the tindog coffeehouse

It’s still very early into Megan’s first season of playing soccer and my first season of coaching, but already it’s been an incredible experience. Not because of the soccer, per se, but because of the league.

Megan plays in an Upward Sports league, a church-hosted Christian sports program aimed at teaching kids the fundamentals of sports while also ministering to them and teaching biblical values. Players are given positive encouragement and equal playing time, allowing them to develop their skills and have fun without an undue amount of pressure to win. They’re also given recognition for their hard work and contribution to the team, promoting the benefits of teamwork while fostering a sense of individual accomplishment.

Continue reading…

Yesterday, I did the unthinkable. I volunteered to coach my daughter’s soccer team. Which I may have to do by myself with no assistant. And I’m still on crutches with a fractured tibia. And I’ve never coached anything in my life.

I’m an idiot.

In all fairness, though, practice starts in less than a week, and Megan’s team still had no coach. And without a parent stepping up to coach, there’s no team. I couldn’t let that happen. And besides, I got pretty nostalgic thinking about coaching her since my dad coached my soccer team when I was little. (We were the Kongs, as in King Kong. Yeah, we were some bad ass 6-year-olds.)

So here goes, um, something. Good or bad, it’s bound to epic.

Previously:
August, you suck too
Goodbye, July

Boy, it’s hot. This is damn hot. Never got this hot in Brooklyn. It’s like Africa hot. Tarzan couldn’t take this kind of hot.

– Matthew Broderick, Biloxi Blues

I spoke too soon. Yes, I’m glad July is over, but August isn’t turning out much better. First, well… it’s hot. Yeah, yeah, it’s frickin’ August in North Texas, what do you expect? Doesn’t mean I have to like it.

Continue reading…

Hello and farewell
I know I broke your heart
Oh come on July, will you never let me down
Everything I took I would only give it back
If I could

– Jackopierce, “Come On July”

What was July like around our house? This:

Continue reading…

Like a lot kids, I grew up without a father around. My parents divorced when I was six, and my dad moved out of town for work a couple of years later. I still kept in touch with him as I grew up, but it was hard not having him in my day-to-day life. I’ve struggled most of my life to figure out what it takes to be a man, what it means to be a husband and a father. And I think it’s fair to say that at some point in his life, every man wrestles with those same questions, wondering whether he’s good enough or strong enough or smart enough or whatever. The problem is, we don’t really have a good way to determine that.

Continue reading…

On Wednesday I volunteered at my daughters’ elementary school. It wasn’t the first time I had done so, but for some reason I think I was more aware of what I was seeing, a lot of it good and a lot of it really frustrating.

First off, the third, fourth, and fifth grades are in the process of preparing for the TAKS test scheduled for the end of the month. They’ve already spent weeks taking various practice tests and benchmarking tests, and Wednesday my daughter’s third-grade class spent most of their time going back through a recent practice test and correcting their answers. And this pattern will continue for another two weeks. Because the TAKS scores are the very lifeblood of public schools in the state, every school district in Texas obsesses over the test to the point that it seems like they’re more interested in the test scores than in the actual quality of education that those scores are meant to reflect.

Continue reading…