Soccer (3)

Last summer was pretty uneventful for me. The being of the summer started off, pretty good. My sister plays on the high school soccer team, and her coach was my coach in high school. So, I volunteer to help the girls out and work with them so they become better players and teammates. I’m not the only person from my class to return and help out. One of my best friends, from high school, who happens to also be an ex girlfriend, comes and we use our collective knowledge, to not only help the girls we teach, but each other also. The main reason we go back is to give back to the program that helped us, but we also have a special task to help the coach get a different perspective on players. The players open up more to us, because we are closer to their age, and have been teammates or helpers for the past 5 or so years, so we get some insight that the coach might not, and splitting up practices is easier with more authority figures.

Soccer (2)

So, I started out a little shaky, as I got use to the indoor rules, and my goalie box. The first shot took at me squeaked by. Getting the worst out of the way I was able to settle down and play decent soccer. After two or three times playing, I was given a complement, as being one of the best goalies, that plays on Friday nights. Over the 6 weeks I’ve played with them on Friday I’ve probably played close to thirty or thirty five games. While I have played that much, I have still yet to break ten goals given up. Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to play the past couple of weeks due to various issues, including a broken thumb from playing intramural flag football with a bunch of buddies from my freshman year. Being the only member of the team allowed to use your hands, a broken thumbs doesn’t work well with being goalie.

Soccer

Ever since I started playing it in high school, soccer has been one of my favorite sports to play. After making varsity halfway through my first year, is where it really got fun. Playing against competition, and having to learn the game at the same time is difficult, since before high school, I knew nothing about soccer. We had a decent team back home, but coming to Northwest I knew there was no team to try out for, so I put aside soccer. Earlier this year, a friend invited me to play with him on Friday nights with a group of guys. Although I do return home every summer to help my sister’s soccer team out, I know I wasn’t going to be as good as I once was. When I got there and saw the guys playing I knew I was in for it, but when no one wanted to play goalie, I sprung on the chance. Over the past summer I had played a lot of street hockey with my church, and goalie was always a strong point for me.

Basketball

Playing basketball is something I have loved doing since about the fifth grade, and since I got to school here, I have played a lot more basketball than I did in high school. I play every Friday at the Rec Center and every Monday at the Horace Mann gym. Both of those events are sponsored by the Navigators. I also am willing to play just about any other time, if someone will go with me. One thing though I hate, is the fact the players have no repercussions that stop them from fouling somebody. Because here, they are just pick up games so you just take it at the top of the key. In organized basketball you get a foul, and the other team gets to shoot free throws, and if you get five fouls you have to sit out the rest of the game. More than one time while playing here, I have took cheap shots in the back on fast breaks, that would warrant a technical foul or even an ejection from the game in organized sports. So I nearly get injured because someone doesn’t have the sportsmanship to play clean, because they know if they alter my shot enough I’ll miss and we have to take it from the top of the key. Which I think is quite ridiculous.

Video Games (Wrestling)

Although they are classified most of the time as sports games, wrestling games such as WWE Smackdown vs. Raw! 2009 to me are in a class by themselves. This ongoing series dating back to the original play station, has got my attention year in a year out. I believe it started way back, when my sister first got me hooked on the television show. Since the first game of the series came out, I have personally owned ever installment in the series. My favorite part of the game is you get the chance to customize your very own wrestler. You can make him look like whoever you want, and do basically whatever moves you want. Then you get to put him in the ring against the WWE stars you see on television every week. Every year, the game comes out with new features, revved up graphics and a variety of other things to keep your attention and make the game worth buying.

Video Games (Shooters)

Although I enjoy playing sports games, on my Xbox360, I also enjoy a variety of other games. Another primary genre of games I play is shooter games. With Halo 3, Call of Duty 4, and Gears of War 2, are my favorites in the class. Halo 3 is a futuristic first person shooter, with a mix of standard guns, and future guns to add a solid mix. The main enemies in Halo are the Covenant Elite, and the Flood. Call of Duty 4 is a realistic first person shooter, mostly with weapons currently in use by the arms forces today, ranging for pistols, to assault rifles to sniper rifles. Here you will be fighting and sabotaging the Russians. Gears of War 2 is a futuristic over the shoulder third person shooter, placing you with weapons of the future, including the infamous chainsaw gun, The Lancer. In this shooter you face hordes of Locust, literally hordes, when you play the new cooperative game type, rightly named Horde mode.

NCAA Football 09 (3)

Now that you know what all your players can do, you have to cut your roster down to 75 players. Sometimes this is no easy task, especially when I had a roster count at 89 pre cut. So you’ve trimmed the fat off your roster, now you get to begin the preseason, and at the beginning of each preseason you get your first glance at this year’s recruits, and can select a few for your target board. Since you have to look the future, the next task is to redshirt players. This takes them out of the depth chart for this year, and next year they return as freshman again. This is helpful, to give the player an extra year of training camp, and also if you have a deep roster and the player won’t play anyways. After that’s done you get to set your depth chart. This is putting the players in order of how good each is by their positions. Finally the last thing for preseason is the custom schedule, where you get to choose non conference opponents to fill the rest of you schedule. Once that’s done you are ready for your next season.