TexasTrack Blog

Yesterday was one of the most exhausting days I've ever had -- at least as far as I can remember since it's been 8 years since my last "first day" at a school. It was also, without a doubt, the most I've enjoyed the first day. The students at North Side High School are great and they jumped right into working hard form the start. My basketball team has me really encouraged. They're tired of losing and seem ready to do whatever it takes to get better and break the cycle of constant losing. I think we're going to have a great time.

Last week I was asked to be the head girls track coach as well. While this is another sport that has been near the bottom, I see some signs of potential in the group. Of course, this is going to make my spring extrememly busy, but I'm excited to be coaching the sport again.

Our thoughts have been with Mary's countryment in Peru as they deal with the horrible tragedy of the monstrous earthquake the central coast endured last week. Fortunately, none of our family was affected. Her sister who lives in the north part of Lima felt only a little shaking, but nothing more in her neighborhood.

I've got a week of inservice training behind me with another week to go before classes begin on the 27th (which also happens to be my birthday). So far it's been pretty interesting and I really like the people I'll be working with at North Side High. The school is a wonderful place and everyone says the kids are great. That's completely different from the reputation the place has, but it seems the only people who talk about the bad reputation are those who aren't there. The staff all seem to love the place and the students.

The one concern is that as of this weekend I still don't have an assistant coach. Hopefully, we'll have someone hired in the next few days. I think I'll have a good assistant, though it's all dependent on if he passed his certification test. We'll know in a couple of days. Keep your fingers crossed.

Last night Peru was rocked by a 7.5 magnitude earthquake. As of about 7:00 this morning there are 337 deaths and maybe thousands injured. Since my wife is from there, we are pretty concerned. Last night she was able to reach her aunt in Cajamarca several hundred miles to the north. All was well there, but the earthquake was centered just south of Lima -- a city of about 9 million. The city apparently was shaken pretty badly.

Mary's sister lives with her family in the northern part of Lima, but we were not able to reach her last night. Telephone and cellular service are reportedly gone so it may be a few days before we hear anything. Of course, we have quite a few friends in Lima, too, and we're very concerned about them, too.

Most of the hard hit areas are considerably farther south of the capital city so hopefully our family and friends were only shaken last night.

Website subscribers will be receiving their first subscriber email next week. In it will be a link to the subscriber home page that will change weekly. I'm going to try to place as much interesting stuff there as possible while still keeping some information (like the schedule) available to everyone. I'm not sure how long it'll be before I make results available to all. Right now it'll probably 1 week later, but I'm considering a 2-week delay.

Since M-F will not be supporting my travel expenses any longer as part of business, I won't be traveling around the state nearly as much as in the past. That means I'll be in the Dallas-Fort Worth area (where I live) a lot more.

There are 3 good meets on August 25 in this area -- Haltom (in Hurst), Southlake, and Greenhill. I'll probably be going to the Haltom meet first. It looks like it will have a pretty solid lineup of teams. Needless to say, with the meet still 16 days away, I am really getting anxious to see some competition!

Yesterday I finished my first two days of teacher in-service training in 8 years. Those of you who are teachers now understand the joys (!) of these days. It really wasn't bad at all, but the two weeks of training that lie ahead may be pretty rough.

I'm in the process of setting things up for website subscribers now. At the start of the season in a few weeks, subscribers will have access to results a lot faster than non-sunscribers. Subscribers will be receiving information about this shortly. I think everyone will be pleased with the new things that I'll be offering on the website, especially in the spring.

One consequence of not being with M-F Athletic anymore is that I won't be traveling to different meets across the state nearly as much. I'll be spending a lot of my time in the Dallas-Fort Worth area (where I live) so you'll probably notice more on-site coverage of that area. Sorry, but until subscriptions really get going, there's no way to afford the travel expenses right now.

You can subscribe to TexasTrack.com at http://texastrack.com/Subsrciptions.htm. Thank you!

With the start of the season less than two weeks away, I am really itching to get to a meet. I'm going to publish a lot more videos of meets in the future -- even some high def videos will be online soon. This is all stuff that I'm really excited about.

As always, please feel free to make any suggestions on what would make the site more interesting to you.

There are big changes coming this year for the UTA Track Clinic. It will no longer be held at the Green Oaks Inn in Fort Worth on the first weekend in January. Instead, clinic director and UTA head coach John Sauerhage is moving the clinic to the Hilton hotel just north of Six Flags in Arlington on January 11-13. Not only will the Hilton be a huge improvement, having it on a different weekend will allow more coaches to attend since it doesn't conflict with Christmas break. Look for this clinic to return to its days as one of the country's premiere coaching conferences.

Did anyoe else watch the Arentina-Peru soccer game last night in the Copa AMerica quarterfinals. Since my wife is a Peruana, I have much greater interest in all things Peruvian. It was really exciting as the less-talented Peru team played great defense to keep the game scoreless in the first half, but the second half was a different story as they were badly outgunned by the superior Argentinian team.

It's been a very busy summer. Mary and I are now married and living happily in my old home in Fort Worth. It took her awhile to get used to it, but we've worked to fix the place up a little better after years of being a bachelor's. (Use your imagination on that!)

We chose the quick route -- went down the the Justice of the Peace office and got it over with.

I won't begin to describe the changes that have come. I've learned that all the humorous stories my friends have told all these years really aren't jokes -- they are things that happen!

Mary has been working hard on learning English. I am very proud of the progress she is making, but she needs a lot more practice talking with others. She is still a little nervous about her lack of language skills, but is a bit more at ease when she's around others.

We've explored Fort Worth and done a lot of cool things with lots more planned for the future. I love to take video of the places we visit and put together DVD's and sometimes post them online. I will be adding videos here occassionally, too.

It's no surprise how my priorities have changed, but some of the other changes have been a surprise. I never thought I'd spend so much time watching Spanish-language novellas (i.e., soap operas) in the evening. Finally I had to put a stop to that and say I can't do this anymore.

Well, after numerous bumps along the way, I'm finally traveling to Peru to bring back Mary Isabel. Right now I'm sitting in the American Airlines' Admirals Club waiting for the next leg of my journey. I'm pretty worn out from the last few days of preparation, especially considering that I almost didn't make the trip.

I was originally scheduled to travel last night, but as I neared the airport something madfe me check my back pocket and I realized that I didn't have my wallet! While I could travel with my passport, I wouldn't have a penny and there was no way to get money without an ATM card or credit card. I panicked because there was no time to get my wallet and make my flight. Fortunately, the lady at American Airlines understood my worry immediately booked me on the next day's flights. She didn't have to do that since the type of frequent flier ticket that I have is for specific days.

So now I have one more flight to Lima and a 30 minute taxi ride in the wee hours of the morning to the hotel where Mary will be waiting (or will arrive soon if I get there early). And in a couple of days we'll return home together. We are both very excited and, surprisingly, we're not at all nervous. We've had a couple of near breakups that have tested us and a long time to decide if this is what we both truly want. Now the long wait is almost over.

I'll write more tomorrow when I get settled in. We're going shopping tomorrow to buy new clothes since they are considerably less expensive in Lima. Her current wardrobe is more for the hot. humid jungle than the temperate climate of Texas.

I’m sorry for taking so long to get this posted after saying I would. I’ve written this twice only to be timed-out and everything was lost!  Aaaarrrghhhh! Anyway…

I spent last weekend serving as meet referee for the Region III-4A and Region IV-1A hosting by Sam Houston State University in Huntsville . This was the fifth time that I worked this meet and it’s possible that this was the best meet I have ever attended in my life.

While I put in 25 hours of work over 2 days, it was nothing compared to the track and field community at SHSU. These men and women worked countless hours preparing for the event. (Remember, they also have a conference championship meet to get ready for this coming weekend.)

Head coach Curtis Collier, assistant coaches Dave Self, Jesse Parker, Adrian Ray, Randy Flach, Clint Blinka, and Charlotte Collier along with the student-athletes at Sam Houston did an incredible job and deserve great praise for hosting both regionals for the first time. Over and over dozens of people came up to me during the weekend to tell me how much they enjoyed the meet and how much they appreciated the work of these men and women.

You can’t have a great meet without great athletes and there were in abundance this weekend. Over and over we saw exciting races and the large, roaring crowd made things even more exciting.

Of course, there are always some interesting folks who show up to advertise their lack of class and ignorance to everyone in attendance. The group of people from Huntsville who felt the need to make sure everyone knew about their lack of character by shouting at officials (including obscenities) were in a class by themselves. Had I actually seen the person who cursed, they would have been escorted out of the stadium immediately. Not being able to identify that person is my one disappointment of the meet. Of course, the person was too cowardly to take responsibility for his words.

One person from Barbers Hill apparently rushed home to write a long letter attacking the character of officials because he didn’t get what they wanted. He called me cowardly because I followed the rules and didn’t have the you-know-what to sign his email! The message was filled with all kinds of hateful personal comments towards the officials, but lacked any facts to support his argument. Cowards do that – attack the person when you can’t defend your argument because of your own ignorance.

Of course, I don’t believe for a second that the writer was a Barbers Hill coach. Despite an understandably highly emotional moment, they were passionate but professional – the same as all the coaches I dealt with. Not much is harder than having to disqualify a team or an individual, but it's a lot easier when I am able to work with coaches who, though disappointed, still handle themselves with class and dignity. I just wish some parents could be be like that.

I honestly went home feeling honored to have been lucky enough to spend a weekend with so many great people who work so hard for the sport – the meet workers, the officials, the coaches, the parents and fans, and especially the athletes.

I've only got about 10 days of single life left! On May 5 I'll be with Mary Isabel again and we'll begin our lives together because then I won't be leaving her behind in Peru. She and I will arrive in the U.S. on May 8. We have to go through customs and immigration, of course, but they have already told me that it's just a matter of getting her arrival paperwork done -- nothing to worry about.

Right now she's high in the Andes again with her mother. She received her university diploma last week (after more than 2 months of trying to get it after finishing her studies) and is ready to be here. I can't reach her right now because her cell phone doesn't work in the mountain village where her family lives and they don't have a telephone. When she called for a few moments yesterday -- calls to the US are very expensive from there -- it was the first time we'd spoken in five days. That's the longest we've gone without talking since we first met. Pretty good considering we live over 4000 miles apart, huh?

Everything is all set now except for the house that is still not ready for her to arrive. A little more work to go with that. Okay...a lot more work, but who needs sleep? That's what I get for putting it off!

I've warned her about the UIL State meet and the thousands of people who will be there and the countless people who want to finally meet her. She's pretty intimidated already because she speaks only a few words of English, but I promised her that everyone will welcome her with nothing but smiles. I haven't told her about the tens of thousands who have seen her picture and know what she looks like. That might be a little too much.

We're both very excited and can't believe that the day that we've worked so hard to reach is nearly here. I can't wait to introduce her to all my wonderful friends.