NaBloPoMo 2009 Day 21 -- NAIA playoffs report

So I drove the nearly 4 hours to Pulaski, Tennessee today for the NAIA playoff match between Asbury College and the home team, Martin Methodist College. The drive was a pleasant one, although it would've been spectacular three weeks ago before the leaves fell from the trees.

I arrived about 10 minutes before kick-off -- having learned late that the NAIA had moved the start time up 2 hours. The weather was comfortable: partly sunny with some wispy clouds ribboning the pale blue sky.

The game started quickly for Asbury, with freshman Rebecca Batey putting the visitors on top in the 4th minute on a breakaway. Batey calmly slotting the ball past the MMC keeper. My first thought was that the Eagles scored a little too quickly. But it did seem to settle the women down and confirm that they could play with the 2-time NAIA champs (2005 and 2007).

After the quick start, I took a minute to look at my program, and by "program" I mean the 2 pieces of paper that had the team rosters and team season statistics listed. The thing that jumped out to me right away was that MMC's roster of 23 players included 12 women who were not from the United States. Then, I looked on the field and started matching shirt numbers with names and countries on the roster sheet. All 11 MMC starters were foreign-born. Asbury has one non-U.S. player on the roster, and she's from Canada (a well-known soccer hotbed).

After absorbing the initial blow from Asbury, MMC started to maintain possession of the ball and dictate play a bit. The quality of the MMC players also emerged. MMC equalized in the 16th minute on a corner kick. Poor marking resulted in a powerful header that skimmed off the keeper's hand and cross bar back to another unmarked MMC player to tidy up.

A mere 4 minutes later, MMC went ahead 2-1 in transition showcasing speed and skill. Within another 10 minutes, the home team went up 3-1 on a corner kick doomed by more poor marking. It was clear at half-time that MMC was the more physical squad and were wearing down the Eagles.

The second half was a better half for Asbury, but they did concede a final goal on a free kick in the 70th minute. The kick, from about 25-yards out just to the right of center was taken well. The shot rose and fell into the far left corner. The strike reminded me of many shots I've seem Cristiano Ronaldo take for Manchester United and Real Madrid. Cristiano would've been proud of this one for a couple of reasons: (1) the technique was spot on; and (2) the MMC player was a fellow Portuguese countrymen.

For the rest of the match, the Eagles did a good job playing an offsides trap to foil a number of goal chances for MMC. They sprinkled in a couple of breakaway attempts of their own, but the Martin Methodist squad was never in danger. The final whistle saw the result 4-1 in MMC's favor.

The match is a great stepping stone for the Asbury women's program. This was an eye-opener in many ways. The women now know what it will take to compete at this level. I trust it will push them in the off-season and push them throughout next season as well. They know they need to increase their fitness, their technique, their intensity, and their physicality. I'm excited to see how they respond next year.

But I'm left wondering about the climate in NAIA soccer. The make-up of the MMC team -- especially the starting XI -- is typical of the better teams in the NAIA. Unlike the NCAA, there is no clearinghouse to evaluate the eligibility of the foreign players. If you look at the best men's and women's teams in the NAIA, you will see as many or more non-U.S. players on those squads. This situation has been building since I last played in college. In 1991, Lindsey Wilson was just starting to build its program, but they were doing it with foreign players. At the time, I enjoyed the challenge those players brought, but to say that it has gotten out of hand is an understatement.

Without a clearinghouse, the NAIA teams who want to can field teams of foreign players who may have played in semi-pro situations overseas -- something that the NCAA would never allow. In fact, the NCAA has been known to disallow players who were not paid but who played on club teams with other players who were. I am encouraged to hear that the NAIA will be introducing a clearinghouse that, hopefully, will level the playing field a bit more.

NaBloPoMo 2009 Day 20 -- NAIA women's soccer tournament

On Saturday, the women's soccer team from Asbury College plays in its first NAIA playoff match. This day has been a long time coming. Asbury has won the regular season and conference tournament for four years running in the Kentucky Intercollegiate Athletic Conference (KIAC). However, this is the first year that the KIAC has had enough teams for the winner of the tournament to receive an automatic bid to the NAIAs.

Asbury's coach, Paul Nesselroade, was awarded the conference coach of the year following the team's 14-6

season, including 10 straight wins to this point. Coach Nesselroade takes his squad to Pulaski, Tennessee to face the #7 seed team from Martin Methodist College on Saturday. Nesselroade has been building the program for seven seasons to get to this point. The Eagles senior class has won over 50 games during their time on campus and have worked hard to get to this point. I fully expect their commitment to serve as the foundation of success for years to come.

NaBloPoMo 2009 Day 17 -- Building Windows of Opportunity

I went to an event tonight hosted by my alma mater, Asbury College. The college has begun construction of a new building for the Communication Arts program. The college president spoke about the program's history, where it is headed, and how this new facility will equip students for making a difference in television, radio, journalism, and public relations.

Asbury's communication arts program dates back about 25 years. Over that time span, the college has developed a strong reputation for preparing students to work in broadcasting. The college has trained students for nine Olympics. They help producers and directors. They film Olympic competitions. As a result, networks seek out Asbury students when filling openings.

The original building for the program was designed to house about 75 students in the program. There are over 300 in all of the Communication Arts programs today. The new building will not only accommodate those students but also better prepare them for the fields they enter because they will be working with state-of-the-art equipment.

The college is calling the capital campaign for the new facility, Building Windows of Opportunity. You can learn more about the new building at the Building Windows site. There are several videos that discuss the building, the program, and what Asbury students are doing in their respective fields.

If you know a high school student who is interested in broadcasting, television, radio, journalism, or public relations encourage him or her to take a look at Asbury.

NaBloPoMo 2009 Day 6 -- Who says soccer's not a contact sport?

Many of you have probably seen the video clip of the Mountain West Conference women's semi-finals soccer match between New Mexico and BYU. A New Mexico defender takes physical play to a completely new level. You want your central defenders to be tough and to play a physical brand of soccer. And I can sympathize with the New Mexico player as this back and forth starts. She is marking a BYU forward who gives her an elbow in the chest. This obviously does not sit well with the defender. Her mistake is that she rares back and punches the forward in the top of her back. The situation clearly calls for a forearm in the lower back -- a strike that says "I won't be pushed around by you BYU forward." Message delivered. But no, rather than standing up to the opponent and moving on, the punch to the back is just the appetizer of a 10-course meal of violence. No white table cloths at this affair either. This is like a torch-lit Viking buffet of slabs of meat -- killed and skinned table-side -- and casks of ale. Not exactly fine dining.

For those of you who haven't seen the video of Thursday's match yet or those who can't see it enough times, here it is again:

I was asked today if I ever had my hair pulled like that in a match. I had hair that long in the late-80s, but I never pulled it back in a pony tail. The mullet was sufficient. But no one ever pulled the mullet. (Why would they? At 5'8" no one ever mistook me for Samson.) Plenty of elbows in the sides and back throughout my play in high school and college. I can identify with the emotion that this New Mexico player obviously felt the other day. Not justifying anything she did, but the game gets heated if you care at all about your performance and your team's performance. Emotions can get the best of you from time to time. One particular instance comes to mind when I was a sophomore in college. We were playing our homecoming match. I was playing in the midfield on the wing. An opposing midfielder knocked me down as we were fighting for a ball by the sideline. Then, he stood over me and/or said something unkind. As fast as my shoulder blades hit the ground, I popped back up. In one motion, I stood up and shoved him in the chest knocking him on his back and stood over him. My Old Testament approach got me a yellow card. (The stereotype that the Irish have short fuses is probably based on thousands of similar incidents in towns on both sides of the Atlantic. At least mine didn't take place in a bar in Dublin or South Boston!)

Seventeen years ago . . . .

Seventeen years ago tonight, I was sleeping in a bunk at a Salvation Army camp in Sharon, Massachusetts. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

When Jen and I started at Asbury, the college was still on the quarter system and had been for years. As many of you have likely noticed, during the holiday season, the Salvation Army descends upon malls and shops across the country with companies of bell-ringers. When Asbury was on the quarter system, fall quarter ended the week before Thanksgiving and winter quarter didn't start until after New Year's. This made the Asbury student population perfect candidates for the thousands of bell-ringer positions across this great land. Each fall, the Sallies (as they are affectionately called) came to campus and recruited students for teams in various cities -- Dallas, TX, York, PA, Baltimore, MD, and Boston, MA to name a few. The fall of my junior year, Jen and I decided to sign up for one of the teams going to the Boston area. We signed up for a smaller Salvation Army center in Sharon, MA. I was excited because my parents are from MA, and I had a number of relatives in the area that I had hopes of visiting on off days. At the time, my paternal grandparents lived in the next town over from Sharon.

I was assigned to stand outside a grocery store in Sharon. I came prepared for Boston in December. I had ski gloves -- that provided enough digital flexibility to grasp my assigned brass bell. I had a hat. I had a nice winter coat that had an outer shell to help break the cold winds. And I had long johns and thermal socks for every day of the week. I was prepared.

I was prepared for something other than ringing bells outside in Boston in December. After a few days of relatively mild weather, December in Boston came to reign over me. It took about an hour for my fingers to feel the gloves' inability to withstand the really cold weather. Thankfully, after about a half day of my quixotic stand against the elements, the kind employees of the grocery store invited me inside to stand in the front lobby. Oh sweet warmth of a grocery store entry! The only catch was that I couldn't ring the bell inside the store. That was an easy call. After about an hour of ringing that bell, I wanted to plunge one of those sandwich swords into my ears to make the ringing stop! This would avoid all that carnage. And the guy managing our team of ringers wouldn't care if I was still able to raise money sans bell.

Another funny thing about ringing bells in Sharon, MA is that Sharon is well-known in the Boston area as a predominantly Jewish town. So I received a lot of disclaimers from the Sallies not to expect great donations. I can testify that the warning I received was complete bunk. I raised a lot of money over the course of my weeks in Sharon. In my experience, the Sharonites are a very generous lot. And I was able to strike up a lot of conversations with the employees of that store who saw me come from Kentucky and stand in the frigid air outside their store and then saw me stand in the lobby day after day to raise money for a great organization.

A funny story from our time in Boston that winter: We went out to lunch one Sunday afternoon with another Boston-area team of Asbury bell-ringers. We were ordering our drinks when one from our party ordered sweet tea. The waitress looked at her like she was on crack and responded, "We only have that during the summer." Priceless.

How to write a song

Wouldn't it be nice if there was a roadmap to good song writing? This video may help you in your quest. That is, if your quest is to write a song for a 98 Degrees cover band.

The video is a student production that was entered in the Highbridge Film Festival earlier this year in Wilmore. And it is hilarious! I ate lunch today with the lead "singer" in the video. Funny guy. He is also one of the class sponsors for Marie-Claire's freshmen class at AC. (NOTE: the song is by a band that is no longer performing and has a number of other "not-so-clean" tunes, so I am not including their web address for you. The guys in the video are not in that band. Just clarifying.)

Headed to Wilmore

I am writing from the relatively comfortable seats outside Gate D-35 at the Atlanta airport waiting for my flight to Lexington. For some crazy reason, the powers that be at our alma mater, nominated me to the Alumni Board. The board's fall meeting starts today. What this means is that tomorrow I get to wear a suit around campus and sit in the back at chapel in Hughes Auditorium. The board will be recognized and several hundred students will gaze our way and wonder what they'll be doing when they're as old as that group of people. And I am old because when we were at AC, the women had to wear skirts to class and the men had to wear collared shirts (ah, the days when mock turtlenecks caused a certain level of consternation. Is that a collar or a t-shirt? Do I want to have an argument with this student about the presence or absence of a collar or just lecture about the War of 1812?). Now the kids can wear shorts to dinner in the cafeteria. Shorts people!! In the center of campus! REM was right.

Before I left today, I got to watch Keegan eat his oatmeal. He gave me this cute look. That kid is awesome.

Reunions and the burden of false appearances

OK it's been way too long since my last post. Sorry about that. I've been working on this one for about a week -- hence the backdating. I hope the SEC doesn't inquire about that! [Investment humor? Only DA will laugh at that. I hope.]

Jen and I went to our 15th college reunion last weekend. It's hard to believe that we've been out of college for that long. We went to Asbury College, a small Christian liberal arts college in Wilmore, Kentucky. While we were there, the women's soccer coach asked me to come out and kick around with some of his players on Saturday morning. He has given them a set of challenges they must meet to make the team. Some of them asked him to come out to help them. So I went out there. There were 5 girls out there. They were working on chipping the ball first. They need to chip it 40 yards as one of the challenges. Not an easy task. I was chipping with this girl for a while. She was working up to trying the longer distance. I was standing at the 40-yard distance to show her how far she had to go. She was getting close at around 33-35 yards. Where I was standing, it was a little muddy from the previous day's rain and the regular watering they are doing to reseed the field. On one kick, I went to chip it the 40-yard distance. I knew I would need to give it a little more leg than I had been for the shorter chips. With the mud, my plant foot slipped, and I fell right down on my hip. The girls erupted in laughter. Then they asked if I was OK. I'm sure they're asking me this because I am so old. I give them a hard time for laughing at an old man -- especially because I could've broken my hip in the fall. More laughter. (I'm old, but apparently, I'm funny.) Later, we're getting ready to leave, and one of them points out how dirty my shorts are and asks again if I'm OK. I assure them I'm fine, and tell them I'm just glad that the hip didn't give out on me. More laughter.

We went to school with "kids" from a variety of backgrounds. Some kids went from Christian high schools straight to Wilmore. Others had gone to public schools but found their way to Asbury through their local churches. Some went because long lines of relatives always went to Asbury and that was the only place their parents would pay for them to go.


Being a Christian school, there were certain things that were required of students and certain things that were off limits. We had curfew. We had chapel three times a week. The men had to wear collared shirts to class. The women had to wear skirts unless it was freezing outside and then, pants were permitted. It sounds sort of puritanical. I guess it was (actually mid-way through our time there, the skirt rule got dropped -- so progressive!). But it's not like we had no idea what we were getting into. The college made us read the student handbook and sign a pledge to abide by its terms.


Our reunion got me to thinking about how we all reacted to life in Wilmore when we were in school and after we graduated. Some felt the pressure to do all that was expected and avoid all that was off limits. Others approached it as a challenge to get away with as much as possible. The ones that stand out most to me are those who went to great lengths to look like they were only doing what they were supposed to and avoiding what was off limits. But several stories surfaced during school and after graduation about people who succumbed to the weight of the burden of false appearances. It can be overwhelming to constantly worry about hiding one's flaws.


I don't think that lesson applies only to those with whom we went to college. I think at some point, we've all had those times where we put up a front to protect our reputation or our position. We need to be more authentic about who we are. We aspire to be better. To live a Christ-centered life. But we're not perfect. None of us. Even that person you've always held on a pedestal. You know the one.

The revelation here (for me and maybe for you) is that no one thinks we're perfect. If you have friends who expect you to be perfect or whose friendship is conditioned on you being perfect (or appearing to be perfect), it begs the question whether they're truly your friends. Friends don't care that you screw up or that you get depressed or that you regularly double dip your chip or that you chew with your mouth open (OK they might care about that -- and a friend should tell you to close your freakin' mouth when you're eating!). I would venture to guess that they love hanging with you even more when you let your guard down and reveal your flaws. A lot of people will love hanging out with you more if you're not afraid to show that you have struggles like the rest of humanity. It's hard to ask someone for help when you think they're perfect and don't struggle with life.