"This is ten percent luck, twenty percent skill. Fifteen percent concentrated power of will. Five percent pleasure, fifty percent pain. And a hundred percent reason to remember the name."

Guess who took a 3 hour nap at FSU yesterday? I know, a year ago and you might have guessed Jessi Bishop. But not this time- Nico. For real. Little homey slept for 3 hours straight in the afternoon yesterday. You have no idea how much of a win this is. He has been one of those “Half-Hour Nappers”. Oh… the half hour napper. How I don’t miss thee. I remember when I used to teach preschool (the 4-5 year olds) it was always an EPIC battle. Tripp: “Miss Jessi, I am just not tired.”

Me: “Then too bad for you Tripp, because I don’t care if you are not tired. You are not getting up to play with toys. End of story.”

Tripp: “But I am just not tired.”

Me: “Boy! Zip it!”

So I was glad to hear that he slept well. Turns out when he does sleep well, he isn’t Mr. Cranky Pants going to soccer. Which is nice. I rocked out to teen music on the drive down yesterday while Nico looked out the window and wished for the days when he could drive himself and not listen to “Party in the USA” on REPEAT! Sucka!!

We won the district play-in game against Godby last night, 3-0. Yes, that looks like a closer outcome than any other game- but we played well. Nice and relaxed, lots of nice passing, LOTS of shots. Srsly, if it weren’t for their GK, the game would have ended 6-0. She brought her A-Game. I think, top to bottom, this is overall the best team we’ve coached. We have a lot of depth, even with our 5th, 6th and 7th players off the bench. And despite the fact that we are graduating 7 senior starters, I think we’ve got some good soccer ahead of us still. In the past, with Lizzie (our big gun) we were good- we won a lot of games with her, but for the most part, she carried us a lot. Now, I think that our team has a lot more skill- every night it’s someone new that steps up. Sometimes it’s our GK, sometimes it’s our defensive center mid, sometimes our leftback who was converted to a midfielder and then converted back to a left back. Sometimes it’s one of our attacking players. And that is in addition to players who ALWAYS play well (like our center back, center mid and striking attacker).

Still, we are, for the first time since Dave and I have been coaching, playing in the District Championship game (Whoot!!) Of course, I think this is more a function of the fact that our district got a LOT easier when they redrew the districts. But I am NOT complaining. So we host Rutherford on Friday night. Should be interesting. Some of our girls want it pretty bad- which you gotta love.

Looking forward to a leisurely weekend. Hopefully I can get a couple of runs in and work on my dissertation. The problem is, that when you’re struggling just to get to the weekend, it’s hard to be productive- because all you really want to do is sit around and recover from the week. Nico has been eating avocado mixed with his rice cereal all week (well- mostly just avocado- a couple of times guacamole pinch hit for us). Am thinking this weekend of maybe getting some sweet potatoes in the mix. Whoot!