Showing posts with label Frisbee. Show all posts

Athletic Director - 1 Week In

This semester my "job" at the seminary is athletic director.  Last semester they had everybody write down their top three offices that they would like to do the next semester, and one of the ones I picked was athletic director.  Basically, my job involves coordinating sports around the seminary.  So I'm in charge of announcing when we are doing something as a seminary (there is a good bit of land around Bruté so we will play football/frisbee/soccer, just as a seminary, pretty frequently), and my job also includes organizing for inter-mural or inter-seminary sports (like the soccer tournament at St. Meinrad or inter-mural football at Marian).  Anyway, I really enjoy getting out there and playing sports with the guys, so this job (I think) will be an absolute blast; yeah, there is some organizing to be done, but I'm still really looking forward to it.  That certainly isn't what I wanted the whole post to be about, so without further ado - my first week as athletic director:

During the orientation days (Friday/Saturday last week) there was very little time to get any sports organized.  We had a pretty packed schedule on Friday  and on Saturday  when we went to the lake for the afternoon, there wasn't a good spot to get anything going.  Thus, it wasn't until last Sunday that I organized my first seminary athletic event.  Of course, with 40+ guys it is hard to come to a consensus on what sport to play (football and soccer usually are the top two choices), so I went with the obvious choice, and said we'd do both.  Sunday afternoon came, I trotted outside in my cleats and nobody was there.  I went back inside for the soccer goals and tried to find guys to come out, and nobody was around.  Great, the first athletic event has next to nobody there, and isn't any fun...  Anyway, finally about 8 guys were outside and I quickly realized that there was no way that we would have enough interest in football and soccer.  More guys were wanting to play football, so that was the game we started.  I was fine with either game, but I had promised some guys that we would get a soccer game going on Sunday, and now that wasn't happening.  Anyway, to my delight, 5 minutes later another half dozen people showed up and we had enough to play both sports after all.  The soccer game was a lot of fun!  Of course, since I hadn't been running much this summer I slowed down to a more moderate pace after about 10 minutes, but we probably ended up playing for an hour or two.  I worked up two enormous blisters on my feet (which weren't as painful as they looked).  A lot of the guys are pretty good at soccer; I can't wait for the Meinrad tournament in October, we just might be able to win it this year.  (Last year we lost in a tie-breaker shootout in the final.)  

Anyway, the second opportunity for me to act as athletic director occurred on Friday.  In years past, Friday has been the usual day for the seminarians to get together and do something athletic.  Thus, as the illustrious athletic director, it is my job to make sure everybody knew that this was happening and do my best to drum up interest.  (Thankfully, this early into the year most guys don't have a ton to do, and most are somewhat enthusiastic about getting out and doing some sports.)  The sport of choice for Friday was football (the two touch variety).  I did manage to catch a few good passes, but I have found that I am usually more effective on defense in games like football or ultimate Frisbee than offense.  I am fast enough to typically keep up with people, where I have  a decent chance to block them, but it is harder to get open on offensive because I am not particularly tall.  (Though I am happy to note that there are probably 4 people shorter than me at Bruté this year).  Actually, this game was really funny because on several different occasions the ball would be knocked out of the air by the team I was on (great defense right!) but then, somehow, it would fall into the hands of one of the players on the other team who had been knocked down in the struggle for the ball.  They had an overabundance of luck I suppose...
OK, onto yesterday's sporting event: the ultimate Frisbee tournament.  Last year, Ultimate Frisbee was a spring-semester sport (at least, that was when it was organized, not just spontaneous), but this semester I guess they are trying to do something in the fall.  Anyway, somebody set up a tournament for this past Saturday, and being the dutiful athletic director,  I was oblivious to this event until Kevin told me this past week (thanks Kevin!), I guess I have to read the Marian emails now, bummer... 

 Nevertheless, I announced it at the house-meeting on Wednesday, got a list of guys who were interested, picked two guys to be captains, and created a list of guys for each team.  I really did try to make the teams even, but I don't know how successful I was at that enterprise.  Not only did I have very little idea of who was good out of the new guys, but it is just really tough to match guys up who have similar skill levels, they are just all so different.  

Kevin, Zach, Dominic, and Andrew playing some ultimate

Anyway, skipping any further superfluous rambling, we showed up at 2 PM and Sam's team (the one that I was on) was slotted to play the first match.  There were 4 teams from different groups at Marian and 2 from Bruté.  We ended up getting an early lead, and from then on it was a pretty easy game.  We had several very good Frisbee players (both old and new), and I ran around enough to keep at least one person from the other team on their toes.  (OK, I got a few somewhat important short passes, but that was about it.)  - Win 6-1. 
Leaping catch by Matthew
After that game, the other Bruté team (Kevin's team) took the field. This game was very close throughout, with the two teams swapping the lead every minute or two.  It was a close game, and Bruté again had a lot of talent on the field, but the clock ran out in the other team's favor. - Loss 5-4.  

Kevin launches the disk around a determined defender
Game number 3 was the first Bruté team against a remaining Marian team.  Both teams had already played a game (and had a rest), so from that standpoint it was pretty even.  Also, this team was quite good, and it was a battle to the very end.  Time ran out (quickly, remember these are only 20 minute games), and it was now a next-score-wins situation.  We got the Frisbee after the other team had taken it down within maybe 10 yards of our end zone.  We quickly worked it up the field and I had the good luck to get away from my defender and catch a short pass to get the game winning score.  It was my only point of the day, but I was pretty happy with it.  I also had a diving catch in that game (But it didn't go anywhere because the Frisbee  was intercepted/blocked on my next throw.)  Anyway, that was probably our best game - it was close, but we were working together well, and everybody was giving everything he had.  Good times!  Win 6-5.
Bruté pushes down the field
The other Bruté team having been unfortunately eliminated, it was up to Sam's team to keep up the honor of the seminary.  Unfortunately, we were up against the team that had previously beaten them, plus we had just played our 2nd game, they had had a break after playing 1 game.  Nevertheless, after a 10 minute break, Bobby and the Red Rockets (our impromptu team name) stiffly took the field.  I was pretty tired, and the heat wasn't helping matters, but the rest of the team played really, really well.  We took a lead, the other team got frustrated, and scoring with only a few seconds left, we won the tournament final 5-3.  Yes!
There you have it folks, a little bit about my new position, a bit about soccer, a bit more about football, and a lot about Frisbee.  I think I will enjoy being athletic director a lot.  There is an enormous amount of talent (in all kinds of sports) at Bruté, and I am starting to find that I can be (a little bit) effective at games other than soccer.  I think basketball will still be a stretch, but, I think I just might be able to be decent at everything else.  (This is something that is sorta necessary for the athletic director...)

Thanks to Sam for the pictures, and all the other guys for all the effort that they put in - you guys did the seminary proud!  Oh, and thanks Zach for reminding me that I hadn't mentioned you on my blog yet - I remembered.
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Last Sunday at Home

Well, as I have said before this summer has been absolutely flying by.  I guess I will have to have a post here later about the upcoming semester, but for now I'm just going to let you know what has happened today.  As always, there is something to be learned from everyday life.

estimated duration, I didn't have a watch (probably a good thing)
This morning dad and I went for a run - well, dad went for a run, I went for something more resembling a crawl.  Dad chose this particular route the goes from our house and then hits the hills - and they never stop...  We (as always) blew through the first mile.  Dad has this nifty GPS running watch and at one point it said that we were hitting a 6:15 min/mile.  Anyway, that didn't last long.  I guess I figured that I was in OK shape - sure I hadn't ran that much this summer, but I wasn't out of shape by any means.  If I could run 13 miles on flat terrain back in May, certainly 5 of 6 miles on hilly terrain would be doable, right?  (wrong)  After a few hills I started slowing down and dad slowly pulled away.  On the last mile I was pretty worn out (even with the slow pace) and my feet hurt (because I just got a new pair of shoes), and my pride hurt (because dad was nowhere in sight), and so I stopped to fix my shoes.  That pause was just about to the top of the last big hill, so I was looking at somewhat more flat trek to get home (still a bit uphill, but getting easier), and I, for whatever reason, thought about martyrdom and how (being the humble person I am) I figured that I'd have the courage to be a martyr.  Then, as I should have expected, my next thought was like "could you even run all the way home?" - Of course, I didn't hear a booming voice from Heaven or anything, but I certainly knew that God was challenging me (in a tiny way).  With that in mind, I forced myself to run all the way home; yeah it hurt, but there was no way I was stopping (God has a sense of humor too, the lights all were green).  So I found two things out during the run, I'm not in as good of shape as I thought, and I'm also not as humble as I need to be.  I guess that I'll be working on both those deficiencies during this coming semester.

Moving on:  Mass today was beautiful.  As you may know, I frequently attend the Extraordinary Mass at St. Rose.  Fr. Fromageot, who recently moved in as our assistant priest, was (so I have been told) previously the schola director at the FSSP's seminary in Denton NE.  Either way, he has a wonderful voice and knows how to use it.  Fr. Devillers said Mass at 11:00 AM this morning, so Fr. Fromageot was able to assist the choir.  It was incredible the amount that the choir improved with a little coaching before Mass and Fr. Fromageot's extra voice pulling them all together.  Kudos to all of them!  Father is having a "chant workshop" on Wednesday that I may squeeze in before heading back to Bruté on Thursday.  Should be interesting (and challenging). 

This afternoon the family (and I) went out to Siloam Springs, a state park 30-40 minutes from Quincy.  We had a delicious picnic, threw a Frisbee around for a while, did a short hike, cracked some incredibly bad (but very funny to us) puns, and overall had a wonderful afternoon.  What can I say, I love being home with the family, but at the same time I look forward to being back at seminary.  Really can't beat life right now - I have a blast when I am at home, and I have a blast when I am in seminary.  God has blessed me so much!

I hope all your Sunday's were fantastic - mine was!  If you would though, say a quick prayer for an intention of mine.  Thanks!
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A Finals Week Update

Well folks, it is now the last day before finals week, and I really don't feel like studying so I decided to do a blog post.  This is another one of those boring "what's going on in my life" posts:

Last week was somewhat busy.  I had some homework due (not too hard) and the infamous Shakespeare paper.  Anyway, I eventually made it through everything with some late nights.  Unfortunately, that left me with a mild cold for the last few days - ah, well, I can sleep in a week.  Yesterday, I ran the mini-marathon (all 13 miles!), and had a tough, but fun, time.  Later that evening I went out to dinner with (mostly) the Springfield guys.  Mark was here from Meinrad, so we wanted to do something before he went back this morning.  Then we briefly came back to Bruté before some of us went downtown, got some ice-cream, and then went over to St. John's where they were having a party thingy.  We listened to the music for a little while (a really wide range of music was played) and then came back here.  It was kind of funny; we had six guys, so I drove and we all squeezed in my car - it was tight, but that added to the excitement...

Anyway, today has been a bit more laid back.  I slept like a log last night (something about running 13+ miles does that to you), and got up around 8:30.  I led Morning Prayer (I've been the prayer leader for the entire week), and I got nearly everything spot on today.  A lot of guys went out to eat for breakfast/lunch, so the ones that were still here (myself included) made a bacon/ground-beef concoction.  It actually turned out pretty delicious!  This afternoon was really slow, I managed to get next to nothing done studying wise - procrastination has struck again...  At 5 we had a Frisbee game, which we had to play in the poor (60, windy, drizzly) weather.  We didn't play as well as we should have and lost.  I should have thrown myself into it more, but my legs were protesting a bit, and I was feeling sort of lazy.  Anyway, I am now going to go to Adoration, get a grace boost and then hit the books.

Tomorrow at 8 AM I have my theology final - unfortunately, my grade is barely above an A, so I need to pretty much ace this test (bummer).  Then I have the Shakespeare final at 3.  I haven't started studying for it yet - the paper burnt out my appetite for Shakespeare.  On Tuesday I have my Sociology final at 8AM and a take home final due in Ethics at 2.  Once again, I'm behind - haven't started either...  Last, but not least, I have my final in Asian Philosophies on Wednesday at 10AM (shouldn't be too hard), and my take home final is due in Catholic Music on Thursday.  So, there you have it.  I have a good final week schedule and still have managed to get behind on everything.  If I had to guess I'll be up late tonight studying Theology, and then it won't be too bad.  Either way, I'll be done in 3ish days!

I'll have to do a post on how the year in seminary has been overall (great!) at some point.  Probably, it will show up later this week...  I also hope to have some more spiritual style articles up at some point.  I have about 5 spots in my breviary marked that were good lines/bits, and other stuff written on scraps of paper just waiting for me to devote some time to them.  Ah, well, that's the end of the semester for you. 

and just because it is a cool picture of the race yesterday:
The 1st place wheel-chair racers yesterday finished in the incredible time of 45 some-odd minutes
almost 20 minutes faster than the first place runners and almost an hour ahead of me...
- thanks to Corey for the picture
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Weekend Recap - 4-28-13

I hope these recap things aren't getting boring.  I'm trying to give you guys a picture of what happens in seminary, and this is the easiest way to do that.  The blogs on spiritual-type stuff take longer to put together because they generally require at least a little bit of research.  I have some good ideas for this type of article, but haven't finished any yet.  Anyway, this weekend has been quite fun!

Yesterday the sophomore service group (the sophomore seminarians, myself, and a guy who will be entering Bruté in the fall) got up for an early Mass (7 AM vs. the normal 9:30), graciously said by Fr. Bob.   Then we quickly changed and slammed down a few donuts (which were a nice start to the day!) before heading over to the Indianapolis St. Vincent de Paul Society around 8:00 AM.  The first part of the day was a program called beggars for the poor.  This entailed packing a truck full of food and clothes and then distributing them to the homeless in downtown Indianapolis.  We probably worked for about 30 minutes carrying around crates of soda, sorting/folding clothes, and getting stuff on the truck.  

Around 9:00 AM we got to the parking lot where the beggars for the poor program happens.  By the time we got there, there were already some people set-up and already a good number of homeless people waiting.  Last time we did this (last semester), I was on the food line and handed out buns for the chili dogs.  This time I wondered the crowd, talking a little bit with the people and giving away small food things.  I first gave away bags of different kinds of nuts (salted/honey-roasted peanuts, and cashews) - those were easy to get rid of.  Then I tried my luck at the orange-cracker-peanut-butter-thingies, which fewer people wanted, but I eventually gave away all of them.  Then I gave away these bracelets that we had (the rubbery kind) that said "Mother Mary Pray for Us".  I thought it would be all but impossible to give them away, but that was not the case.  I don't know if the people just liked bracelets, liked the phrase on them, or whatever, but they went like hot-cakes (actually, that's a pretty bad analogy because the cornbread muffin things - basically hot-cakes - were impossible to get rid of).  One guys actually took about 10 of the bracelets and said that he would give them out to his friends!  Anyway, around 10:30 or so we finished giving out the food/clothes and the crowd was beginning to disperse.  We chatted with a few of the people left, heard their stories, and then headed back to the St. Vincent De Paul Center.

For the next hour maybe we helped out in the back of the center sorting, folding, and hanging clothes that they would give out over the week.  All the people were really joyful and enthusiastic about what they were doing.  They were also very happy to see the 9 of us helping out (they usually have 2, so we sped up the process a lot).  After we finished everything they had for us to do, we went over to Hardees and got some lunch.  I got the $5 bag lunch, which came with 2 burgers, fries, a cookie, and a drink - I usually wouldn't have ordered that much, but all the other meals were $5+ and only came with one burger, and I couldn't pass up the good deal.  (It was pretty good, and I think I burned it off as you will soon see...)

After lunch we headed back to the St. Vincent De Paul.  It is located in this pretty cool old building, and we now headed back to where the loading docks were.  There were several big rooms attached to this area with different assorted stuff in each - one had fridges, one stoves, one couches, one tables, etc.  There was a mix of different stuff we did here; some involved unloading trucks of stuff and organizing it among the different rooms, and the other major work we did was taking stuff from the different areas and loading it up in people's cars (who need it).  We had a blast doing it all, like the Beggars for the Poor program, it really felt like we were helping these people.  Plus, whenever there weren't trucks to be unloaded, or vans/cars to be loaded, we enjoyed checking out the many different pieces of furniture   We found folding rocking chairs (cool), a massive couch (literally, a foot bigger on every side than a normal couch!), a super-comfy recliner (I almost fell asleep in it), and a rocking lazy-boy (yeah, pretty awesome).  Let's just say that we had a great time!  (we finished around 2:45 PM)

Saturday afternoon, after returning from the sophomore service stuff, I worked on the Shakespeare paper of doom.  OK, so it's not that bad, but I spent hours watching plays on YouTube while reading/making notes in the book.  I finally took a break and said Evening Prayer, it was so peaceful in the chapel, and while praying about it I finally got an idea for a thesis of my paper (prayer works folks!, I had been wrestling with that for days...).  Anyway, I got a few paragraphs assembled and then was pretty tired of Shakespeare, so I went out with a few guys to get some food.  We went to a place called Nick's Chili, which had a great selection of different chili-related food (chili, cool hot-dogs, burgers, fries...).  I ended up going with the 5-way chili (I guess it's called "5-way" because it has chili, beans, noodles, cheese, and onions).  It was fantastic!  Totally recommended!  I don't remember anything all that awesome happening Saturday evening, I guess I just hanged out with the guys, but I got to bed at a reasonable time (10 PM-ish).

This morning, we didn't run because one of the guys wasn't available, so I got to sleep in until 8:30 (It was wonderful).  Mass was great, I was concentrating relatively well, and the songs that Daniel chose were awesome (it included my all time favorite "Jesus Christ is Risen Today!").  After Mass the Frisbee game that was supposed to be played today (at Marian) was rained out, so I just hung out until lunch.  Today it was done by the Bruns family (Corey is one of the bloggers I mentioned before); they made shrimp and chicken Alfredo (fantastic), Caesar salad (my favorite), fruit salad (wonderful), and two kinds of desserts: fruit and chocolate trifles (you know the kind where there is pudding/whipped cream/fruit/whatever else all in a bowl - yeah these were spectacular).  Better yet, there is a ton of leftovers, so tomorrow's dinner will be just as good.


After lunch about a dozen of us went out behind Bruté and played ultimate Frisbee for about an hour and a half.  It was a blast!  Not only was it a ton of fun, but I felt great the entire time.  All the running that I have been doing has given me a ton more stamina than I had before.  I didn't feel incredibly tired at any point.  Corey took some pictures which I embedded below.  Anyway, after that, I said mid-day prayer, took a shower, and then had dinner. Today was one of the few days where we actually had 2 community dinners (in one day), which was absolutely fantastic.  For dinner the Stenges cooked (Anthony is a wonderful cook and apparently it runs in the family because their dinner was phenomenal).  They had Caesar salad (twice in one day - yeah!), cheesy-hash-brown-bake-stuff (tasty), and pulled pork (anything with bbq sauce is like my favorite food, so this was awesome).  Finally, for dessert they had apple crisp a-la-mode (it was fantabulous).  


OK, well I guess I'll wrap this up (I've just about ran out of adjectives).  After dinner I took a short nap and then went to the Holy Hour.  We said the rosary as a community, I said Evening Prayer by myself, and then read some of Pope Emeritus Benedict's book, Jesus of Nazareth - Part 1.  Let's just say that it was superb.  I'll end with an excerpt: (page 129, chapter 5) - 

The other false form of prayer the Lord warns us against is the chatter, the verbiage, that smothers the spirit.  We are all familiar with the danger of reciting habitual formulas while our mind is somewhere else entirely.  We are at our most attentive when we are driven by inmost need to ask God for something or are prompted by a joyful heart to thank him for good things that happened to us.  Most importantly, though, our relationship to God should not be confined to such momentary situations but should be present as the bedrock of our soul.  In order for that to happen, this relation has to be constantly related back to it.  The more the depths of our souls are directed toward God, the better we will be able to pray.  The more prayer is the foundation that upholds our entire existence, the more we will become men of peace. ... This orientation pervasively shaping our whole consciousness, this silent presence of God at the heart of our thinking, our meditation, and our being, is what we mean by "prayer without ceasing."  This is ultimately what we mean by love of God, which is at the same time the condition and the driving force behind love of neighbor.
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2 Weeks to Go

Well folks, I find myself with a few minutes of free time today, a position that is uprising considering that finals will be in full swing in 2 weeks.  Assignment wise, I have 3 papers left: one for theology (4 pages), one for Asian philosophies (3 pages), and one for Shakespeare (10 pages).  Lets just say that I've been postponing the Shakespeare one for a few weeks, but I'm now down to about 10 days to get it done (so I really need to start it).  Otherwise, there is a small assignment in Sociology, and a group project in Shakespeare and I think that is it before finals.  Unfortunately, (in my opinion) all of my classes have finals.  The one for ethics class will be take home (so, that is nice), but most are also cumulative, which I don't particularly enjoy.  Don't feel too sorry for me, I'll make it through alright, but don't expect a ton of posts appearing (not only am I busy, but there isn't a ton of cool stuff happening around here - pretty much everybody is getting busy).  

Yesterday's barbecue with the Serra club (a group that seeks to "foster and affirm vocations to the priesthood and vowed religious life") was a lot of fun.  They attended Evening Prayer with us (and seemed quite proficient in saying it), and then provided a delicious dinner for us.  We ate outside in the courtyard because it was such a beautiful day, and the addition of pulled pork (smoked and sauced)  pretty much made my day.  We threw a Frisbee around for a little while afterwards; it was just for fun, and helped work off the extra plate I ate.  It was actually quite funny; we began playing monkey-in-the-middle with the Frisbee and I somehow ended up guarding Luke (trying to block his throws and/or intercept ones going to him).  Well, lets just say that I am not the tallest guys at the seminary, and Luke is, so there was (quite literally) more than a foot difference in our height.  Not only that, but his arm-span is tremendous.  Needless to say, it was a bit comical, but we still managed to have a fun time.

Tonight we have a inter mural Frisbee game over at Marian, which should be quite competitive.  So far the team I am on has barely lost both our games (within I believe 2 points each time).  Anyway, we are hoping to win tonight...  

On another note, our running training is starting to wind down.  We ran 9 miles on Sunday, and we will probably run 3 or 4 miles for the 3 times this week.  Next week we have one 8 miler, and then it's very easy with I believe a 2 mile run and some walking.  I guess the theory is that we have peaked at 12 miles (so we can definitely do the 13.1 on the 4th), and now we are resting up for the race.  Actually, we met with Fr. Rick Nagel (the pastor at St. John's downtown who is running the race for vocations that day) when we did the ceremony on Sunday at Brute thanking Arch-bishop Buechlein.  He asked us to serve the Mass of the night before (which goes along with a pasta dinner for all the runners), which we, of course, agreed to do.  It should be a lot of fun!

Well, that's all I have for right now.  Sorry these last few posts have been so boring; I haven't managed to think of anything extraordinary, so I'm just trying to keep you up to date.  Keep me in your prayers.  The last few weeks are always the hardest.  Have a fantastic day!
It's St. George's feast day, so I chose this (pretty cool) picture of him.
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