It clicked a little bit tonight

Practice is a wonderful thing. Don't get me wrong, games are obviously the most fun, and the reason for having practice. But I love the way you work and try to get just a little bit better everyday at practice; and then all of those little improvements hopefully add up to a major difference by the end of the year. I often refer to this philosophy as, "Baby Steps." You might be familiar with Baby Steps by Dr. Leo Marvin, played by Richard Dreyfus, in a movie that also featured Billy Murray in arguably his greatest role, What About Bob. (By the way, if you haven't seen What About Bob in a while, go rent it immediately. So much better then this Dane Cook/Carlos Mencia crap that they try to pass off as comedy now a days.)

Every once in a while though, something clicks for a player or for the entire team, and you make a huge improvement in a single practice. That happened tonight. We are considerably better as a team after tonight's practice.

I say this for two reasons: 1) our goalie for this season, Chris Castleberry, is really starting to feel comfortable in the cage. He is making some saves that he just has no business even being involved in. Chris is a 26 year-old freshman, who served in the Marines for 8 years, and is one of the better athletes on the team. He played goalie growing up, but obviously hasn't played for a number of years. He is a mid-semester transfer, and started off his career at USD as a Defensemen. We put him back in the cage after about a week. Thank God that we did! Initially he was doing well, but was considerably rusty. Tonight it clicked a little bit for him. There was a stretch where he got dialed in, and was an absolute wall! It was awesome to watch from the sideline.
I know that he might not be like this every practice, nor every game, but he is such an improvement from what we had last year. The other exciting thing, at the risk of being cliche, he is only getting better. By mid-season, right around the time most of our division play begins, I really think he could be a difference maker for us.

2) we put our new ride, "Costanza," in tonight. It puts an enormous amount of pressure on our opponents clearing team, and fits our teams strengths perfectly. We will get burned a couple of times this year because of it, and will give up a few easy goals. But I believe the risk/reward is absolutely worth it, because the pressure that we are putting on the other team should create numerous turnovers and easy points for us.
I have noticed that most of the top teams in the MCLA have a great ride. Last year we were a good riding team. This year I hope to be a team that is known for the pressure it puts on you, and for how well it rides.

With these two huge strides that the team made tonight, I am even more excited for our scrimmage this weekend. Finally a chance to see how a different opponent will defend the Spread and handle our defenses. We will fine tune our special teams during this Friday's practice, focusing on face-offs and man-up/man-down, and then look to put everything together finally come Saturday.

There are few things as sweet as knowing that you are siting on something special before everyone else does. Just saying it though won't make it a reality, we MUST go out a perform and win big games this year. However, I can say with great confidence, that this team is going to really surprise people. Not only can I feel it, but I see it coming together with each practice. The only possible "roadblock" so to speak, is if the guys on this team will have the mental fortitude to play a full, 60 minute game. Not 40 minutes, not 50 minutes, not 58 minutes. We need to be on our game, playing to our strengths, and running our systems, from the first whistle to the last whistle. Can we do it? It is hard to get a group of mostly 18-22 year-olds to focus on anything. We will see........

4 practices to go before the opening lights at Chapman, got to make sure that we don't have any let-downs, got to keep it going in the right direction.

All thanks and glory to our Creator, and to his son, the Christ