Southwestern Basketball Trip

The weather was beautiful for the long-awaited trip to Southwestern for the annual Basketball Classic. It was in the mid 60s and sunny on the day I took this picture in the front of campus. I took 10 Guys Varsity Basketball players along with the coach to Texas from Wednesday the 24th through Sunday the 28th of January. We finished 3-3 with 2 losses to Forest Lake Academy (one by 33-31) who went on to win the Tournament for the 2nd consecutive year in a row.

Here is a picture of the team before we played Shenandoah Valley Saturday night. The team didn't want to stay for the supper I signed up for and so they also skipped the picture. It was a good learning experience for them as they got a shot to their ego after going 8-0 in Ohio so far.


Here is the half-time S.W.A.T. Gymnastics show performed by the Southwestern Gymnastics led by Chad Hutchinson. He has done a good job there according to everyone I talked to at S.W.A.U. It was fun to see the wall-walkers too.


Here is a picture of the informal Slam-Dunk competition after the Championship Games ended. Even though the picture is dark, you can still see all the people gathered around, also in the bleachers. The F.L.A. guys won and the CAYA girls won. The week was very tiring as M.V.A. played 6 games at the Tournament, and including our games in Ohio on Monday and Tuesday, we played a total of 8 games of 6 days! Today was our first day without a game since last Sunday. Our next game will be @ home on Feb. 6 and we finish the season the following week with Senior Night on Thursday, Feb. 15. Then the next week the Guys team will start playing in the State Sectionals. I had fun on the trip but it is also a relief it is done and all went relatively smoothly with no major problems.

Winter Has Returned

I liked this picture I took of my Grand Prix on Thursday with the water tower behind. I was loading up to head to the prime destination in this area, Snow Trails.

The snow was a lot better last week, as I went boarding on Wednesday with MVA's Ski Club and then again on Thursday. It snowed nearly the entire time I was there on Thursday and they ended up getting 1 inch of natural snow along the 6 inches they made.


The side on the left side of the Silver Triple Chairlift was closed as you can see. I rode this lift for the majority of the 3 hours I boarded on Thursday. Carrie called me about 40 feet from the top of the lift once! I took one hard fall and probably slid about 60-70 feet down the slope after I caught an edge after jumping. I got snow up my coat even from all the powder that was there.

As you can see from this picture, Thursday was very crowded. There was an estimated 1,000 students that came on coach buses. There were at least 14 buses lined up in the parking lot. But Wednesday there was only 1 lift open and the line took around 7-10 minutes every time, so with 3 lifts open Thursday the wait time was nearly gone, maybe 30 seconds at the longest. This afternoon at 2 p.m. the SoBe Terrain Park opens. Hopefully it stays open for awhile.