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.