LPS Blogs

Ramblin' Man by Dan Sousa

About: LPS Editor Dan Sousa always has a lot to say ... just ask his poor wife and children. They have requested he start this blog and leave them alone! And now he is bothering his advertisers as he chronicles his "Quest for Fitness"  by joining Velocity Sports Performance of Ashburn (soon to be a new reality show if the writer's strike continues) on the MLC channel (Mid-Life Crisis TV) ... Read on, if you dare ...

july 28, 2008

Heritage’s Popular Coach Burke Back to Work after Heart Attack

(July 28, 2008) - Each year, about 1.1 million people in the United States have heart attacks, and almost half of them die. Heritage High School and the Loudoun sports community is breathing a sigh of relief that popular Pride football, basketball and lacrosse coach Jason “Choppy” Burke was one of the lucky ones.

Burke not only survived a heart attack on July 2, but he was back “at work” last week, helping out with a Pride basketball camp. The fact that Burke suffered his heart attack while working out at Heritage probably helped save his life as he was surrounded by quick medical attention.

Choppy is always there to lend a hand from his defensive duties in football to basketball where he has coached on the lower levels to lacrosse where he has built the Pride into a Dulles District power with back-to-back trips to the Region II playoffs. On July 2 it was others lending a hand to the man with a lot of heart.

“The great thing is that it happened where people were around,” said Pride athletic director Ron Petrella, who estimates that from the time the attack occurred, which was around 10 a.m, to his angioplasty at Fairfax Hospital, where he had two stents placed in partially blocked arteries, the entire time elapsed was less than three hours.

And my research tells me that is a good thing as minutes matter in heart attacks. Of the people who do die from heart attacks, half die within the first hour. I also learned that most heart attacks aren’t of the Hollywood variety where the victim falls dead away but are usually a gradual thing with most people taking up to two hours to figure out what is happening.

Burke, a Baltimore native who graduated from Baltimore City College High School in 1993 and from Salisbury State University in Maryland where he played two years for the Sea Gulls football team on the offensive line, comes with a family history of heart disease with his father passing away six years ago of a heart attack and his older sister then died three years ago with among other things heart complications and his mother is a survivor of a stroke.

Ironically, Burke suffered the heart attack while in fantastic shape, having taken off 80 pounds in the past year and kept most of that off.

Up at Heritage on July 2, Burke was going through a typical workout and was only a week away from fellow Pride football coach Steve Williams wedding where Burke would handle Best Man duties.

Burke jokes that he and Williams over the years tried to see if they could exist on a lifestyle of hot wings and hamburgers. The answer was no! (Those who know me, know that I have been trying a similar experiment but with tacos and burritos … earning my nickname from my kids as Gordo Papa).

In the past year, both have supported each other as they dropped weight and got in shape. On July 2, Williams was inside the building doing some paperwork when Burke had the heart attack outside on the track and as Burke became disoriented and started to feel unwell he said he had only one thought in his mind: “Make it back to Steve and he would make sure everything would be all right.”

“I had done a 90-minute workout before that and broke a good sweat,” said Burke who after his personal workout was with some Pride athletes on the track conducting a summer workout. “I started to feel like someone was sitting on me. It was a weird feeling.”

Burke tried lying down and then he sat in a golf cart. Heritage track and field coach Kate Cassidy was also in the area and she came over to check on Choppy.

“I guess I wasn’t really making sense,” said Burke.

The questions were coming faster than Burke could process them. Was he dehydrated? No, he had been sweating fine. Did he have asthma? No, he didn’t. Did his left arm hurt? Yes, but he had been lifting earlier.

Burke tried to walk back into the school but could only make it as far as the benches by the side entrances to the athletic area. By this time, everybody from Williams to the school nurse to Pride principal Margaret Huckaby were on the scene. An ambulance was called for.

“I wasn’t in a lot of pain, just numb,” said Burke.

And in this moment of crisis Burke was still thinking about the kids, especially worried that those he had been “horsing around with” would assume some responsibility for his heart attack.

“I told Steve to tell the kids I’m all right,” said Burke.

Burke was rushed by ambulance to the Inova Loudoun Hospital’s Cornwall campus. Williams was there along with Burke, playing the “Best Man” in a medical drama. Soon, Burke’s mother Anne and twin sister Ericka arrived.

His heart attack was quickly diagnosed and he was flown by helicopter to Inova Fairfax Hospital. He has 60 percentage blockage in one artery and over 50 percentage blockage in another artery.

“I kept thinking ‘what did I do?’,” said Burke. “I don’t have a bad habit. I don’t smoke. If I go to the Wing Factory you will see me with a soda in my hand.”

If anything, Burke kept his sense of humor during the heart attack. When asked if he could “walk” from the bench to the gurney after the ambulance arrived. He said “sure” and then proceeded to almost topple over after getting up. After being helped to the gurney he then quipped: “OK, not so much.”

At the hospital, they started to give him morphine for the pain and he claimed mock alarm to the nurse: “I’ve seen “Saving Private Ryan”. Am I dying here? They always give morphine to the guy dying!”

Turns out he was in good hands. He did spend July 4 in the hospital but by July 5 he was home and chafing at the instructions to take it easy. He couldn’t lift anything over 10 pounds for three weeks.

In that time, as word spread about Burke’s heart attack, the “get well” phone calls and emails started pouring in from colleagues, players and even opponents.

Burke had to end our interview as he was headed for a doctor’s appointment to follow up. He wasn’t looking forward to it as he has a little aversion to anything involving needles, but he may have to get over that in the coming months and years as his recovery continues.

I had one final question: “Are you coaching football this year?”

He gave me an incredulous look.

“They would have to lop off my legs to keep me from coaching,” said Burke.

Petrella and Williams sat in the Pride athletic office and wished Burke well on his appointment.

It turns out that Petrella was on vacation in New York when Huckaby gave him a call.

“She said, first, I want you to know that everything is OK, but the news is bad,” said Petrella, who ended his trip early to return to Virginia to be near Burke.

Williams talks about the day in almost hushed tones.

“He is like a brother to me,” said Williams.

Williams took charge on July 2 when Burke went to the hospital, calling his family, calling his girlfriend, getting Burke’s wallet and helping the hospital with his insurance information. He probably displayed calm but inside: “I was a wreck.”

The doctors may have said take it easy but Burke was not about to miss Williams wedding and on July 10, Burke had build up to enough stamina to stand up and be the Best Man at the ceremony held in Vienna.

“I felt kind of guilty because the reception food was not really “heart friendly”,” said Williams.

About the only thing that got scuttled was a planned bachelor party. That might have been a good thing because the days of hot wings and hamburgers may be over for Burke and Williams.

Petrella said he thinks of two things when he thinks of Choppy.

“No. 1, he’s a friend and family and No. 2, is his concern for the kids and fellow coaches.”

For this past month it has been our turn to have some concern for Burke. We can all say a prayer and be thankful that the coach with a lot of heart is back once again.

Want to learn more?

What is a heart attack?

Angioplasty with stent placement 

Heart attack, stroke and cardiac arrest warning signs   

July 24, 2008

Good Guys Do Finish First: Ashburn Heat Wraps Up 3-Year Run with Babe Ruth 14-Year-Olds Virginia State Title

When the Ashburn Heat baseball club faced elimination last weekend in the Babe Ruth 14-Year-Olds Virginia State tournament, the team representing Eastern Loudoun called upon the message delivered to them by their coaching staff for three years: don't worry about the winning, just repsect the game, do your best, and remember, the thing you can always control is your ... attitude.

In the end, that message delivered by manager Kyle Jessop and coaches Eddie Teal and Scott Logan paid off as the Heat, having already lost a game, and trailing 4-1 with two innings to go agaisnt Falls Church, rallied for a big 14-4 win and then kept on winning ... six straight times to capture the state title.

"They are great kids," said Jessop of his group that now moves onto high school sports at Broad Run, Briar Woods, Freedom and Stone Bridge.

Back-to-back wins against McLean left the Heat finishing as a club on top. With many of the players on the team getting ready for their first high school football season, the Heat will not travel to Alabama to play in the age group regionals.

Every thing you need to know about the Heat can be found in their goals that were established in 2005 when formed:

            1.         Create and maintain a passion and a love for the game of baseball.

            2.         Prepare these select kids, at a minimum, to make their high school team.

            3.         Create a bond among teammates that will last a lifetime.

Jessop said he modeled the team after a positive experience he had with the Ashburn Alley Cats, an AAU baseball team that his older son, Chris Jessop, a rising senior at Broad Run, played on with the likes of Michael Prince, J.P. Devlin, Patrick Murphy, John Bladel and Patrick and Zach Thompson.

"We really wanted to create a bond among the teammates," said Jessop.

No where can the feeling of team and unity be felt than in the inspirational story of Heat pitcher Alex Logan. Named team captain this year for the Heat not because he is the best player on the team but because of his dedication and drive to improving himself and the team, Logan was thrust into the spotlight when the Heat's top two pitchers were able to combine for just one inning in the state tournament because of injuries.

How did Logan respond? How about coming within one out of a perfect game in a 3-0 win over Lane. That no-hitter, only a walk was given up, was the emotional boost that fired the Heat towards the title.

"Alex is such the team player. His performance inspired everybody and fired everybody up," said Jessop.

Without the top pitchers available, others stepped up on the mound including Garrett Thomas, Connor Jessop, Blake Duncan, Dylan Chapman and Brad Baker.

"As a coach, I have to say it was truly a team effort," said Jessop. "We are done but I hope they stay close and it will be great to follow these kids in high school. I couldn't be more proud of the way they  handled themselves."

Just a case of nice guys finishing first ... news we like to report!

EL's Scores:

Eastern 2, Williamsburg 1
Dinwiddie 13, Eastern 2
Eastern 14, Falls Church/Annandale 4
Eastern 3, Lane 0
Eastern 15, Glen Allen 3
Eastern 7, Dinwiddie 5
Eastern 2, McLean/Great Falls 1
Eastern 4, McLean/Great Falls 2 (Championship game)

July 13, 2008

“Experience” of a Lifetime: McGrath Ready to Tackle the Challenge of Loudoun Valley Football Job

I’m Back from Colorado and our big family vacation (more later!) and the big news of the week is the hiring of Park View High School assistant football coach Danny McGrath as Loudoun Valley’s new head coach.

Wow! This threw me for a curve ball as McGrath at age 25 probably wasn’t on many radar screens for a head coaching position. McGrath, however, comes with a wealth of football experience, having played at Herndon High School and utilized an unmatched work ethic at Virginia Tech to not only become a starting offensive lineman but a team captain.

“I have a lot of experience and I want to share it with the kids,” said McGrath over the weekend as he was nice enough to chat with me on the phone.

I didn’t have the heart to tell McGrath that I have yellow legal pads in my wreck of an office that are older than 25 years old! Bad jokes aside, hiring a young coach can work out quite well … just ask Park View where McGrath’s “former boss” Andy Hill became a head coach at age 26.

McGrath had the support of Hill in seeking the position, even though the hiring came at the unusual date of just three weeks prior to the first official practice date.

Yes, in an age of year-round programs … McGrath has 21 days to prepare for his first head coaching job … though, it looks like this hard-worker has been preparing for such a job since he first laced up a pair of shoulder pads in Herndon.

“Loudoun Valley is a top of the line program and I’m excited to put my stamp on it,” said McGrath.

The Vikes are not entirely new to McGrath as his mother moved to Purcellville five years ago and he now lives in the area as well so he has been following the team.

McGrath will borrow as much as he can from his past experiences and the past year at Park View in setting up his program at Valley.

“I’m going to take everything I can from Coach Hill in how to run a successful program,” said McGrath.

Prior to hiring on at Park View, McGrath’s background was grounded in the ground game having played in a power running game in high school and then been exposed to Tech’s running game and tough defense concept.

The last year, however, McGrath was exposed to Hill’s play book which at times appears to have pages taken out of a book from Hogwarts (my first ever Harry Potter reference … if you are scoring at home). Seriously, it looks like some of the Patriot plays are drawn up by David Blaine.

“Working with Andy opened my eyes,” said McGrath who often had to find creative blocking schemes for his Patriot lineman to fit Park View’s sometimes unorthodox sets.

McGrath was hired on Friday and by Saturday he was already getting a first-hand glimpse of his players as he watched the Vikes play in a 7-on-7 football league game at Millbrook.

“Open to all options” is how McGrath put his mindset and he will need that flexibility as he has just three weeks to find a coaching staff at a time when most assistants are already onboard for the coming season at other schools and he will take over a program where out-going coach Bruce Sheppard spent some significant time last year installing a spread offense.

“It will be a collective effort his year … seven football minds working together,” said McGrath of how he will work with his new hires.

The Vikes suffered through a tough first year in the AAA Cedar Run District in 2007 with a 1-6 league mark and 2-8 overall finish. Restoring some confidence early in the season may be key to McGrath’s first year at the LV helm.

“I’m ready for it. I’m ready for a new challenge,” said McGrath.

Countdown to New Website

This summer brings our exciting change from our current website over to the Digital Sports platform … look for a “sneak preview” of the new site in a week or two. Like any shift on the Internet … there will be a trial and error period as we get things up and running but I’m looking forward to some of the cool features.

For one, schedules and scores and standings will now be linked such that we can update our scores in the schedule area and it will update the standings automatically … those of you that emailed me over the years pointing out mistakes we made in updating the standings as we attempted to do that by hand will now have free time to start new hobbies!

But seriously … we will still appreciate your sharp eyes to  help us get things looking great when we make the shift.

Rocky Mountain High

No … not that type of high (and trust me, Digital Sports is making me take a drug test as a new hire to prove it! That is a first for me but I’m glad to see that my “clean living” is finally paying off … luckily they don’t test for overuse of Mexican food … my chimichanga withdrawal of ’97 was not pretty) … but we just returned from 12 days of high altitude fun in Colorado.

The trip got off to a slow start … we spent almost eight hours sitting at Dulles Airport after our on-time departure went five feet before the captain told us there was a “problem with the right engine” … better to find that out on the tarmac than at 30,000 feet!

We lost one night on our first three-night rental which was in the mountains about midway between Vail and Aspen … our cabin came without a TV, telephone or even cell phone reception. This period of the vacation to my two boys is known as the “Dark Ages”.

We later spent eight nights in Vail … a nice week of that spent in a two-bedroom condo … which, yes, had TV and telephone and even high-speed Internet! All the better to keep my 8-year-olds Webkins “alive”.

My wife and I were huffing and puffing every time we walked up any incline. Thank goodness for my Velocity workouts or else I would have been dialing 9-1-1.

We went white water rafting on the upper Colorado … sounds more adventuresome that it really was as we opted for a class 2 trip … think Lazy River vs. the River Wild (my first Kevin Bacon reference in 2008!). All the creeks and rivers were going crazy as Colorado had twice the usually snowpack and the melt-off was in full roar.

We went on an alpine jeep tour (hello Theo! Best jeep driver ever!) which was cool … especially when it started raining at 10,000 feet with the jeep’s top down! We got up high enough that there was still snow on the ground in places and we got off road enough that the jeep at time was going sideways (honest!).

We went to two fireworks shows … a nice July 4^th parade in Vail Village and even to a rodeo. It was the kids first rodeo … it was a bit for the tourists if you grew up in the part of California I grew up in but the boys enjoyed it.

We had time for mini-golf (always!) at Beaver Creek and the coolest bowling alley ever (yes, the coolest!)

We rode the gondola to the top of the mountain in Aspen and Vail and in Vail we played the disc golf course at the top of the mountain … a thrilling view and bit of a challenge for me to stay upright as I went sliding around the dry ski slopes.

We rented bikes one day and I learned a valuable lesson … when you go cruising down a really big hill … you later have to go up that hill to return the bike back to the rental place … Lance Armstrong’s Tour de France record is safe for now.

We also just spent time at the condo rental … using the racquetball court, pool and even the chess set in the rec room. My 16-year-old took much delight in finding various ways to defeat me in chess. Since I was on vacation and trying to relax, I didn’t swipe the pieces off the table upon defeat … though, mind you, I surely wanted to!

It won’t be long before my oldest is off planning his own family vacations so we are sort of counting down these family vacations and trying to make the most of them. Next year we have even set up a trip to Cancun in the summer … ah, I can taste the chimichangas now …

june 20, 2008

Celebrating Summer Solstice, a Merger with DigitalSports.com, Three Loudoun State Titles, Ongoing Construction at the LPS World Headquarters and the First Ever LPS Monkey Garage Sale!

Has it really been over two months since my last post?!?

Wow ... and so much has happened! Today we are celebrating Summer Solstice at the LPS World Headquarters located in Ashburn Farm ... the LPS Monkey is out in the front yard in his little deck chair soaking up the sun (spf #87) ... So, grab some lotion and soak in all the news I have failed to report in this space the past two months:

Merger with DigitalSports: The biggest question in your minds I'm sure is this: just who gets custody of the LPS Monkey! The good news is that while DigitalSports might not totally understand the LPS Monkey (or my off-the-beaten-path sense of humor sometimes) they are keeping the LoudounPrepSports.com name in this merger and thus the Monkey Lives!

We first spoke with DigitalSports exec Rich Toland in December 2005 after our very first column ever criticized DigitalSports for a lot of promise but not a lot of delivery on coverage. Rich, who started his own LPS-like site in New Jersey before joining DigitalSports, actually said we were right on the money with our critique.

Since that phone call, DigitalSports (way, way back they started out as SportsCombine here locally) has progressed into an impressive company with top-notch journalists delivering first-rate prep sports coverage. That has been our goal here in Loudoun from Day One.

In 2006, DigitalSports came with a merger proposal but we had just planted the seeds to LPS and really wanted to watch the thing grow. In 2007, DigitalSports came with a new merger proposal but we weren't ready to let the reigns go free. (Yes, I'm a Control Freak!).

Several months ago, DigitalSports and LPS started talks again and this time ... we felt that a merger would benefit both and in the end help expand coverage for high school sports in Loudoun.

I really think this will be the best of both worlds for our coverage as Alysia Deem and myself will continue to provide the Loudoun content that you have come to know and now we will have access to the cool "bells and whistles" that the DigitalSports site provides. The standings will improve. Rosters will be up for each team. Players will now have individual pages. Teams will now have the ability to go in and actually post items and update pages if they choose ... schools can take advantage of DigitalSports services such as schedule makers and school stores if they choose ... but at the end of the day, we will still be running the shop and making sure all the information is up-to-date and complete.

Schedules. Scores. Standings. And a whole lot more!

Plus we are now going to add the Cedar Run District to our coverage area which means better reporting on Loudoun Valley this coming year and then for Heritage when they make the move to the CR in 2009-10. We will also be able to draw on resources within DigitalSports to cover teams when they venture to Richmond and even into Maryland.

Bottom line is that I will now be free from the business end of things and I can concentrate on what I love to do which is cover high school sports. The honest truth is that my business sense is more Jim Rockford than John D. Rockefeller ... only I don't keep a gun in the cookie jar but a digital tape recorder ... fans of 1970s TV will understand this (kids: ask your parents!).

Three Loudoun State Titles: Girrrrrrrrl Power! Really, what is it about the female sports in Loudoun ... they rock! Three state titles in the spring: Park View track and field, Broad Run softball and girls soccer to go with the Loudoun County girls volleyball title in the fall.

Here is my theory: About 10 years ago Loudoun experienced this tremendous growth and a wave of very active (think Type-A personality!) parents moved into the area. They were former high school and college athletes and still playing (just look at the growth of adult leagues in this area!) and they wanted their kids to achieve the most they could on the sports field.

Girls or boys ... that didn't matter.

This was one group that didn't tell their daughters to put down that baseball and pick up the Barbie. They encouraged their girls to play hard and they armed them with the best training and resources that an area with Loudoun's wealth could provide.

In other parts of Virginia, girls may have not been getting the same encouragement to excel on the playing fields, especially at such a young age. We start them young here in Loudoun.

For example, when my son started soccer, age six was the youngest you could be but then mini-soccer was added for ages four and five and then it expanded to allow 3-year-olds. With my second child, we were able to sign him up for short training programs at age two. There is even now a "Mommy-and-Me" soccer program in Loudoun that allows children still in the womb to play ... there is a waiting list nine months long to get in this program ... yes, the "Mommy-and-Me" thing is a joke but you get the point. We are serious about sports in Loudoun!

These girls don't just win. They expect to win! More power to them.

Broad Run seems to have hit the Mother Lode of great athletic girls. The Spartans went through a rough stretch back in the late 1990s as they were tossed into the AAA mix with a growing student body, only to lose many athletes to the opening of Potomac Falls. Safely back in AA in 2000, BR had to suffer again as Stone Bridge opened and siphoned off more talent. Now BR can probably claim in the last two or three years, its greatest athletic run in school history or at least equal to its early 1990s good run.

Construction at the LPS World Headquarters: When we lived (briefly) in New York on Long Island we had the most wonderful backyard but here in Ashburn at the LPS World Headquarters we traded life on the cul-de-sac for a tiny backyard which 90 percent of the year has the feel of a swamp as the street above us drains down through our backyard on its way to the Chesapeake Bay.

After a year of planning we are putting in a patio (good-bye builder-grade deck!) with a cabana and fireplace plus an "outdoor kitchen" ... construction started a week ago so it is quite chaotic here ... one of the downsides of having your home and office be the same!

Plus we have summer break so in addition to jackhammers and Bobcats dropping loads of gravel we also have second graders spilling fruit punch on the carpet in the basement, playing soccer in the living room ("dad, can you get the soccer ball, it is stuck in the lamp!") and feeling the need to ask a question anytime the phone is near my ear.

The poor DigitalSports guys ... hearing the background noise (Generators! Children's Screams! Spanish! Guitar Hero! Chainsaws!) keep asking me: "Uhmm, is this a good time for you to talk?"
Sure ... it is always a good time to talk at the LPS World Headquarters!

First Ever LPS "Garage Sale"... OK, we were going to have a Garage Sale to clean out the basement (kids items! Kids clothes! Other Junk ... er, priceless relics!) and I thought ... why not toss out my collection of sports media guides (lots of soccer from the 1990s) and sports memorabilia on the lawn (does anybody collect baseball cards anymore? We have unopened boxes from 1992!) and see if any sports fans come by.

We have to have a good cause if we are selling sports stuff so any profit from the old sports stuff will go to the Broad Run girls soccer and softball teams which are currently seeking donations to help pay for their state title rings.

And to make it fun ... mention the LPS Monkey to us and we will give you some free Chick-fil-A stuff which is sitting in the back of the LPS Prize Van ...

The LPS Garage Sell is Saturday June 21 from 9 a.m. (sure, I put 9 but you will show up at 8 a.m. if you are seriously collecting!) until we get tired or the blender starts up in the kitchen ...

LPS World Headquarters: 20747 Steamside Place (it is off of Wintergrove which runs between Hay Road and Claiborne Parkway!)

April 8, 2008

Life at the Bachelor Pad ... "Mean Haircuts" ... Soggy Spring ... Late Starts ... A Word on Randy "All Weather" May ... And More!

It has been 13 days since my last entry here and that can mean only one thing: I have a lot to get off my chest!

First of all, after 22 years of marriage my wife has left me ... OK, so it's just a series of business trips ... but she just left yesterday for Arizona for a 12-day trip (she terms it "training", we picture her by the pool on "holiday"!) and that follows after back-to-back week-long trips to Texas ... so in a four week period we will see her for about two weekends.

When she leaves it does leave the three "Sousa men" in winter storm crisis mode ... I think we are already low on milk and TP and we need to hold a manly summit tonight to figure out exactly where those items can be purchased.

The real danger is my wife is my Alarm Clock ... with her gone to the Lone Star State last week, I overslept twice and missed Velocity and the other day I skipped due to some bothersome dental work (hello nut; good-bye tooth).

An entire week ... which I should say, I partly skipped because the last time I was at Velocity Sports Performace, I practically killed a woman ... seriously, we were doing this exercise where one person held an elastic band tied around the other person's waist and they were going over small hurdles while working against the resistance (not pleasant ... the last resistance I actually liked was the French Resistance) ... They had a band to wrap the cord around your wrist while the other person worked the hurdles but safety, schmafety .. I just hold onto the cord freely when, with my arms a bit tired, I lost a grip on it and the band shot straight at my partner ... just missing her head about 10 yards away ... yikes! OK, maybe it might not have resulted in death ... but everytime that poor woman came to Velocity and people asked about the "eye patch" all she would have been able to do is mutter "Sousa".

Luckily, no harm, no foul ... but it was safer to skip a week in case she was gunnin' for me.

Then I show up Monday and Geoff Mapp ... my fearless trainer ... greets me with the "Hey, who is the New Guy" line. Ha!

And he also greeted me with a buzz cut right out of my youth. My mom thought a "Burr No. 2" cut was the way to go for all children. I didn't know my hair was curly until high school and then I refused to cut it for four years ... graduating with a nearly beehive hairdo ... proudly capped by what I thought was a cool-looking beret ... like I said, I'm a fan of the French Resistance ...

Geoff was in quite the mood Monday (Mrs. Mapp: phone me!) and I blamed it on his "haircut" as my experience is that all kids get a little testy right after a haircut ... though, Geoff is kind of old to be a "kid" but since I'm 45 ... well, he looks like a kid!

I was surprised that right after my first workout in over a week ... no pain! Then the following happened:

10 a.m. Three hours after workout ... soreness settling in

noon Stiffness ...

4 p.m. Trouble walking ...

8 p.m. Starting to feel like a character in Saw VI ... must free self from device ...

You get the point ... no more skipping a week ...

So we have the Bachelor Pad thing going ... note to neighbors: all pasta dishes accepted freely ... I'm thinking over the next week or so, a whole lot of fish sticks and pizza are in our culinary plans ... plus the good old standbye high school stadium hot dog.

Before my wife left town, we headed out for a dinner on Sunday with the family ... the adults won the "restaurant wars" and we went to the new Bertucci's (hello: potential advertiser ... call me! Love the food!) which left my second grader in tears as Bertucci's is next to Fuddruckers AND IHOP ... when he was younger we had him convinced that IHOP stood for International House of Parrots ... we do these things for fun in our family. Ryder loves the "Funny Face" pancake ... but at Bertucci's he staged a hunger strike that would have made a hardened IRA convict proud.

Mom: "Ryder, what would you like to eat ..."
Ryder: (quivering lip): "Nothing ..."
Mom: "You aren't going to eat anything for dinner ..."
Ryder (melodramatic pitch): "No ... I'm just going to sit here ... and starve to death!"

Stone Bridge drama department: Save a spot for my son ... just seven years away from the lead in a drama!"

Of course with this soggy spring: there hasn't been much to cover with all the rainouts which have not just become sog-outs as the ground is so damp and some of the fields don't drain too well (who designed some of these fields for the County: Jacque Cousteau? At Broad Run's baseball field ... forget sliding pants for the baseball players, just put swim fins on them!)

Last Thursday, however, I did get a lovely evening in the freezing rain ... oh heck, what I am saying ... it wasn't raining ... it was sleeting! Little cubes of ice were falling out of the sky.

It was a night suited for curling and ice fishing and Stone Bridge High School boys varsity soccer. Yes, thanks to Randy "All Weather" May ... not only did I watch my son play in the JV game but then I had drawn the short straw that night and it was my turn to take tickets for the varsity game.

Almost the entire region called off events that night but at Stone Bridge we gamely went on. Here are a few stats: temperature at the start of the game was 38 degrees with a wind of about 50 knotts and a wind chill of 56 below zero ... total fans in the visitor stands making the trek from Marshall: two. Total tickets I took: 11.

Now I would have been drenched except for the quick thinking of the Shaban family for providing a tent over the "ticket booth" ... ahem, I mean table and chairs ... (side note: Randy "All Weather" May will try and take some credit here for suggesting this idea ... Ha! Like I'm going let him off the hook ... if he cancels the game ... I'm home dry and warm and watching America's Next Top Model) ...

Look the guy's name is  May ... of course he is going to think Spring-like thoughts ...

I'm happy to report that I lost only two digits to frostbite that night ... and Stone Bridge Assistant AD Jerry Smith relieved me of the money box at halftime (reminding me, as he always does, that it is not "one for Stone Bridge", "two for the LPS Monkey" when I take the tickets) ...

I may have exagerated some of that ...

So the NCAA powers-that-be ... get my second grader all hyped up on the March Madness and then schedule the title game for 9:20 p.m. start on a school night ... heck, I fell asleep in the second half ... only Cooper "Night Owl" Sousa stayed up ... though I did revive in time for the OT ... but seriously, how un-family friendly can you be with that start time! 

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wed. march 26, 2008

McCowat's Encore for Record-Setting Strikeout Performance: Three Days in the Hospital with Painful Bout of Cellulitis

Dominion High School senior pitcher Geoff McCowat was sitting on top of the world a week ago, having struck out 20 (!) batters in 7-inning victory against Gar-Field. Only 21 strikeouts, folks, can top that performance and his name will be in the VHSL record book -- once the paperwork is taken care of -- for a long, long time.

Then life threw McCowat a curve  ball ... a painful slider at that.

McCowat developed some blisters in his feet that turned into a nasty bout of cellulitis that landed the gifted athlete in the hospital for three days! I can testify as somebody who has had cellulitis before, that this isn't something to play around with.

While McCowat was released from the hospital Monday morning, after a weekend of IV antibotics, he won't be able to pitch until cleared by doctors and that won't come until at least next Monday which rules him out of the Titans AA Dulles District opener at Freedom on Friday.

I spoke with McCowat's father Walter today and he is just glad that Geoff is back on his feet. I have to say that Walter has been a follower of LoudounPrepSports since the early, early days ... back when the site was run on a Microsoft Publisher template (kids: don't try that at home) and the look and color scheme changed daily.

Walter said that the problem with Geoff's feet started Monday, the day before his command performance at Gar-Field in Woodbridge which included two home runs, a double and five RBIs as well in the 7-0 victory.

The day before, Geoff attended a funeral and wore a new pair of dress shoes that gave his feet blisters. The next day while pitching, the blisters got worse and then the infection developed.

The McCowat's were in the Boston area on a college visit on Wednesday when the problem got even worse.

"His feet were starting to discolor," said Walter.

The next day Geoff went to the doctor locally and got two shots to fight the infection. When he went back for a check-up on Friday, the doctors decided that a visit to Loudoun hospital for some big-time antibiotics would be the safest course.

If you don't know about cellulitis ... ouch, is all I can say.

A couple of years ago I fussed with a blemish on my knee and nicked it open. Not a problem. A day later, the knee was really sore to the touch. I thought maybe the blemish had been a spider bite, but I had actually infected it by touching it. That night, I woke up with a fever and a knee starting to grow to the size of a basketball.

I hobbled to the emergency room and they diagnosed the cellulitis and gave me some antibiotics. They actually take a marker and draw an outline around the infection, and that way they can track if it is growing. My instructions were: if it started going North of the magic marker line, toward my heart, dial 9-1-1! Luckily it didn't come to that ... but it was rather tender for the next week or so as my knee returned to normal.

By the way, I now never fuss with blemishes!

Here is wishing McCowat a speedy recovery as we want to see how he fares against district competition after that great outing over Spring Break.

Click here for some Dominion  vs. Gar-field baseball pictures

Time for Very Random Thoughts ...

Worst drink ever: As I write ... I am drinking a can of Diet Dr. Pepper Cherry Chocolate cola ... Limited Edition I might add. Please, this is the foulest tasting drink ever. I bought a sleeve of it. My family has made fun of me so rather than agreeing with them. I sit here, determined to drink every darn last one of them. What was I thinking? I said, "hey, it's Limited Editon". My son Cooper said: "no kidding, dad, who else would buy it, but you."

Worse weather ever: Last night and every night it seems in the early spring sports season. People, no games should ever be played whent he wind chill is below 20 degrees. I have a new rule here at the LoudounPrepSports world headquarters in Ashburn ... I check the thermometer and if it is under 50 ... no coverage for games that night! Hey, I'm from California.

When second graders stump their parents: My son in second grade is reading a book on the Civil War. He wanted to know who won the war and who were "we rooting for". Which brought up the concept of  slavery. He pointed out that George Washington owned slaves and that he treated them well. I countered with how the entire concept of owning another person is just wrong. He then said: "But you own me." ... OK ... well, time to play outside kid ... daddy is stumped.

Lacrosse Sticks: I never see soccer players dribbling soccer balls to school or baseball players walking with their mitts but everywhere I look I see lacrosse players with their sticks. Cradling. Cradling. Cradling. Everywhere ... in the library and at the grocery store and in church ... OK, I made up the last three but you get the point.

Wishing for the Old Days: Remember when the preseason was really a "season". Time to practice and hone your skills and get to know your teammates and coaches. Here in Virginia. It goes 1-2-3 tryout days. Two days later, a first scrimmage and week later it's Game Time! That isn't a pre"season" ... that is a pre"moment" ... I'd love to see the VHSl trim one or two games off the schedule and give the kids an extra week of practice and let the darn weather get better before we have to don our parka coats, ski caps and wool mittens to sit on metal bleachers ... the temperature of dry ice I might add. OK, now I do sound like the "old man" who used to yell at the neighborhood kids to "get off my lawn"! 

Sat. march 15, 2008 @ 8:30 p.m.

I Told My Wife She Lied to Me ... But of Course I was Lying

I had to call my wife at work on Friday and tell her she "had lied"!

Seems she had told me at 5:30 a.m. Friday morning, as I was trying to weasel my way out of going to my Velocity workout (it just seems sooooo cold and dark!), that "I would feel so much better" for going.

Ha. At 9 a.m. and I couldn't lift my arms to make a phone call (hello: triceps workout) ... I didn't share that opinion ... so I called her and said: "honey, you lied!"

But, truth be told, I always feel better after do the workouts. I have a lot more energy ...

And speaking of energy, I'm going to need it as the spring sports season started officially on Wednesday.

10 high schools and 10 sports in the spring equals 100 teams to cover here in Loudoun (really, I did that math all by myself).

Every year the same things happen. I tell myself at the start of the season that I will stay in (where it's warm!) and not cover a lot of events early in the season. Sit back and collect the results. Get organized!

Never happens. Opening night there was Loudoun Valley at Loudoun County in boys soccer. Rule of thumb: when a game pits two teams with Loudoun in the name and your website is called LoudounPrepSports ... well, cover it Bubba!

So there I was amid very cold temperatures up in a LC press box that was nearly empty save for some very unlucky flies that had been trapped in the structure the last time the windows must have been opened ... maybe four months earlier. If there is an outbreak of the Asian Fly Flu ... I'm in trouble.

(I must digress and say that I once had a room in my fraternity that collected so many flies, as it was above the kitchen, that my roommate and I became some of the world's foremost experts on catching flies in our hands ... we were good ... very good ... we could catch a fly and keep it alive in our hands and then bounce it off an unsuspecting frat brothers forehead ... this, parents, is why you are saving so much money ... so your kids can have these type of college experiences!)

Where was I? Oh, the soccer game ... I got to watch two players that previously were on my son's travel club back in the day ... Connor Winemiller of Loudoun County and Daniel Nesbit of Loudoun Valley. Great kids. Great families. Part of the joy of my job is now getting to cover athletes I have seen in the youth ranks.

One game surely is enough to cover ... but on Thursday there was a Stone Bridge home softball opener ... with new coach Mike Skinner making his debut. Against Loudoun Valley no less.

OK, gotta go to that ... with my son playing JV soccer that night at Stone Bridge it was a family affair. I was at the softball and my wife and mother-in-law with my second grader were at the soccer. Somehow my second grader worked some sort of scam, going back and forth, begging for money for the snack bar.

End result: (this is not a lie ... social services will be contacting me Monday) he consumed at the snack bar ... three slices of pizza ... three bags of chips ... two waters ... two Reese's ... and a bag of popcorn.

Did I mention he is 8 and growing?!?

The Bulldog-Viking softball game was fun to watch. A lot of runs and extra innings. Skinner has taught Natalie Driskill to slap hit and she went 5-for-5 in the game. He loves the slap hitters and says he will be introducing the art to other players, but one at a time ... expect to see several slap hitters in the SB line-up by playoff time.

Back-to-back nights ... enough, already but on Friday evening ... it was Loudoun Valley girls soccer at Broad Run. I really wanted to drop in on that and did so, light rain and all.

Claire Collins, BR girls soccer coach, always has some sort of motivational thing she does with her team for each season. It will involve a motivational word or number and will serve as a rallying cry for the team. They kinda of keep it under wraps ... I spent part of my spring in 2007 trying to unravel that mystery.

This year, Claire tells me it is a number ... a number that represents something. Hmmm. My first guess of 11 was off.

Now I'm thinking ... something to do with the number of games needed to make a state title game, 25. And if you add up the characters in "VHSL 2008 State Championship" ... it comes out to 25 ... I'll have to see if I'm right!

Rae-Ann Taylor, the Stone Bridge High School girls soccer coach, was at the game as both of her daughters are now varsity players for Collins ... imagine Mickey Thompson's sons playing at Broad Run! Mike Burnett would have no argument.

Rae-Ann is an original early morning Velocity workout person and she said she might go back since I'm doing it ... on one condition: she says I can't blog about her.

OK ... Rae-Ann ... here's to not blogging about you ... oops.

I probably am already in trouble with my class at Velocity anyway as my instructor Geoff made a big point of telling everybody last week to read this blog ... and at least one person gave me one of those ... "what the heck are you writing about us" looks!

And I ran into one of my Velocity "workmates" at the boys lacrosse game at Broad Run Saturday ... sure, four days of the spring season and I've already logged four events ... so much for my master plan.

This Last Words ... Promise

Some people are happy that the Broad Run baseball field finally has lights... but not I. I kind of liked having the "Wrigley Field" of local baseball. Those 5 p.m. starts were super as I could hop over then catch the softball games. But as a parent, who struggles to make 5:30 JV soccer starts, making a 5 p.m. start just stinks for parents ...

Out of any sport ... lacrosse seems to have the most hardcore need to decorate one's car with stickers, logos and other LAX jargon... check it out in the parking lot at the next game ...

The next person that even thinks about stopping for bikers on the bike trail at Belmont Ridge Road... I promise you, I will pull a Jack Nicholson on their car (remember that wild swinging golf clubs can damage a vehicle) ... seriously people ... the car has THE RIGHT OF WAY! You think you are being a Good Samaritan but you are only endangering the lives of the bikers and other motorists ... somebody will get seriously hurt if this continues ... here is my advice, drivers continue on ... the bikers will make it across in good time ... and if they were really in a hurry ... man, they would be in a car!

Last word: the world's most dangerous intersection is currently on Claiborne Parkway just north of Stone Bridge High School where they are putting in lights. Some bright-brained transportation official got the crosswalks painted way too early and the cross traffic assumes that the Claiborne Parkway traffic must stop ... and they are going 40 mph-plus and they aren't stopping ... I had a near miss at this intersection the other day and I'm guessing I'm not the first person.

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wed. mar. 5, 2008 @ 11:30 a.m.

I Was a Fugitive From A Velocity Workout Gang ... plus Tales of Tango, Shopping IS a headache and "Three Words" to Die(t) For

Well .. somehow it has been a month since my last entry and I think we can blame several things: the winter playoffs kept me busy as can be, who has time to write when you are spending most of the day answering the door and paying for Girl Scouts Cookies and the pressure of knowing that Mrs. Geoff Mapp is reading!

Yes, my Velocity Sports Performance fitness guru (OK, instructor but doesn't guru sound cool) Geoff Mapp informed me after the last post that his wife had stumbled onto the blog (I assume most of you have stumbled here rather than by design, but welcome!) and she wanted to know one thing:

Who the heck is this Dan Sousa guy and why is he writing about you?!?!

So now every time I sit down to write ... in the back of my mind, I know that Geoff's wife is out there in cyberspace, reading and wondering ... who the heck is this guy!

Ha! I finally found a solution ...

(warning: this next section will either be funny to Geoff and his wife ... or, well, this may be my last entry as Geoff will surely work me to exhaustion, which ain't hard people, as punishment)

Mrs. Mapp ... I'm the guy who feels your pain. That's right ... Sure, Geoff comes off as a super-nice guy, even a bit of Norman Rockwell-esque, square-jawed All-American in him but ... man, oh, man ... the guy can be a perfectionist.

A workout at Velocity doesn't go by that I don't hear a bit of the following:

"Dan, why don't you keep your feet on the ground when doing that exercise ..."

"Dan, good work but try, extending your arms on those presses ..."

"Dan, this time, why don't you try actually jumping when doing the jump rope ..."

OK ... I made up the last one but Geoff does a great job of encouraging but always correcting when we in our class (that is the royal we as it usually is me with the bad form) don't do the exercise just right ... an usually his correction ... makes it HARDER! My reaction is usually something like this ...

"But, yes, Geoff ... that makes my stomach muscles hurt when I do that ..."

or

"Geoff, if I really do jump ... hey, I'll get tired ..."

So Mrs. Mapp ... I feel your pain as I just know Geoff at home is very "helpful" and I can imagine him saying this during the week ...

"Honey, thanks for putting away the dishes ... but if you do it this way, they will stack faster."

"When mopping the floor ... why don't you try moving the mop this direction first ..."

"Great bedtime story ... but you might want to try this book next time ..."

So, I do feel your pain ...

OK ... even if Geoff thought that last bit was a wee bit funny ... he is gonna get me tomorrow (yes, I'm coming in on a Thursday!) ... as I am ...

A Fugitive from a Velocity Workout Gang ...

I missed this morning ... rolling out of bed at 6 a.m. when class starts at 6 a.m. ... Without the use of teleporting powers ... I couldn't make the class ... This is the second time this has happened and both times, I get to blame my wife ... who was going in early and shut down the alarm in advance ...

I need the alarm to go off at least for five minutes before I wake up ... usually I will be having a great dream and then a fire alarm will go off in the dream and after about five minutes, I will realize it is the dang alarm and wake up ... sigh.

Of course, this was a bad day to miss as on Monday, for a lark, I told Geoff that I "hoped Wednesday's workout was going to be much harder as today's was too easy".

Geoff felt challenged and I could already see him turning to his Marquis de Sade exercise handbook for Wednesday's challenge ...

Several members of my class threatened to harm me ... I think they were joking. And now that I didn't show today ... well, they will harm me ...

Seduced by "Other Women"

I just felt like that last subhead would get somebody's attention ... I keep getting asked if I'm "getting in shape" and/or "losing weight" ...

With my Velocity workouts the answer to the first question is a big "YES" ... the second part is harder as we are building muscle, but also my diet took a hit for two big reasons the last several weeks.

One, boils down to three little words: Girl ... Scouts ... Cookies ....

This time of the year is worse for me than Thanksgiving and Christmas ... thin mints, indeed ... seems they don't keep you thin, despite the name ... class action (fat) suit to follow ...

Second reason, well, my wife went to Houston on business all of last week and I am ashamed to admit that I spent some time with two other women: hello "Wendy" ... hello "Anita" ... I believe my first recollection in life is waiting in the drive-thru lane at Der Wienerschnitzel ... chili cheese dogs were a staple food group in my upbringing (we use to say that my mom's favorite cooking appliance was the car) ... and my weakness for great Mexican or Tex-Mex food is legendary ... Now that Anita's has two locations in Loudoun ... I'm always driving by one and it is very easy to do a little takeout ...

Not good for the diet ...

It Takes Two to Tango ...

Wow! Did you follow all of that "Tango" business with the Loudoun Schools ... I wanted to stay out of it but then I woke up last week and found the LPS Monkey with a teeny, tiny picket ("Save Tango") and he wanted to march on the school district headquarters ... luckily, I convinced him to have breakfast at IHOP in stead (Smily Face pancake!) ...

But it got me to thinking about the influence of this "children's books" on our youth ... and I have made a shocking discovery (sort of shocking in that "gambling at Rick's" was shocking in Casablanca) ... there is a book in the schools that encourages all of the following (and more!):

*Reckless driving by teens

*Driving too fast and without seatbelts

*Massive parties that appear to be out of control and have no adult supervision

*Wearing of very bad hats

Yes, I am speaking of "Go, Dog, Go" by P.D. Eastman ... like, I said, shocking!

 Shopping is a Heachache ...

Did you see that an Ashburn man was injured when somebody dropped something on his head from the second floor at the Dulles Town Center ... the guy had to be treated at the hospital for the injury and we hope they catch the idiots that are tossing stuff down at people ... but it does illustrate a point that I have tried to tell my wife over the years ...

Shopping gives me a headache ... honest! I find that even an hour of shopping can sap my strength and lay me up for hours ... only watching an NFL game or two or a full NASCAR race can bring me back to full health ...

Last Word ... for real:

 I read that the creator of the "Dungeons and Dragons" game died ...

Police put out an APB for two orcs and a half-elf ...

Seriously, I played this game in the 1970s after it first came out and it was a blast and quite interesting as to how you could learns some insights to your friends by role playing. (Scott Fritz: if you are reading, I still haven't forgiven you for stealing that pouch of gold!).

Really, today's role playing games do so much work for the players, whether on XBox or the computer, and the old D&D left most of it up to your imagination which I think is a good thing.

When I told my 16-year-old about my old D&D experience ... he wasn't surprised:

"Dad, you were a geek in high school ..."

Ouch ... that felt worse than getting hit on the head at the mall ... 

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sat. feb. 2, 2008 @ 1 p.m.

Blame Us if You Must for Yesterday's "Ice Storm"

That's right ... my second grader and I ... we are the culprits  that "iced out" the prep schedule yesterday. I know it was only raining in Sterling and just a little icy in Ashburn that means out west it was probably dicey.

My second grader came home from school with the following news: if you wore your PJ's inside out, ran around the table screaming at 8 p.m. and ... flushed ice down the toliet. Well, then, ice storm and "no school" guaranteed.

I'm not making this up ... flushing ice down the toliet. That was the directive.

Of course it worked! Now we will be faced with this conversation at our household every time they forecast a possible ice storm:

"Honey, is the icemaker working? There isn't any ice in it ..."

"Dear, it is all in the bathroom ..."

Of course, two weeks ago I showed up to Velocity Sports Performance in dreadful conditions at 6 a.m. for my workout only to find that schools had delayed and thus class was kaput.

All of sudden at bedtime Thursday ... there I was, turning my PJ's inside out ... ice=school delay=no workout ...

I woke up like little kid at 5:30 a.m. Friday ... flicked on the TV ... wait for it, wait for it, Culpeper ... Fairfax ... here it comes ...

Loudoun Public Schools - 2 Hour Delayed

Yes! It worked ... my second grader was dancing around the room ... I was dancing around the room ... I get to roll back into bed ... Yes!

Don't get me wrong, I wasn't just trying to duck my workout but I was trying to get through a dodgy hamstring that I tweaked a bit in Wednesday's workout.

In the early phases of this workout, at the very end of the warm-up, I got a little too self-confident and tried to really finish hard on the last 25-yard sprint ... at about 23 yards ... tweak!

Not enough to sideline me, but enough to make the rest of class a true grind.

The good news from Wednesday is I have now dropped six pounds since starting my workout classes at Velocity Sports Performance in Ashburn three weeks ago. That is a good two pounds a week average, especially since I'm truly adding muscle and toning up muscles that last saw action when the A-Team reigned surpeme on TV and "Who Shot J.R." was a big question.

... speaking of TV: when did Friday Night Lights become Friday Night Spikes ... the Dillon Panthers volleyball team is getting a lot more action than the football team, which takes the field about as often as Haley's Comet ...

I watched part of the Moment of Truth ... it was the Moment of ... zzzzzzzzz .... sorry, I drifted off ... Moment of Boredom ... (That answer is ... ... ... ... ... True) ...

My second grader "makes me" watch American Idol. Here is my breakdown of each audition episode:

20 minutes commericals
5 minutes actual good singing (they must save it for Hollywood)
5 minutes of actual feel-good storyline
10 minutes of actual truly sad storyline as in these people are sad, sad humans
5 minutes of Ryan in the hallway acting like he has better places to be
10 minutes of wacky acts, including the judges behavior (really, what is the difference between this and the Gong Show?)
5 minutes of roving camera shots of the masses ... yes, we get it, you are a popular show!

Saw it on TiVo ... so should you:

The movie "We are Marshall" ... nice family PG move "Wild America" ... old series on Sundance called "Office Tigers" that follows an American company that opens an outsourcing business in India ... Late Night with David Letterman (Len Easton of the California Highway Patrol makes me watch it) ...

Finally, the "ice storm" dance had its downside as Loudoun Schools were closed and events cancelled ... and then not only did I have a bunch of houseguests in my home office (dad: I'm hungry ... I'm bored ... my brother hit me ... so on, so on) but my second grader decides to get sick, like much of Ashburn I might add ...

The day and age of the "sick bell" we had for my oldest son are gone. That was cute, when he would ring the little Statue of Liberty Bell we picked up in New York and ask for something from his sick bed. My youngest? He has a cell phone (blame the parents ... oh, that's me)somehow and figured out he can call our home number and reach me downstairs ...

"I'm hungry" ... "I'm thirsty" ... "My throat hurts" ... "I'm cold" ... "I'm hot" ... "My stuffed animals (bulldozer the bulldog, LPS cheeky monkey, poker the pug and Benji the dog) need your attention" ...

So all day I'm fielding calls from a second grader upstairs in my bed ... After 50 trips up and down the stairs I felt my legs begin to burn that Velocity Sports Performance burn ... this was not a "day off" as advertised at 5:30 a.m. ...

Simply put, I'm banning anymore ice anywhere near a toliet in my household ...

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tues. jan. 29, 10 a.m.

Call of the Search: I'm Still Alive ... and Kickin' and Ramblin' ...

Warning: the following column may truly ramble and thus reveal why we call Dan the Ramblin' man (yes, I'm talking about myself in the third person, just like Smash from Friday Night Lights ... Smash! Arrested! Tough break for the Dillon Panthers ... but then again, they don't actually play football anymore!)

While attending the Loudoun Valley at Stone Bridge basketball game Saturday night I ran into a couple of friends of this blog (FOBs?) ... and they had this to ask: "Are you still alive?"

There were worried that my workouts had gotten to me! Ha ...

What really has gotten to me is the dreaded "tax season" ... aka Nightmare on Filing Street for this small business owner. Let's just say that my filing system makes Oscar Madison from the old "Odd Couple" show look like a neat freak. (I know, I know, I'm dating myself again ... but I can't think of a "messy" character on TV ... besides the Family Guy .. ) ...

Speaking of TV (or should I say ... writing of TV ...) I'm not saying that the "writer's strike" has got me down but this confirmed Couch Potato (my sister and I for many years actually thought that Hazel, Alice and Aunt Bee all had raised us) has resorted now to watching my soon-to-be-16-year-old play Call of Duty 4 online with his friends ... we recently moved his Xbox Live game up to our big TV in the family room in order to get better wireless connection with my fantastic new Verizon FIOS (Verizon: call me quickly to set up advertising on this site ... seriously, I love the FIOS!) and also for him to do better with a larger screen to see the enemy lurking down the street.

You know TV is getting sad when this is the best thing on ... I did draw the line, however, at watching my just-turned-8-year-old play some sort of twisted smash-up between Alvin & the Chipmunks and Guitar Hero. Pipe this into federal prisons and see if anybody wants to do the crime again ...

Where was I? Call of Duty 4 ... I stink at it ... my son made me play it with him ... something about his need to feel superior to me ... You know that Paul Simon song "There Must be 50 Ways to Leave your Lover" ... well, just title my gaming experience: "There Must be 50 Ways to Kill Your Father in Call of Duty 4" ... (OK, OK, Paul Simon ... I really am dating myself as a child of the 70s ... but is there a current song titled "There Must be 50 Ways to Crank that?" ... probably, I just don't want to hear it ...)

On Saturday I did the triple duty: quietly watched my son's JV game against Loudoun Valley (this is an inside joke for any SB fans that are brave enough to sit within earshot of me at basketball games ... hey, in my family, we heckled people at Christmas pagaents and  christenings ... "Come on Father! You call that a baptism!") and then took tickets for the first part of the varsity game  (memo to the five guys too cheap to pay to get in so they waited until midway through the third quarter when the "gate" was shut down: "Dudes ... Get a Job!") and then covered the varsity game.

The Vikes are one of the best defensive teams in the area in some time ... LV coach Chad Dawson was saying that his team has a goal of holding opponents to 40 points a game ... 40?!? That would be a good goal in the lower scoring girls hoops side of things ... but the Vikes have done it this year: Yorktown just 37 ... Freedom 40 ... Battlefield 42 ... Fauquier 37 ... Stonewall 41 ... Heritage 39.

Tonight the Vikes play for first at Osbourn Park in Manassas ... and we wish them good luck!

For SB, the Bulldogs are fighting a 7-game losing streak and haven't won since the holiday break and still are searching for a first home victory. The team has some games it can win down the stretch in the tough Liberty District but they have to keep their heads up. The entire season, SB has been very competitive for two to three quarters but then a lull will happen and a run by the other team will put the game away. My advice: just forget halftime ... and keep the team on the floor shooting instead of heading to the locker room ... works for my second grade team!

On Friday SB played at Woodson ... speaking of Call of Duty 4 ... Woodson High School looks like one of the game settings ... are they rebuilding that school or just tearing it apart? It looked the same to me a year ago. SB boys JV won in double overtime ... I was very, very quiet during this game ... as quiet as those Woodson students all dressed in black and carrying white boards.

Did I mention that Verizon FIOS rocks! Our TV reception is twice as clear as the Comcast we just dinged ... (Hello, Verizon, I'm wating for that ad call ...)

Back to my working out ... Day 6 and Day 7 and Day 8 all went off ... I am now a full 21 days into the program ... we have been doing a lot of upper body stuff ... in fact, my arms are propped up on a stack of books to write this ...

Day 6 was all about the Medicine Ball ... the ways in which they use it at Velocity Sports Performance are creative ... I was partnered up for some of it (partner throws the ball to you while sitting and you catch and touch the floor on three sides and toss back and repeat ... then he throws it to you and you lay back with the ball over your head and then throw it back ... having a partner means ... not being able to cheat on the reps!) ...

Using the medicine ball always makes me think of some old movie and guys with handlebar mustaches and the gentleman's rules of boxing or something ... only these are funky looking cool Nike medicine balls (what the heck: Nike, call me ... your shoes have never fit my EEE foot but you can advertise on my website: hey, Just Do IT ...)

Day 7 ... brought a big change ... Geoff the guy guiding this out-of-shape 44-year-old for the first two weeks was not working on Friday ... Enter Mark Kimener, another ex-football player (UMass-Amherst) who looks like he could strap on the pads and still kick tail ... Mark, basically kicked our tail on Friday (Dude: we are old guys ... and gals!).

Actually we had some upper body weight lifting followed by some serious running ... three of the guys in our group are in insane shape ... they were doing these 400-yard runs like some serious Olympic training team ... it looked like the bell lap in China ... I, on the other hand, couldn't run for distance, even if a Tiger at the San Francisco zoo was chasing me.

Friday was killer as after the Woodson-SB basketball, I scooted over to Claude Moore to see the Dulles District swimming finish up ... my hair still smells like chlorine and I didn't get in the pool! What a beautiful facility ... two thumbs up to Loudoun for building this rec center. Check it out. My arms were sore over the weekend and then on Saturday afternoon, while refereeing a youth basketball game ... my calf cramped up ... ugh! Somebody page Liesure World ... I can apply for an age waiver.

Monday's workout ... Geoff was back and leading the troops at 6 a.m. ... did I say it was dark and cold at 6  a.m. in the winter! I don't want to jinx anything but I think Geoff must be reading this blog because no jump rope, yet again! I am worse at jump roping than I am at Call of Duty 4!

We did some serious stations at the end of class ... knee tucks on the big workout ball, push-ups on the slide boards, step ups with weights in each hand, snatches, throwing the medicine ball against the wall ... I have found that one way to make it go faster is the Power of the Lost 3 ... when counting your reps, skip anything with a "3" ... so 1, 2, 4, 5 ... and then 10, 11, 12, 14 ... it really helps at the end ... 21, 22, 24, 25 ... Little know fact: the pyramids were built by the Power of the Lost 3 ... I read it on Wikipedia ...

Now, I'm hoping that Geoff doesn't read this blog ... man, he's going to be counting my reps tomorrow morning ... and we will probably finish off the class playing Call of Duty 4 while jump roping ... 

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mon. jan. 21 @ 10:30 a.m.

Day 4 and Day 5 Sandwiched Between a "Snow Day"!

What? We get snow days for our workout routine as well! Yipeeeeee.

Well, except ... like a good first-timer I actually went to Velocity last Friday, slippery ice and all, only to find out that because Loudoun schools were running a two-hour delay, Velocity was closed for the morning sessions. Yeah, yeah ... always read the fine print.

I felt like a cheat ... having not worked out, so I tackled the ice field, commonly known as the Sousa driveway.

When we moved from New York (a short six-month stay there moving from the Herndon area) who knew to think about which way the driveway faced and the possibility that my driveway would get about 35 seconds of sunlight per day and that in the winter as my sunny-side of the street neighbors showed off their clear driveways, I would be out hitting my blacktop with a pick axe ... looking like some desperate character from the "Ice Truckers" series.

But  back to the workouts ... the Wednesday before was Day 4 or the one-week mark of my quest for fitness. I really appreciate how Geoff Mapp, our fearless instructor, changes up each workout ... we have yet to repeat a day. Only the sore muscles are reruns.

On this day we finished with something called the "fabulous 50" or something like that. We had to write down a set of exercises to do and then we were set loose to attack them with the command: 50 reps at each exercise.

Ever see those little kids count for hide-and-go-seek, when they really want to win ... 1-2-3-4-11-12-13-25 ... "Ready or Not, Here I Come!".

OK, OK, I wasn't that bad ... but man, my classmates were a flyin' through these sets and I was laboring like a pack mule on the Grand Canyon trail ... heading up the incline.

If I can remember the exercises were: 50 double jump ropes (Geoff, Geoff: not the darn jump rope again) ... yes, swinging the rope twice through on each jump. Sugar Ray Leonard I'm not so I had to do 100 single jump ropes. This really, put me behind the 8-ball or later as it were, the Nike medicine ball.

What else? 50 back extensions, 50 crunches, 50 walking lunges, 50 jump pull-ups, 50 wall throws with the medicine ball, 50 box jumps, 50 Burpies ... I might be missing a couple but needless to say ... this is quite a workout.

While I was doing the box jumps and still needing to do several other things, Geoff came over and said, "is just have crunches left?".

Uhmmm ... "yep, I have crunches left."

Later as I tackled the other remaining exercies, Geoff came by again: "just crunches left?"

"Oh yeah ... still got to do crunches."

I finally did the crunches but as the class was about to finish up ... the burpies were left ... what the heck is a burpy anyway ... is that any kind of exercise for a grown man! And what about the name burpy ... sounds like something you get when you mix exercising and Mexican food ... "oh man, I got the burpies." It sounds like a type of tomato ("today's fresh house salad features burpy tomatoes grown organically by a little old lady in Sunnydale, California.").

Next time ... I promise to finish the burpies!

I might add, I weighed in at the one week mark and four pounds are gone.

I did a little exercise over the weekend with a father-son basketball game at Stone Bridge with the JV team. The fathers won, 57-56, only we were able to count our points as double for the first two 15-minute segments. My "6-pointer" was key to victory ... that is my story and I'm sticking with it. We played on the smaller court in the aux. gym and still the boys ran down the court with 4-on-1 fastbreaks and one embarassing 5-on-none (all five fathers were receiving oxygen and donuts at the other end).

It was actually a lot of fun as not only did the coaching staff join in with varsity head coach Sonny Green and assistant Trevor Wright and JV coach Brian Whitmore and freshman coach Doug Poland all playing but so did Stone Bridge principal James Person. How cool is that? I reminded the players ... block the principal's shot and don't even think about passing midterms.

On to this morning and Workout No. 6 or the 12th day of my little get-in-shape foray.

More variety. More sweat. More medicine ball work!

Today we had to go and get two medicine balls and put them at each ends of the running area (about 30 yards apart) ... just this spoke of pain to come. We then did a set of exercises (20 reps) with the medicine balls and had to skip, spring, backpeddale or side shuffle to the other end to do another set. I think we did a series of six excercises and we did this three times, working on different parts of the body. Don't quote me on this as I was getting groggy by the end.

I did see Velocity Sports Performance of Ashburn owner Andy Bast come in right toward the end and it really made me try and not stagger towards the finish. I didn't want to worry him that I was going to keel over in his business ... never fear, I save that for my family room after each workout. Andy not only runs this Velocity but he was warming up for the next class, which I think was Adult Performance which sounds even harder than my class, titled Adult Fitness or in my case Adult (Un)Fitness. Not only that but I noticed another big difference. The Mon/Wed/Fri Adult Performance runs 90 minutes long. Ouch.

I don't even want to think about how much jump roping can be done in a 90-minute block.

Well, again I felt great after finishing the workout ... until a reality check from my soon-to-be-16-year-old ... I was showing him the medicine ball exercise we had to do when he chimed in:

"Dad, you didn't wear that shirt this morning?"

"Sure," I said ... it was my lucky "Life is Good" shirt.

"With your stomach showing like that?!?" he said.

(Snappy comeback, snappy comeback, why are the writer's still on strike! I thought to myself, but then I went with the truth)

"Son ... my stomach shows in all my shirts ... that is why I'm doing Velocity!"

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tues. jan. 15 @ 4:45 p.m.

Day 3: Stomach Muscles? I Don't Need No Stinkin' Stomach Muscles

Of course I need stomach muscles but anytime I can slip in a reference to one of my favorite movie lines (Treasure of the Sierra Madre ... "We don't need no stinkin' badges") then my work has been done.

Anyway ... Day 3 or should I call it Workout 3 and Day 6 of my "So you Think Velocity Sports Performance can Put Dan Back into Shape" adventure ... I can't spend too long  mulling over this question as my arms are heavy, so heavy. We did strength work Monday and it was my most enjoyable day yet.

Here is what I found out: my upper body strength is still OK and my leg strength is still good (helps to have tree stumps for legs just don't try and buy dress pants) but my back muscles are about a 1 on a scale of 1 to 10 and my stomach muscles ... Ha! On a scale of 1 to 10 ... at least a minus-5.

Over the years I've had some back and shoulder problems and every doctor said the same thing: "you need to work on your stomach muscles." This coming from MD's with zero body fat ... I'm always suspicious. Of course I work on my stomach muscles ... you should see my eat over the holidays ... nobody can go at the big meals back-to-back like I can. They don't call me Mr. December for nothing.

If you remember my last entry ... our fearless trainer Geoff Mapp claimed he would turn me into a champion jump roper. Not feeling so good now ... are you Mr. Mapp! I can say that because Geoff had us drag out the jump ropes on Monday and he wanted us to do 30 forward and 30 backward and then run 25 yards and back while jump roping. As others whipped through the 30 and 30 and headed down the turf ... I was struggling through the 30 front.

Then came the 30 back ... a one and ... tangle ... two ... and tangle ... three ... and trip ... four ... tangle, stumble, trip ...

Finally, Geoff looks at me and says: "You can just do forward if you want, Dan."

No, what I would really like to do ... Geoff, my friend, is take this jump rope and wrap it around your ... oh, this is a family blog. Sorry about that. Never mind!

For the last time: Dan+jump rope=Just plain silly.

We had five stations that we rotated through ranging from presses to a wicked straight leg sit up while holding a bar over your head to jumping with a 5-pound medicine ball over your head and pounded it down as hard as you can (don't try this at home ... it could be dangerous ... especially if you are using your family cat).

I was feeling pretty good as we neared the end ... or as Larry David would say "pretty, pretty, pretty good (please, you must watch Curb Your Enthusiasm) when Geoff finished with quite a reality check for me ... doing 25 sit-ups one way and 25 another and then doing ... oh heck, there were all kinds of things the others (those luck fit six!) whizzed through while I struggled with the first command: 25 sit-ups ...

Ever seen the hapless, helpless beached whale struggle to get back into the water ... that had to sum up my pathetic sit-up attempts. I know there are stomach muscles somewhere ... in hibernation or perhaps a witness relocation program ("they probably squealed on my late-night McDonald's drive-thru's"). Sigh.

Oh well, another day ... almost to the one week mark! I would applaud ... only if I could raise my arms that high ...

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Sun. Jan. 13, 2008 @ 11 p.m.

Day 2: One Small Step for Dan, One Giant Stretch over the Hurdles

Well, those that were betting I wouldn't make my second workout session at Velocity Sports Performance lost as I did indeed show up on Friday.

I would like to report that there were no jump ropes and that is cause for jumping for joy in my workout book. Though, Geoff Mapp informed me that I would be jumping the rope like a pro before I was done ... uhmmmmm ... OK, Geoff. Keep thinking those happy thoughts. Then again, my wife (a former high school swimmer) told me she could easily teach me how to float and I still sink to the bottom of a pool, lake, ocean ... like an anchor.

No jump ropes ... but hurdles! We did some work with the the hurdles and you don't jump them (ha!) but did some reps where we had to kick our leg over the side of them. I should explain. If I was a SuperHero ... Mr. Flexible or the Incredible Bendable or Twisty Man would NOT be my moniker. I haven't had flexibility since 1964 when I started to walk. There is still laughter echoing the California school halls after my attempts to do manadated gymnastics in P.E. in high school ... not to be out done, we later did Disco Dancing in P.E. (seriously, it was California and 1977!).

I really pushed myself, stretching my legs over these hurdles. The eight of us went in a line and I thought it would be great to go last (no witnesses to the caboose) only to discover that we were doing the exercises in a continuous circle which meant that shortly I had the first person in line (who volunteers to go first!?! I tell you who, those same kids that sit in the front of class in school and can you trust them?) really, really catching up to me ... I moved and stretched for my life.

Didn't feel to bad Friday afternoon. A little sore Friday night. Very sore Saturday morning. By Saturday afternoon the muscles running from my hips to my thighs were screaming for mercy. Of course, I had to coach my son's hoops team at 2 p.m. and then officiate a game at 4 p.m. I must have looked like the Tin Man running down the court.

We did a great circuit of exercises on Friday that included wall touches which I make my players do and I thought it wasn't that hard but ... man, when you get tired, doing wall touches (jumping up and touching as high as you can) really is hard! I now apologize to all my second grade basketball players.

I figured Geoff would ease us towards the end but ... Noooooooooo! (Sorry, I just read Steve Martin's new book). We finished by doing push-ups with five pound (well, some of the more fit guys had more weights) weights in our hands ... we actually did the push-ups on the weights as the weights are square. Then we stood up and did a press over our head with the weights.

One push-up. One press. Ha! Easy ... time to go home ... no?

Two push-ups, Two presses. Not bad.

Three push-ups, Three presses. Hey, that burns.

Four push-ups, Four presses. OK ... it seemed so close to quitting time a moment again.

Five push-ups, Fives presses ... There goes my push-up form.

Six push-ups, Six presses .... will anybody think less of me, if I do the push-ups with my knees touching (Geoff said we could but had to cross our legs).

Seven push-ups, Seven presses ... The heck with image, I'm on my knees doing the push-ups.

Eight push-ups, Eight presses ... I have met pain and his name is Geoff!

Nine push-ups, Nine presses ... As I do the presses the weights sort of waiver around in the air, sort of like a Vegas plate spinning act!

10 push-ups, 10 presses ... I wish I could say I finished like Rocky doing those one-hand push-ups to a mental soundtrack of "Eye of the Tiger" ... but I really ended more like SpongeBob Squarepants to the soundtrack of "Help"

I'm happy to report that we held our Athletes of the Month photo shoot at Velocity today and I had no unhappy flashbacks (though, I did knock over a hurdle when nobody was looking ... darn, that felt good).

Seven more hours until "Day 3" of my workout experiment. Say a kind word to me if you see me at a basketball game Monday night ... if I don't shake hands ... nothing personal, I probably just can't lift them!

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comments

From Dajuan on Jan. 15, 2008.....Hey Dan, Great to see you're getting in shape... good luck on making it through the pain of the suicides and keeping your sponsor.

From Andy on Jan. 15, 2008.....Congrats for making through your 1st 3 days. Love the write ups.

Wed. Jan. 9, 2008 @ 1:30 p.m.

Dead Man Walking ... Well, I should Have Been Running

This is Day One of a grand experiment ... can Velocity Sports Performance of Ashburn train an out-of-shape, overweight 44-year-old "ex-athlete" ... back into condition?

Velocity has a special place in LoudounPrepSports.com history as one of our very first advertisers and supporters of the site ... back when it looked more like a middle school project than the nearly 7,000 pages of content today. If it wasn't for local business owners like Andy Bast, LPS would have joined etoys.com in the URL dust bin of history long ago.

Since starting the website in Oct. 2005, I have logged more than 6,000 hours working on LoudounPrepSports.com and most of that has come sitting here in my home office and doing what millions of others do at home ... snack!

Thus, my almost out-of-shape body has really morphed into a very poor excuse of a human physique and at times, I'm wheezing just trying to keep up with my second grade basketball team I coach ... forget that I'm playing in a parent-son game next week with the Stone Bridge High School JV hoops team (memo to fellow parents: please bring ringers).

I've joined health clubs before and the motivation wasn't there for me to follow through with anything. So when I saw that Velocity offers a "Adult Fitness Program" ... I thought, hey, this might be my (last!) chance to get in shape before I start getting that AARP magazine.

And if not having the pro's at Velocity lead me through the paces wasn't enough to get me to stick, what if I blog about it ... so the entire world knows ... hmmmm.

(At this point, smart readers are saying, "darn, he might just lose Velocity as an advertiser if this brainchild doesn't work ....)

Hey, I heard that ... true, true ... the pressure is on ... I owe it to myself and Velocity to make this work!

So I signed up and I'm in the 6 a.m. class ... I figure, going under the cover of darkness is the best way to avoid ridicule but then there were seven other adults that showed up this morning with me and instructor (or should I call him coach?) Geoff Mapp.

Geoff has trained my son Cooper at Velocity and I like him ... well, I like him better when he was telling Cooper to do stuff and I was sitting in the lounge watching Sports Center!

At this point, I'm praying that Day One is as bad as it gets because, well, the old muscles are aching ... even in spots I didn't know existed (or at least I lost visual contact with).

I can break my first day into the following:

First 15 minutes: That's funny, but I must have swallowed a sock because ... all the saliva has gone from my mouth. It's the water fountain for me or just dial 9-1-1.

Second 15 minutes: Oh, yeah, I remember this feeling ... high school during wind sprints for football ... I forgot I had lungs ... and they are trying to exit my body!

Third 15 minutes: OK ... I knew the Wendy's run at 10 p.m. last night after I covered the BR-LC girls hoops game was a BAD IDEA ... but man ... I'm a bit queasy ... sort of like that first Deep Sea Fishing Trip ... got ... to ... tough ... out ... can't ... lose ... advertiser!

(It was at this point that I really got a reality check ... I stepped onto the scales at Velocity ... my first trip to the "numbers" since before Thanksgiving! Wow ... I am way too close to the dismissal time of my son's elementary school and let's just say, he doesn't get out before 2 p.m.!)

Final 15 minutes: Dead Man Walking ... we were doing these great drills that involved a lot of forward and backwards and shuttling and touching of cones ... kind of like punk rock meets square dancing ... at first, I'm flying through with my second wind and then ... legs by Rubbermaid ... I can't move ... is this how Michael Jackson can moonwalk? I finish these drills with the help of the "third person Dan" looking down and laughing at me ... My mind says "run" but my legs are walking, er, wobbling ... I have been reduced to a Weeble status ... thank goodness they don't fall down.

Geoff has some kind words about how every Day One is like this and I have to thank the other seven adults ... all in crazy shape I might add ... for not taking any cell phone videos of my pathetic attempt during the jump roping drill. I have the same problems with jump ropes that I have with the dance floor.

The other adults have been through this and they even know how to sweat the right way ... nice patterns that start at the neckline and work their way down their shirts. I, on the other hand, well ... because of my nice stomach (moment of silence for Taco Bell, please) seemed to be sweating in this big, fat circle on the front of my shirt. Yikes, I look like I'm wearing the Target logo. Maybe my goal ... is simply to sweat the proper way!

And as bad as I felt during the workout ... I have felt great the rest of the day (well, crawling up the stairs so I could get my son ready for school, that wasn't a pretty sight).

Can it work? Do you have your stories of getting in shape? Hit the button below to share ...

For the record, the program I am in is divided into the following:

Active Dynamic Warm-up: We worked with some great bands ... I'm guessing that my Achilles Rupture would not have happened 18 months ago if I had gone through this type of stretching!

Energy System Development: full-force, high-intensity workout is promised ... I can testify to that!

Strength Training: This wasn't a weight day ... my other muscles will have to wait for their baptism.

One thing is that all the times I watched my son do this training, I never had a true appreciation of the intensity and effort. Sorry Cooper. And it always impressed me that Cooper never hesitated at going to his Velocity sessions ... the truest barometer of a teen's interest.

I understand that feeling as I'm already looking forward to Friday morning ... maybe not that 5:30 a.m. alarm clock going off but to the next challenge. Who knows ... maybe it won't be Dead Man Walking at the end but just Dead Man Shuffling.

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Friday, Nov. 23, Noon

Reason to Give Thanks!

I had to compress the photo above from Stone Bridge High School's first "Athlete to Athlete" program last week, but trust me ... those kids are all smiling!

The program, started by Dominion High School AD Joe Fleming, pairs special need athlete with high school athletes in an afternoon of fun and skills involved around one sport. At Stone Bridge, the program was run by sophomore Cullen Fleming, Joe's son, and the sport was basketball.

Full disclosure: I'm biased towards this program ... it is a winner! For the special needs kids and for the prep athletes. Plus, that is my son Cooper in the photo holding one of the banners. Cooper is on the JV team at Stone Bridge this season and I'm glad you got involved in the program.

Stone Bridge girls coach Brian Parke was also all smiles during the afternoon.

"It is excellent for the kids. It's wonderful that my players can get another perspective on basketball. They are coaching, putting the kids through drills," said Parke.

I was impressed by the Stone Bridge kids and young Fleming and how well they ran the program which drew 17 athletes with special needs. And the special needs athletes ... wow! Some of these teens could really play a great game of basketball ... I saw smooth shots, great dribbling skills and blocking out on rebounds that would make some high school coaches very happy.

But mostly ... smiles ... smiles from the parents in the stands and the athletes themselves.

Cheers Sports kicked in $650 for nice-looking t-shirts for the event. This is one local business with a heart in the right place.

Cullen was busy leading the clean-up after the program but he had time to answer a couple of questions. This is one mature sophomore, just another Loudoun teen with a bright future. The school system has so many talented kids in so many areas ... just incredible.

Fleming said he has had 21 students sign up for the Athlete to Athlete club at Stone Bridge and another 20 or so volunteers.  He hopes to organize another one in February.

"It was just great today, seeing everybody come out here and having so much fun," said Fleming.

Athlete to Athlete ... just another reason to be thankful over this holiday weekend.

Thurs. Nov. 20, 2 p.m.

 This is NOT a Halloween Story ... but It is Quite Scary!

So you see ... we were driving home from a weekend soccer tournament in Williamsburg. Taking the back roads in a rain storm ... I avoid I-95 at all costs. Flying things were splattering off my windshield and more than just rain drops when the rain stopped ... but that is half the fun of driving on a tw0-lane road in the dead of the night.

The next morning, I'm backing out of the driveway when my wife flags me down and informs me that "something" is hanging from my front grill ... It may even be alive ... 

OK ... we can rule out my neighbor's cat Sophie (she likes to ride on the sunroof when I'm trying to pull out sometimes) and chipmunks (they live under our stoop) and rabbits (Ashburn is home to a million and that number multiplies nightly) ... better walk around front ...

Well ... I'm no "Man vs. Wild" type of guy, so I kept my distance ... Are those wings? Maybe if I check it out from an angle ...

Wow ... those are wings ... Hmmmm ... I think that is a bat ... but I guess I better step closer ....

Great Gotham City! Yes ... that is a bat on the front of my Honda Pilot ...  but was he alive or just sleeping ... his wings were fluttering every time the breeze blew ... scary ....

Upon closer inspection ... could it be bat hibernation? They do sleep during the day ... I was a bit hesitant to poke the little fury guy ... but stick in hand ...

I'm no doctor (and I don't play one on TV ... but I do watch Grey's Anatomy) ... but I'm  sure that he was in what we shall call a really, really long golden slumber ... he wasn't moving when I prodded him ... Seems somewhere between Williamsburg and Ashburn he had flown into our path and thus the eternal nap. (hey, I just thought the bugs were really big outside of Fredericksburg!)

I did call the Loudoun health department ... "How does one get rid of a dead bat?" And they told me what to do ...

So now the Honda Pilot is "bat free" but it will thus be called the Batmobile from now on.

fri. aug. 24, 3 aM

Golden Rules of Fundraising Tournaments: Don't Win Your Own
Golden Rules of Working at Home: Don't Accept a Free Piano

It is 3 a.m. and most of you are asleep ... I, on the other hand, am deep in thought ... thinking about Golden Rules ...

Here is one.

LoudounPrepSports.com help sponsor a fundraising golf tournament for the Broad Run High School girls basketball team last Sunday at South Riding and I bravely decided to enter a foursome. Remember those crutches I was on last fall? Well, I hadn't golfed a round for a year when I did blow out my Achilles tendon so it was a two-year span since I last hit the links when I jumped in the golf cart Sunday.

We were not a team built for winning. I am not a good golfer to start with and we also had a 15-year-old, my son, and a 14-year-old, his friend and our neighbor. The only guy who could hit it straight in the foursome was my neighbor Greg ... a Secret Service agent who was on the Gerald Ford detail at one point so I assume he knows a thing or two about wayward tee shots.

I'm just glad he doesn't carry his weapon off-duty as he might have wanted to use it on the rest of the team as we sprayed tee shots, fairway shots and even short putts off into the woods, ponds, roadways, backyards ... we even smacked a goose in the head (is that illegal in Virginia?).

So ... we shoot 75 ... which in a scramble is like, oh shooting 110 ... the winning team is led by Spartan coach Mike O'Hara and they shoot 55 ... What?!? The coach wins his own fundraising tournament. Hey, that has to violate a Golden Rule. The guy also won the putting contest.

It led my neighbor to say, you know what it means if these teachers are so good at golfing? It means that they need to spend more time on lesson plans. Ha. Hey, he said it ... not me.

I can forgive O'Hara for winning but this I can not forgive ... for the longest time our lonely 75 was the high score on the board and somebody said, hey, you win wine if you are the high score. Cool. Something for our trouble ... until O'Hara's wife I think and a foursome of women came with a 100-plus score ... Come on!

Oh well, it was all for a good cause and an enjoyable afternoon ... as a bonus, I told the Freedom golf team that they can expect to find "bonus golf balls" hidden around the South Riding course for years to come. If fact, I'm having new golf balls printed up for the next tournament that read ... "If lost, please return to Dan Sousa of LPS"

Finally ... here is another Golden Rule ... I work from home ... yes, the World Headquarters of LPS is my little home office. This summer, my mother-in-law was nice enough to give us her piano. It has been placed in the living room ... oh, let me step this off for you ... this is not a joke ... seven paces from my office door and a whopping 12 paces from my office chair.

Now ... my 7-year-old thinks he can play and play (pound ... pound ... pound) he does. Often, his friend Jack, will sit down and play as well ... two budding Mozarts ... I call it the Duet from Hell.

Thanks grandma! Accepting a Piano when you have a 7-year-old and you work from home ... that violates a Golden Rule.

Just think it is only 12 days away from the start of school ... I can't wait. I know that first morning when the house is quiet and the kids are at school, exactly what I will do ... hide the darn piano!

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tuesday, Aug. 7, 9:45 pm

Haiku for Comcast Plus the Ill Fate of Loudoun Sports Journal

This really hasn't been a great seven days for Comcast and Me ... first last week I learned that the local Comcast affiliate (Channel 3 to those without the dish) wasn't going ahead with a second season of Loudoun Sports Journal. I had a great time hosting the show last year with first Jeremy Huber of WAGE-AM and then Joe Conroy of Loudoun Times-Mirror.

Sadly, Jeremy and most of the WAGE staff were let go in the spring, and he now works out of the county. Then Joe got a great job at the daily newspaper, the Potomac News down in Woodbridge. Even an end of the season standin, the Connection's Paul Frommelt, couldn't yield a new co-host as Paul is working the Fairfax beat now. Those are three great sports journalists that Loudoun has lost in just a five month period.

Comcast has decided to go in a different direction and will put forth a new local sports show co-hosted by their high school football play-by-play team. I wish them well, but I will miss the weekly tapings and the great behind the scene crew at Comcast that made doing the show fun.

I hope that some of you had a chance to catch the show and enjoyed it. I joked with Comcast that they were going to lose the "Dan Sousa fans" by changing to new hosts (the new show will have a new name and I'm not sure of the format) but I'm not sure they saw that as dire as a threat as, say contracting  bird flu or even a paper cut.

To make matters worse ... I rely on Comcast high speed Internet to run LoudounPrepSports from home and we have had more outages here in Ashburn in a week than I would guess we had in the previous 12 months. Believe it or not, four different neighbors called on different days, asking me if my service was down like theirs ... misery loves company or at least it was good to know the problem wasn't located in my yard.

Of course, Verizon just gave my lawn a new look (21st Century Excavation) and now Fios has come to Ashburn. Every single day, my mailbox is attacked by Comcast and Verizon marketing materials with each company pitching their services for high speed, cable and phone. Really, guys, one flyer a month is plenty ... seriously, if Comcast and Verizon have this much marketing money to burn, I have a local website that could use a new advertiser (hint: the LPS Monkey is involved with the site!).

How steamed was I today about the latest "down time"? I fired off a haiku ... that is how mad I was ... in fact, I think I'll write a Haiku a Day for both Comcast and Verizon, at least until one of them advertises on my site.

So here goes, Day One of the "Much Ado About the Haiku"

Hotter Than the Sun;

Fiber Optic Flirtation

Comcast Down Again

Do you have a haiku of your own ... email me and I'll put it up. Do you have a favorite memory from the gone-but-not-forgotten Loudoun Sports Journal (hey, who could forget "Stump Joe Conroy")? Perhaps a good mental health specialist to refer Dan to?

Giving credit where credit is due department! I figured out finally who had suggested I do the high school rankings for 2006-07. It was Gus Casanova and some of his friends. I first met Gus back when my oldest son started in soccer ... some 10 years ago! Thanks Gus and keep the ideas coming.

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Monday, Aug. 6, 5:30 PM

Playing the Parlor Games or the Silly Season of Prep Sports

Before we totally get into 2007-08, I thought I would give 2006-07 one last look. It was actually a couple of LPS viewers that emailed with the idea to try and rank the schools to how they did for the entire school year in prep sports. So ... before we get going once again with the fall sports season, I did a quick eyeball on 06-07 and came up with my own ranking. Call them the L(E)SP Awards (so named because I did some mind reading to get the results ... actually the LPS Monkey visited a palm reader to come up with some of the sports rankings).

Really it is tough to do because Stone Bridge and Loudoun Valley (the two largest schools in the county with some of the best athletic programs) do not play in the Dulles District. So for many sports, I looked at the Dulles final standings and any tournament/postseason action and then sort of squeezed in SB and LV where I thought they might fall had their been a 10 team district.

It was incredibly tight when I ran the final numbers with three schools separated by three points!

Potomac Falls was on top with 166.5 points followed by Broad Run and Stone Bridge, each with 163.5. I simply ranked the teams for each sport and then gave them a point value (10 for first, all the way down to one for last). Of course, there could be a variance within each sport so those three schools can be seen as tied at the top.

Heck, even LV at 153 could probably end up on top, depending on what colored glasses the sports are viewed in. Heritage and and Loudoun County finished in the middle of the pack and then there was a gap to Park View and Dominion and finally Briar Woods and Freedom, but it clearly looked like overall, the Falcons had a wing up on the Eagles last year.

To view how I can up with the results, click on this Excel spreadsheet which can be downloaded.

Do you have your own opinion of the different rankings, let me know and if you want to attached your version of the final results, I'll put them up for everybody to see. Emails will do fine, please no bricks through my front windows ... I don't have many unbroken windows left as a lawn mower this summer sent a pebble through my office window (the crack of the window, some five feet from my office chair, sent me scrambling to the ground in a classic case of duck and cover) and my 7-year-old did a Bend it Like Beckham and sent a soccer ball crashing into one of our family room windows.

**Best sport of all-time award: I have to thank my wife who has now put up with me for 21 years as we celebrated our wedding anniversary this weekend ("honey, I have a surprise for you ... I TiVo'd the NASCAR race for you!). If you like LoudounPrepSports.com, give her a big "thank you" as she has encouraged me to turn this site from a whim into a real business over the past 21 months.

***"Post"-It Note: Did you see how much the Washington Post sports section downplayed the Barry Bonds tying the home run record? They put the Redskins training camp above the fold and left the Bonds story in the middle of the page with a fairly routine headline. And no columnist filed from the game. I seem to remember a much bigger deal made of the McGwire/Sosa home run chase. The steroid issue is a sore subject within the sports media as many feel like they were partly to blame in the 1990's as they glorified the home run explosion without really asking the hard questions about weak-hitting second baseman besting their career home run totals by 20 or more overnight and slim-looking outfielders turning into beefy muscle-bound mashers overnight. Did you see the video of Bonds at milestone home runs 100 and 200 ... the current Bonds looks like something out of those Eddie Murphy movies where he puts on the fat suit ... I keep expecting Bonds to reach for some hidden zipper and let the real slugger step out for some fresh air ... Of course, as a baseball fan, I'll still check out his attempt to break the record against the Nats.

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Wednesday, Aug. 1, 8 pm

Washington Post Loudoun Extra Worth a Look ... or Two

I have been following closely the launch of the new website at Washington Post Loudoun Extra and so far, I have to say I really like what the Post is doing.

The Post's approach has been to not only provide its own take on Loudoun, but to check the pulse of the county with its Linked Up Loudoun section where they link to stories from the LTM, Leesburg Today and other publications ... such as yours truly, LoudounPrepSports!

That breaks an old newspaper standard where you would rather cut off a pinky than to mention your competition, but this is the Internet folks and not print, so all bets are off. If you have followed our coverage here at LPS, you have seen that we have linked to other stories from different publications. We do that as a service to our viewers.

The way we have always figured it is that when it comes to "surfing" around for news, people just don't one-click and quit. They flit around from site to site, looking for different angles and versions of what they care about. As long as your site provides quality information, then people will put you in their "viewing" loop (the reverse is true as well, don't deliver, and people will no longer stop by your corner  in cyberspace).

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comments

From Gep on Aug. 2, 2007 at 3:56 pm:  "I also thouroughly enjoy loudounextra.com, however it could never be as good as Sousa's super site, loudounprepsports.com!"

Dan's reply: "I honestly did not pay for those comments ... but I can always offer free Chic-fil-A gear for positive feedback! I'm not sure who Gep is but we can rule out anybody in my wife's family who often asks her at family get-together's if 'Dan has decided on a career yet?'!

friday, July 20, 5:15 pM

Guilty TV Sports Pleasures

My wife says time and again, if she knew I liked to watch NASCAR on TV, she never would have married me. And I was holding out about a sweet spot for Country Music as well ... somethings you don't reveal when dating.

I found golf tough to watch on TV, but now with TiVo, it is a lot of fun. I have all eight hours of the British Open coverage on the TiVo and I can speed through and basically watch Tiger Woods play all 18 holes in about an hour. Try that pace at your local golf course!

There are so many commercials in this British Open coverage on TNT, that it is hard to find the golf. Watching it live is a bit like watching paint dry. I was a Jack Nicklaus fan as a youth with Lee Trevino also a favorite and now I'm a Tiger fan. The rest of the PGA players leave me cold. Tiger is still searching for his Tom Watson to challenge him in the next decade. When I watch Tiger play I feel as if I am getting a chance to watch the Babe Ruth of his generation in action.

With my 7-year-old in golf camp this week, it has been golf week here as the boys today, with a neighbor kid, have taken their clubs and some whiffle golf balls out to the common area.

Against better judgement I have signed on to play in the golf tournament in August hosted by the Broad Run High School girls basketball team. I say better judgement as I have not held a golf club since severing my right Achilles tendon a year ago. I am hoping that I don't fall down on a backswing!

The truth is ... I love golf but I have always been fairly bad at it. When I was young I would shoot over 120 and as an adult, I got it down to the 105 range but I have neve broken the century mark. Of course, since the kids were born, I only golf about once or twice a year and it is a sport that you have to do on a regular basis to get good at.

I am thrilled about the talent coming up through the junior ranks in Loudoun. This area will bring home some state individual and team titles on the high school level in the next decade.

Do you have any good local golf stories? Let me know ...

Wednesday, July 18, 2:05 pm

The Heat is On ... In More Ways Than One

Heat is the topic ... regarding the break-in of a former Redskins house and also my little guy at golf camp.

First, a couple of Loudoun youths are in hot water for their theft of former Washington Redskin running back Ernest Byner's home while he and his family were on vacatinon. Click here for the scoop.

I hope that Bynder gets all of his stolen property back. I covered Byner in his playing days but I doubt he would remember me as I was an "upper press box" guy with the Potomac News. At old RFK you had the main press box with the likes of the Post and AP and the Times and then you had the upper press box which was filled with smaller media reps and for some reason the back row was reserved for stogie smoking, fatigue wearing guys from the D.C. Armory next door. Just getting from the upper press box (lovely views of the monuments but not necessarily the playing field) to the lockerroom was liking the Running of the Bulls as you had to navigate down many levels, fighting through exiting fans, to get to the basement level.

The set-up at FedEx is much better, though when the new stadium first opened the press box was centered on the 50-yard-line but since has been moved to the corner of one end zone. When I freelanced for the AP in the final year at RFK, I was often squeezed knee-to-knee with future PTI guys Michael Wilbon and Tony Kornheiser ... they were working on their act back then and much of it is natural. Part of the fun was that if you threw out a line that Tony found funny, he might ask you if he could use it ... that was one way to get into the Post.

It can be quite a feeling to return home from vacation and find your home broken into. It happened in my family when I was about the same age as my 7-year-old. We came back one August from a two-week trip to find the family room sliding glass door in our Bakersfield home broken and jewelry and money in the house were taken. I think the sense of violation - somebody going through your private stuff - was greater than the actual value of items taken, though some things stolen, much like Byner's Super Bowl ring pendant, were of special value to our family only.

Now for a strange moment earlier this week which points again to the importance of staying hydrated in this heat. My youngest didn't drink a lot during the first day of a golf camp this week and, thankfully as I watched him, he just about passed out in the final minutes of the session as he tried to drain a final bucket of balls in the midday sun.

All of sudden, he looked over and said he felt dizzy and that everything was going black. I thought he was joking but then I noticed his face was drained of all color and I quickly sat him down in the shade and got a glass of water to cool him off. He felt bad for about 10 minutes (almost sick to his stomach) and then the shade and water perked him up. 30 minutes later he was back to normal but it just shows you how quickly a kid can fade (or adult!) in this heat. Turns out, he hadn't had more than a small cup or two of water during the three-plus hours camp. He hasn't had any problems the rest of the week as he has been drinking plenty.

Go to this CDC site for tips on what to do in the extreme heat. Most of all, stay safe out there, especially as all the high school athletes head out for August practices in less than two weeks.

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Tuesday, July 17, 2007, 1:25 pm

Summer Vacation: Stingrays, Sea Turtles and Sand

Welcome to my first blog entry!

The Sousa clan returned from vacation over the weekend and we just got a phone call from Florida ... seems part of their beach is missing ... and I just found it in the back of our Honda Pilot.

Seriously, the beach would be fine without the sand. Surely if we can invent the iPhone, we can make sand that doesn't cling to your body for days. And I'm talking about clinging to parts of my body I didn't even know I had. (Yes, it is going to be that type of blog ... LPS photographer/managing editor/Gal Friday Alysia Deem will no longer be reading this after that last comment).

We made the 16-hour drive to Florida's Hutchinson Island in Stuart to avoid having to take off our shoes in the security line at Dulles Airport by the TSA officials ... you seriously do not want any male members in my family removing their shoes in a public space.

One of our highlights is seeing a baby sea turtle hatch during the daylight and make its way to the ocean. We were on a stretch of beach where the mama sea turtles would come ashore at night to lay eggs. We never saw them but those helping the sea turtles staked off where the eggs were on the beach to prevent people from trampling on them.

Actually we didn't see the baby sea turtle ... that was our 15-year-old son but one of the joys of vacation is that we can make anything up and you will believe it ("Yeah, I caught a 30-foot sailfish after a six-hour fight but decided to let live. Catch and release baby is the only way.")

From a 4th floor beachfront balcony we saw unusual activity on the beach below. People actually moving instead of laying in the sun or standing waist-deep in the surf. Soon people were running down the beach with cameras.

Shark attack? SpongeBob SquarePants sighting? Paris Hilton on vacation?

We sent the fastest in our group to investigate and he came back with a cell phone picture of the sea turtle making its way to the ocean. One Florida resident said they had never seen a baby head to sea in all their years living in there. Others said it must have been a straggler as it was the last in the group to make its way out. Kind of a cool vacation moment.

I had my uncool moments at the beach:

*Trying to play one-on-one against my teen in 100-degree plus feels-like weather. Slicing across the lane I made a move for the ages ... er, the aged. A twisting, arcing shot that went in just as I threw my back out. The look on my son's face said it all: Dad is old!

*I got beat in a poolside "Father Fear Factor" contest. We had to eat a mound of gummy worms hidden inside Jell-O slathered in whip cream. It made my 7-year-old happy but my stomach was sickly sweet for the rest of the afternoon. Oh, and I got beat.

*We visited the nearby Florida Oceangraphic Society where you could "pet" stingrays. It was just a bunch of young kids enjoying the velvety feeling of this creatures when I decided to put my hand in the pool ... only, I startled a hyper ray from behind and he did a 180 and jumped out of the pool and tried to attack me (That is my vacation story and I'm sticking to it). OK, he might have just whipped around in the water but I reacted as if Jaws was making its way toward me and I jerked my hand out of the water and soaked half of my body.

The best times on the trip were the simplest. Eating fresh shrimp on the balcony overlooking the ocean. Playing a friendly game of family bingo at the rec center. Opening up the "snack bar" as we headed down I-95 (I can never eat another Starburst!). Watching the sunrise come up over the Atlantic ... and then going back to sleep! Taking advantage of a stormy afternoon to watch the final five episodes from Season Two of Grey's Anatomy (as a family, we are hooked!).

We also saw a bit of brotherly protection on the trip. Our youngest had been having some "run-ins" with a slightly older kid in the pool each day. Nothing big but enough to ruin a bit of fun. Seems some kids on vacation don't want to play fair! Somehow "big brother" got wind of it and in a friendly pool volleyball game, some well-placed spikes kept ending up in the tormentors face. We noticed our youngest seemed just fine with this payback.

Those are the moments we will remember long after all the sand has finally washed away. That and the time we all saw that baby sea turtle.

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comments

From Dajuan on July 17, 2007 at 7:13 pm: This is really a great idea Dan! It sounded like a fun vacation and I look foward to reading the blog in the future.