she was switching to high school, she didn't realize that they train during the summer because the meets start only a couple weeks into the school year.

She had a lot of work to do to get into shape, but the high school program pushes her hard. She does online seminary so she can go to practice every morning where they switch between long distances, tempo runs, and intervals, plus she's supposed to do a "long run" on Saturdays (which doesn't always happen).

She started off not being able to even run the full 2-mile course, but got much better as the season went on, eventually getting under 17 minutes.

Damon started cross country as a 7th grader this year. With his previous sports history, I wasn't sure about him wanting to do athletics, but he found a great sport for himself in cross country.

His first few races he never walked, but he also just went at his own pace and didn't place well. It didn't help that the early part of the season was exceptionally hot. Later in the season we finally got him to push his pace a little and he finished a 2-mile course in a little over 16 minutes. He never regained that form, but he did get to race in the final district meet.

Oregon Trip - Part 03 - Diamond League Final / Prefontaine Classic - Day 2

We made the commute from Beaverton again for day two. We got there early again and parked in the same lot, got some more free pancakes, then went and watched the athletes warm up in the fields adjacent to the stadium until the meet started.

The day started off with women's high jump, and men's long jump (which we got into because it was right in front of us), but the real excitement started with the women's 5000m. Gudaf Tsegay, who was already way ahead with Beatrice Chebet, kicked with two laps to go and set a new world record, beating the one set by Kipyegon earlier this year.

Among other things, Ingebrigtsen won the 3000m (after winning the mile yesterday), Shericka Jackson won the 200m (to go with her 100m yesterday), Joe Kovacs got the upset win over world-record holder Ryan Crouser in shot put, Femke Bol won the 400m hurdles, and Amber's crush Athing Mu won the 800m.

But the other highlight of the day was provided by Mondo Duplantis in pole vault. All season he has been crushing his competitors, then once they've been eliminated has set the bar to one centimeter than his world record to try to set it again. He did the same thing this match except this time, he cleared the bar and we got to see our second world record of the day!

At the end of the meet, they officially presented the winners their trophies.

Afterwards, we decided to take the long way around the stadium and saw several athletes out among the crowds in the concourse. It's cool how comfortable the athletes are with the fans. One of the ladies next to us said Noah Lyles physically bumped into her while she was getting a snack. We stopped and watched for a while as the athletes left the stadium and chatted with each other.

We drove back to the hotel, found some more street parking, then walked to Killer Burger for dinner.

Oregon Trip - Part 02 - Diamond League Final / Prefontaine Classic - Day 1

The hotel situation in Eugene was not great, so we stayed at our hotel in Beaverton and made the almost 2-hour commute each day to attend the meet. The meet was the Prefontaine Classic, which was serving as the Diamond League Final this year.

I wasn't sure what the parking situation was going to be like, so we got there very early. Because it was the weekend, we were able to find a good spot in one of the University of Oregon parking lots. We took a walking tour of the area, ate a pear from a pear tree, then headed over to Hayward Field, where we looked at the booths they had set up outside, got some free pancakes from event sponsor Krusteaz, and watched a pre-game show that was broadcasting right outside the entrance.

We had great seats, just 3 rows back at the beginning of the home stretch.

I was able to sneak in my big lens and go nuts taking pictures. I won't go into great detail, but it was fun to see the athletes I'd been watching all year compete up close and personal, like Americans Noah Lyles and Sha'Carri Richardson.

Some of the highlights were watching Faith Kipyegon crush everyone in the 1500m and a very exciting 1 mile race between Jakob Ingebrigtsen and Yared Nuguse, where they nearly set a world record (Nuguse set the American record).

It was fun to see some other likeable personalities win, like Japanese javelin thrower Haruka Kitaguchi, Venezuelan triple jumper Yulimar Rojas, and South Korean high jumper Woo Sang-hyeok. Most of the winners would make a lap around the stadium with their trophy to take selfies and meet fans. Amber high-fived Woo.

There were some ladies sitting next to us who were former track teammates from college and we had fun cheering together.

We drove back to Beaverton after the meet, avoided parking fees by finding some street parking near the hotel, then walked to an Indian restaurant in a nearby neighborhood where I had some delicious makhani.