.: A Fun...yet long day

We met this morning at the school at 11:00am and when I walked in my house this evening the clock said 10:01pm. My love and apologies to my beautiful wife and daughter for not spending much time with them on a rainy Saturday... Back to the golf: We teed off in the rain and pretty much played in it throughout. Other than the rain, it was a very comfortable afternoon. Russ had to play 5 man today so he could get done early due to another All-Star game this evening (more on that later). He had trouble getting it going on the front and struggled his way around to a 43, capped by a triple bogey on 9. He played much better on the back, firing a 38 to finish with a respectable 81. That tied him for 6th overall. Glick had 45 on the front with 2 triples and a double. That's 8 over on 3 holes and just 1 over on the other 6 for those of you scoring at home. On the back he had a 42 to finish with an 87. Not bad. Aaron Neumeyer had a solid round finishing with an 89. He did just what I asked him to do: avoid the big numbers and be consistent. Several doubles inflated his score a bit. So if those get reduced to just bogeys, he'll be able to lower his score even more. Taylor had a tough day. Too many 7's on the front and a rough finish did him in. He ended up with 92. He'll get it back this week with just a little practice on his short iron approaches. Tegan, aka "The Sand Man" got off to a tough start. Recovered a bit on the front and then struggled again on the back. It was a great learning experience for him, however, on a difficult course-one that will punish you for even the slightest mistake.

Team total: 349. That earned us 7th place out of the 9 teams that were there. 9 very good teams from all over the state. It wasn't our best performance, but again one that I am confident we can learn from. We are undoubtedly a contender in this area. Showings like this where we don't play even close to our best but still finish with a respectable total show just how far we've come and how much further we still have to go. We were only 3 strokes out of finishing 5th. The theme I'll take away from this one:
FOCUS ON EVERY SHOT. THE NEXT ONE IS ALWAYS THE MOST IMPORTANT. WE CANNOT ALLOW OURSELVES TO GIVE AWAY STROKES TO OUR COMPETITION. THE BETTER WE BECOME THE TIGHTER OUR MATCHES ARE GOING TO BE.

After the tournament and eating a nice dinner at Sycamore, we stopped by St. Francis on the way home to watch Russell play in the Nancy Reahm All-Star game. I guess walking over 5 miles around Sycamore was a good warm-up for Byrd because he was lights out in the game. He led the Indiana All-Stars over the pitiful state of Ohio (that was for my wife) scoring 25 points en route to MVP honors. Not a bad day. I'm thankful everything worked out and Russ was able to do both events.

Pictures from Today: Thanks again to my father/assistant coach for providing the photos...