July 1, 2006

When I left Bloomington, I made it a point to remember my black dress shoes and belt for Joe and Trisha’s wedding. But I forgot my dress pants and shirts. So I needed to get some.

I went to the dentist in the morning; Dr. John Burns made a special trip in for me. No cavities! I need to floss more.

Then I went to the Men’s Warehouse and got some new clothes. My parents and I ate at Ground Round, which is like Applebee’s or that type or restaurant. It was good.

Got back, and went to the wedding reception. It was 6:30 or so when I got there, I figure I’d be major late, but I beat the wedding party. I sat with Brian and Rachel Bostelman, Chad Bostelman and his girlfriend, Nick Sonnenbeg, Nick Dammon, and Christy Frutchey.

I saw Mike Hummer which was pretty neat. He was curious how things were going for me. I filled him in, and I had questions about his vacation in the hurricane and football.

I talked with Ryan Miller and Cara. I have only seen them a few times since getting Riffed at Napoleon. They seemed excited about there August Wedding. I’m going to miss a lot of weddings here in the short future, not because I want to, but because of my new job. Miller, Nemire, and Sicky’s wedding are all during football season and I really don’t see anyway that I’ll be able to go to any of them. But, time will tell.

The wedding was a lot of fun. I didn’t get to carried away drinking, cause I had t drive my ass home. But I had a good time. I talked with a lot of people I haven’t seen in a while. Doug Brown, and yes he was sweating. Hines, Vanny, and Brian Wade. Wade and I had a good conversation. His daughter is 4 now, I am getting fucking old.

I found out that Bachman is probably my only reader of this Blog. I told him he needed a blog if for no other reason to discuss his music interests. He has pretty good taste in music, and most people from his class do not.

There were a lot of younger people at the wedding, people from my first couple years of teaching and coaching. Not really a big deal, but I’m not really friends with these people, because of my professional past. Though it was good to say hello and see how school and stuff is going. Zach Kruse is truly a Kruse and reminds me a lot of Todd. Enough said.

Went up to Rick’s afterward hoping to catch up with Sicky, Jen, and Javan. No Dice. But Kruse, Lininger, and Nemire were there. It was good to hang out a while.

Came home about 2:30 or so. I dropped Chad Williams off on the way. When I got home, I thought maybe Christy Brinkly or Uma Thurman might be in bed waiting for me, but again….No Dice


I’m home until Thursday morning, then back to Bloomington Normal.

June 30, 2006

I got up fairly early, 7:00am. I wasn’t packed. I took me a lot longer to get around than I thought. I think after loading up and eating a quick breakfast I was on the road by 8:30. I got home about 2:30 our time. 5 hours plus and hour in there from Central to Eastern Time Zone. I went to the bank, and to the post office, and made it home. Good to see the family. It was also good to see my dogs.

I took a nap, unplanned, but woke up later and my sister had people over. So I shot the shit with some of them.

June 27 – 29,

After 10 days of camp I took the day off. I slept in and did nothing. I just was a bum all day the first day back.
Then I went to the Shirk, there wasn’t much to do. So I would go in at noon or later. I got back into a lifting routine, and I have been playing a lot of basketball. I’m really bad at shooting, I always have my elbow everyway but under the ball.

I watched some tape, and took some notes. I’m looking forward to coming home this weekend.

June 22 – 26, 2006

Thursday was our travel day. We traveled from Bloomington to Grand Rapids, Michigan. We met at Coach Eash’s house. It was the first time I had been there.

Brian Steiner and Mike Goodwin came with us.

On the way there there were two drivers, since Steiner was coming. I rode with Coach Eash. He listens to terrible music, or rather stuff I don’t care for. So I high jacked the radio with my ipod. We listened to some good stuff. He liked most of it, told me to get rid of the “Acid Rock” a couple of times. 5 hours went pretty fast. That’s pretty good for being the first long trip spent with the boss.

Grand Valley is a beautiful campus. It is very large. It is spread out too. 25,000 or so probably go there. It used to be a large commuter school, but that is changing. The football facilities were awesome. There only going to get better too. They are going to build an indoor facility in the next year. Pretty amazing for a D2 school, but they have one 3 National titles and played in 4 games during the last 5 years. That is impressive no matter what level.

The dorm we stayed in was very nice. It was a quad, with a community living room and kitchen. I really liked it. I would like one for my apartment.

Registration was sort of a nightmare. My master spreadsheet was corrupted, so the data printed out all wrong. People who had paid owed and vice versa. Thank fully coach Brockelbank of GVSU had a backup. Otherwise, we would have been in deep shit.

Camp went well. I had a stay group, which means my guys didn’t practice both Defense and offense. This is great for a couple of reasons. One, you get a lot more one on one time for teaching and drilling. The second, I only had 13 evaluations to do instead of 26 or so.

My group was older, but there was not many who had a lot of game time experience. I think they did well. I really like my group. A couple of kids really stood out and were great leaders. A couple others stood out too, but for other reasons. During registration, one kid wrote so bad I took his card from him and wrote myself, of course I got this guy. He was big and strong, but soft and didn’t seem bright. Turns out the guys was pretty smart, just had some problems mentally. I felt kind of bad.

As far as games were concerned, we struggled. The kids couldn’t remember there plays, and that hurt us. We scored a little more often, but again didn’t earn a W.

Coach Alexander gave me shit, and a lot of it. But I think he liked me. I think he like all of we Wesleyan coaches. He invited us to go to training camp in Cincinnati for the Bengal later in July.

Michigan camp was run a lot loser than Illinois. It was that way probably because it wasn’t on our campus. A lot of the coaches were former players or cronies of Coach Al’s. You could tell Coach Eash was a little upset at times about the looseness of camp.

Grand Valley had good food, but not near as good as Wesleyans. I enjoyed a real cappuccino every night for supper. They also had great pizza.

The Coaches party was a lot of fun, we played Euchre. Coach Al and his daughter won. He put up a $100 prize, but Steiner and I fell short.

I met so many coaches over the last two camps, I’ll bet 30 something. I started a database, for future use. I really like Coach Tom Riva and Jeff Hancock. Riva is with the arena football, Grand Rapids Rampage, and Hancock just left GVSU for the OC job at Adrian.

The coaches were all a lot of fun, and I learned a lot.

Steiner went back to Ohio. He is coaching at Dayton. So Goodwin rode with Coach Eash and I back to Bloomington. We drove through Chicago on the way home. Traffic was pretty bad because of construction. I will avoid it at all costs until it is done. But I think, I could cut off another hour or something if I could drive 80/90 all the way to Interstate 55.

June 18 - 21, 2006

Camp at Illinois started on Sunday. It is the Midwest Elite Lineman camp. We probably had just shy of 200 high school players there.

We started off with a staff meeting. I met a lot of coaches. Coach Paul Alexander, who is the Bengals Offensive line coach, is the co-chair of the camp with coach Eash. He brought with him three players; Andrew Whitworth, Nate Livings, and Jesse Boone. Whit was a 2nd round pick out of LSU. He is a freak of a person, absolutely enormous.
Livings and Whit were from LSU, and Boone from Utah. Livings and Boone were free agent pickups that were not drafted, but Paul thinks they will all make the team, especially giving the circumstance that they will have two free agent all star lineman at the end of the season.

I talked to Livings the most at registration; he seemed really interested in knowing about high school football and coaching.

I got to know some of the other local coaches pretty well. Coach Chris Patton, DL, from ISU, and some local HS guys, Rich Baldwin and Duane Thoennes. I talked about the 3-5 and the differences between Ohio and Illinois HS football. There were a lot of other guys as well, Coach Murray and Brian Steiner were the other D line guys.

I met the guys that Jared and I replaced. I knew Jeff Voreis, but Didn’t think I knew the other guys, Matt Traxler and Brian Steiner. I spoke to Steiner before I accepted the job at IWU. He is a good guy and I picked his Brain a lot during camp. It turns out that I had actually met Traxler before. He used to live with Rickenberg. They played together at Tiffin.

We did three practices a day for camp. We had meetings and all that. Players were divided up into groups. My group was very rough. They were all young. I think the oldest was a sophomore. Most were Freshman or Junior High. I got pretty frustrated at times. We played a continuing game, sort of lineman only football against the other groups, I went winless and took a lot of crap. But everyone realized that my group was young and inexperienced. We took pride on not quitting and scoring a few times.

Halfway through the camp we switched groups. I got guys who wanted to play both O and D, that were with an Offensive coach the first half of camp. This group was much more enjoyable to coach and a lot easier too. They were mostly upperclassman.

Coach Alexander told me that he would have quit if he had had my group. I’m not sure if he said this to get my to feel better or if he was serious, but I did feel better.

Camp was great. I ate well on the dining hall food. I really enjoyed hanging out with some of the guys that I replaced. We went to Mulligans one night. They had mason jars that were filled with long islands. Tasty! Long Islands are probably my favorite mixed drink. I love them.

The last night we had our coaches party at Scooners, the place reminded me of Wriglyville. It had a grat outdoor patio and had decent wings. We had a good time.

When camp ended, I helped clean stuff up and load stuff up for our next camp at Grand Valley State.

June 17, 2006

I entered more data for the camp. I printed off rosters etc. for camp.

Put on the pads for the sleds and got final stuff ready for camp. Short day as far as work is concerned.

I went to the grocery as well. I seem to go to Meier a lot. They have the cheapest Milk. I also go to Aldi, for the little stuff.

June 16, 2006

Coach Eash and I went to Sam’s Club, an extension to Wal-Mart. We picked up a lot of things for camp. We bought more Gatorade to sell at the store as well as some candy bars.

I got pads out and boards too.

I haven’t written on here in a while so I’m trying to remember as I type this.