Oh man is it going to be a busy September and October around here….I hope Suzanne and I can get through it. This doesn’t even begin to talk about the new school year and Kevin’s courses at the high school (although we’ve made it very clear that a repeat of Algebra II and yo-yo’ing grades is going to get him dropped from extracurricular activities) and Christopher and Matthew’s challenges.
Let’s take it boy-by-boy:
Matthew: We’ve double-rostered Matthew; he will be playing for two different soccer teams at the same time. The TNT U9 team that he is on has started practice and it’s already painfully obvious that Matthew’s footwork is going to take a colossal leap forward this year. Next weekend brings the first soccer games of the year at the year opening tournament here in Lansing.
Christopher: Starting football AND hanging on the soccer team as well. I fear it’s going to be harder to manage Christopher’s conflicts than Matthew’s conflicts…I still don’t know right now when Cpher will practice and the game schedule won’t be out for a few weeks; I vividly remember Kevin’s football coaches being draconian about missed practices and arriving late….if Cpher’s coaches want to take this approach then they are going to watch their offensive and defensive lineman walk out the door. I really hope we can avoid that though.
His first official practices are next week and they start with eight hours of conditioning (no pads, no balls). All the boys got haircuts today and Christopher’s is exceptionally short in preparation for a lot of hot sweaty days next week (more than any other boy, Christopher sweats his head off!)
Kevin: A complete swerve here in the last two weeks…we believed Kevin would be running cross-country this fall. BUT, Kevin has been going down with Ashton to the high school and playing tennis almost every day since he has been back and has decided that he’s going to try out for tennis instead.
We’re not sure at all how Kevin will fare here; it seems a certainty that he’ll play junior varsity this year but even that would be an accomplishment for Kevin…the program here is really really good and they won four state titles in a row earlier this decade. They had some informal practices this week and I watched Kevin for part of one (as I waited to get him to Adrian…) and was really happy to see that he’s actively trying to improve his form and he looked pretty darn good….I watched Ashton and Kevin beat two kids 2-3 inches taller than both of them in a doubles match.
Kevin’s ‘form’ is what caused the end of tennis lessons in the first place; spent a lot of time getting his ground strokes to where they should be and he went somewhere different for lessons one summer and completely reverted back away from that improved form…..and that was the end of time spent on lessons. So, it’s a bit of a shock that he wants to go back to this, but, I guess it shows after all this time that this is what he enjoys the most.
I’ve tried to explain to Kevin that correcting his form now will be a lot like correcting his viola wrist position this year…it’s going to require a lot of effort on his part. Usually, it takes a lot of repetition of this type of message for Kevin to start following through, but, shock of shocks, after watching him for a few minutes on Tuesday, when I get there on Wednesday to pick him up, it’s obvious that when he’s getting a chance to think about his shot he’s trying hard to start his ground stroke with his racket near his shoulders and then looping down and up before hitting the ball. Very happy that he’s doing this…..
He’s going to need to improve his serve a lot; we played a game today (he won 6-3) but he had a lot of trouble getting his serve in. Kevin claims playing me poses him a problem that he usually doesn’t have…he starts laughing as Dad starts yelling as I flail around the court trying to get the ball.
