Another State Tournament

  Jan and I spent a weekend in Buffalo, Minnesota attending our Grandson Sam's fourth grade basketball teams domination of their division. They ended the season undefeated and took the championship with determination and hard intelligent play. Their team shows the benefit of good players, good coaching, and a close group of kids who want to work hard at their craft. To have seen them last year and this, the improvement and co-ordination of the players was absolutely amazing. My brother Phil and his wife Laura had not seen them this year before last Saturday and were wowed by the level of play. One thing that I can't quite get over, is watching them play to the level that they do, running plays, passing the ball and fast breaks, to, when they are off the court being a bunch of not so regular 10 and 11 year olds. Jan and I were sitting with Gen and some parents and fans between games, and what were the members up to? Lying on the floor working math problems! Anyhow we spent Saturday night at Phil and Laura's house, which is a ten minute drive from the games' site at the Buffalo Senior High School. I think that the school had 8 basketball courts, and it looks as if more are under construction. Sam plays for the Lourdes team out of Rochester and probably will continue right on up through High school. I don't know if it is karma or what but it was Lourdes that beat Gen's St, James team for the State Championship in 1994 and now her sons will probably play for them. Our other Theobald grandson, Gus and I were watching one of the games and I pointed out Sam and his teammates on the floor and said "that's you next year", he wasn't so sure, but we'll see. One thing that helps is that their main coach, Scuba and Tom Week also coach, is the Lourdes high school coach too, so they could play together right through high school.

I have thrown in a few photos from the games. I shot a lot of frames over the 2 days, but for some reason the sport setting on my camera evidently is not working, as it should have stopped action but did not, so most of the half way good ones that I got were when nobody was moving. Being around this group of young men the last couple of years has somewhat restored my faith in the future. In the top photo, Scouba is in the upper right, and Sam, his son, is right below him. After the games Jan and I headed home in a snow storm that steadily got worse the closer we got to home. The last 35 miles were white knuckles at maybe 30 miles per hour. On Monday I had to get the trusty snow blower out to move 6-8 inches of snow out of the way.

   On another note. Rachel e-mailed wondering if I had any photos of Joe playing basketball from when we were out there in Burke. I do, but the photo to e-mail procedure has changed again so I finally gave up trying to attach photos to an e-mail. Let's see if I can get lucky now? I actually got a short video to down load. Here are a couple of photos of grandson number one, Josiah DeFor, he's number 22. In the photos above, Sam Theobald is 23. So that about does it, although I have been working on a model of a Ducati Panigali 1199. This is the most intricate plastic model I have ever tried to assemble bar none. I figure, rather that coughing up huge dough for the real thing I would build the model and park it on the baby grand in the living room. Our 94 900 SSCR spent the first winter in our bedroom in front of the patio door. It was nice to look at the first thing in the morning, you know, bright red in the morning sun. So that about does it for now. Lemme know if you read this OK?

Needless to say it ain't done yet.