From the category archives:
Spartan gets some exercise
Sparty has been pesky lately and too full of energy. He doesn’t want to go out to play during the day because he thinks it’s way too hot. So he wants to go out in the middle of the night and run around in the yard playing.
We needed a way to get him to burn some energy, so Jack taped a dog biscuit to the back of his dirt bike and ran around the yard.
Sparty chased him.
I said he was a good dog with the best personality. I never said he was smart.
Jack goes for an interception in a one-on-one drill
We spent most of last week with Jack in Williamsburg, VA while he attended the invitation-only “Top Gun” football camp. Although the thermometer read 103-106, the heat index hovered around 110 and field turf added what felt like another 20 degrees, I don’t think Jack could have enjoyed it more. He was in heaven. (I was happy too, but man, was I hot.)
Look at the smile on Jack's face -- could he be any happier?
Football University (FBU) holds 28 camps through the year across the country for 6th to 12th graders (FBU is the organization that puts on the Army All-American Bowl game for high school seniors each year). They select about 36 kids (roughly six per grade) from each camp to come to the Top Gun camp in July. There were about 1000 kids at Top Gun camp.
Someone said last week that more than half of the top 50 ranked high school senior recruits in the nation were there. Many of the kids we watched play last week will be playing at D-I and D-IAA schools next year and in the years to come.
At FBU camp in June, Jack worked out with #37, who is the 7th-ranked LB in the country & had a verbal commitment from Stanford his junior year
In April, we snuck Jack in a year early (he was a fifth grader) to a FBU camp at Rutgers. He had a great time and loved the field/classroom format of FBU camps.
We knew he had a done a great job working out at camp and in the classroom, but he’s just so tiny compared to the older kids. (At FBU Top Gun, the kids were grouped by grade. At the regular FBU camps, all the grades are together). Because he was a year young and not huge for his age anyway, we were a little bit surprised that he was selected to attended Top Gun.
Jack also attended a FBU camp in June in Pennsylvania, which featured a different set of coaches, and he was selected again for Top Gun.
All the FBU camps separate players by position — QB, RB, WR, OL, DL, LB, DB & K — and train them specifically for that position. The coaches are all well-known college and NFL coaches and former players. Jack’s linebacker coaches at the Rutgers camp were:
Click here for photos from FBU Rutgers. Blog post about the camp is here.
At the PA camp, the coaches were:
Click here for photos from FBU Pennsylvania.
My favorite moment from FBU in PA was when Jack answered a question in class. Here’s how it went:
The linebackers are in the classroom after an 8-hour day. High Schooler #1, who’s being highly recruited by DI schools, flails at detailing coverage progressions in cover 2 defense. High Schoolers #2, 3 &4 are clueless as well. Coach Fontes asks for volunteers.
Tiny little fifth-grader-masquerading-as-a-sixth-grader JACK raises his hand and proceeds to the white board to detail and draw every possible permutation of the coverage, sounding like the Professor talking to Sherman in Rocky & Bullwinkle.
The best thing: He said he did it because he knew if he didn’t volunteer I would kick his butt.
Coach Cottrell seemed to really like Jack at FBU Rutgers and we were thrilled when we realized after the opening ceremonies that he would be in charge of the sixth graders at Top Gun. He recognized Jack right away and they bonded about Del Val and Doylestown.
Camp started off really well for Jack. The photo at the top of the post happened the first night in one of the first one-on-one drills. It led to one of Jack’s best moments at camp: the Coach Cottrell hug.
After Jack made that play, Coach Cottrell started yelling praise at him from way across the field; he continued yelling good things at Jack as he walked across the field to him. When he reached Jack, he told him that that play deserved a hug.
The general schedule for the three days was workout on the field then class room session, three times a day.
The workout on the field was broken into a drills session, a one-on-one session (LB versus QB/RB), and then seven-on-seven (which is kind of weird to watch: 3 LBs, 2 DBs, 2 Ss against 2 QBs, 2-3 WR and 2-3 RB, so there are two balls flying around and a lot to keep track of).
Although it’s hard to be objective, I would say Jack was in the top three LB in his age group at camp. He struggled a bit with the outstanding speed some of the offensive players had and he was consistently giving up many inches in height and some weight to the guys he was covering. (Remember, he’s at least a year younger than everyone else in his group.)
Also, so much of Jack’s game — and excellence — is his hitting. Obviously, this camp was no contact, so that worked against Jack showing the best of his skills. Almost all the drills are geared toward covering the pass, which again, probably isn’t Jack’s best strength. You could tell that he was just dying to blast through a line and hit a QB hard.
Even though Jack was sometimes getting outpaced in the open field (these are some of the best players in the U.S.), we were most surprised at the speed he showed.
When he did get beat by a speedy RB/WR it was usually only by a step and while he often lost touch with the guy at the beginning of the play, he just as often ran him down and ultimately made the play. I think he realized by the third day that roughing them up a bit at the start of the play slowed them down.
All in all, we had a great few days — apart from the heat. I was impressed with the level of coaching. They demanded a lot of the kids and for the most part, the kids responded. There was very little fooling around; everyone was serious about learning to play better and competing and kept up the pace.
Jack loves FBU because he really like the classroom element. While the coverages he was working on are probably too sophisticated for him to use in the next few years, he loves to increase his football knowledge and he’ll be ready when the complexity of the game steps up in high school.
Click here for photos (many with captions) from FBU Top Gun 2010.
(Catching up…here’s a report on Jack’s summer baseball team; look for posts about FBU Top Gun football camp, more about Tanzania (!), and general summer photos in the next few days.)
Jack played on a combined Upper Makefield-Solebury team this summer. It was great for him because he got to play with his friends from the Spiders as well as his friends from the Mavs team he played on during the Spring. The main focus of the team was the PONY regional tournament, held outside Pittsburgh 15-18 July, where they rallied to finish as runner-up.
The team also did a warm-up tournament in June at the Ripken Complex in Aberdeen, MD. The team struggled a bit in Aberdeen, but had lots of fun and started to get used to playing together.
Bucks Co. Mavs @ Ripken Complex, Aberdeen MD
CLICK HERE for photos from the first game in Aberdeen.
CLICK HERE for photos from the second game in Aberdeen. (I missed the last game they played because I was at Owen’s fencing tournament.)
The team had several practices between the Aberdeen tournament and the Pittsburgh PONY league tournament and really started playing well in the PONY games.
They won their first two games, lost the third and then battled back to play in the championship game. In the five games, Jack went 7-11 at the plate (0.636) with a 0.750 on-base percentage and (my favorite stat) NO STRIKEOUTS.
Offensively, he made a couple of excellent bunts (shades of last year!), had a couple a nice singles to the outfield and got robbed once by a questionable infield fly call. He seems especially to like to swing at the first pitch and to hit with an 0-2 count.
(L) Getting in, just under the tag & (R) A big hit with with 0-2
Defensively at third, he had one or two errors, made a couple of strong plays and made nice double play that the ump inexplicably called the runner safe (see the game #5 photos: the 1st baseman’s foot was so clearly on the bag, before the runner even gets into the frame. And, no, that’s not creative photo cropping.)
CLICK HERE for Mavs v McCandless (Game #1)
CLICK HERE for Mavs v Cranberry (Game #2)
CLICK HERE for Mavs v Brad-Mar-Pine (Game #3)
CLICK HERE for Mavs v Washington (Game #4)
CLICK HERE for Mavs v Brad-Mar-Pine (Game #5, championship game)
Beside the excellent baseball, I think the boys (and families) really had an awesome time together. We all stayed in the same hotel, so the kids did a lot of swimming. We went to the movies and even got to catch the last half of a Pittsburgh Pirates game, complete with Clemente jerseys (THANKS again, Hitchcocks!). All in all, I think it was an experience the boys will remember a long time.
(L) Mavs on the big screen & (R) At the Pirates game (thanks Karen for the photo)
Oops!
I didn’t hear about my favorite moment from the weekend until last night. Kevin and I were talking about Jack’s game (I missed the beginning because I was at the fencing tournament with Owen.)
Kevin mentioned that — uncharacteristically — Jack had TWO errors in one inning when he was playing at third. No big deal. He’s an 11-year-old boy who never set foot on third base until this Spring.
What I loved is the second part of the story.
Kevin said that when the inning was over and the team was in the dugout getting ready to bat, Jack went up to the pitcher and apologized to him for making the two errors and making it tough for the pitcher to get out of the inning without giving up a lot of runs.
I think that’s the proudest I’ve been of Jack all season.
Fiona had a great time Saturday at her classmate’s birthday party at the Doylestown Rock Gym. As usual, she was fearless and shot right up the wall.
She seemed to really like working her way up the wall using the “rocks,” as she especially liked the ride back down to the ground. They also climbed rope ladders and rope nets.
The gym offers a day camp and Fiona said she’d like to try it, so maybe we’ll add that to her summer schedule.
(Oh yeah, we’ll just squeeze it in along with gymnastics camp, baseball camp, a solo visit to Aunt Jo & Uncle Keban’s, a few weeks at CEC, a visit to Quebec City.)
CLICK HERE for more photos of Fiona rock climbing.
Owen (on left) charges to score a point.
Owen had another fencing tournament this weekend. A couple of months ago, he fenced generally the same group of kids and finished third. He improved to finish second in this tournament, knocking off the #1 seed in the semi-finals.
CLICK HERE for more photos of Owen’s fencing tournament.
In between birthday parties and fencing, there were baseball games. And then there were more baseball games. And, I think after that, we went to MORE baseball games.
Fiona is a stand-out slugger in t-ball, although she sometimes spaces out when she’s supposed to be catching the ball at first and insists on throwing it back to the catcher softball-style; Owen is a legendary hitter in minors and has developed into an outstanding catcher (one of his best attributes as a catcher is his ability to manage the pitchers and get them to throw strikes) and Jack did it all this weekend in rec and travel: catcher, pitcher, third base and I lost count of the number of hits.
CLICK HERE for a collection of the weekend’s baseball photos.
Fiona is down and ready to field the next hit
I love how Owen digs in at the plate; no one is brushing him back
Great play! Jack gets the runner out at third
Surprise, surprise. I got behind on posting photos. (Who’s waiting for the rest of the Africa photos??? 
I’ve only posted two days out of 12 of those!).
Sorry I got so behind — but grab a BIG cup of coffee and you can re-live all the Mavericks games of the season so far. Disclaimer: Some of these are great shots, some of them suffer from too little light, or a fence in the way, or just random operator error, but I kept them in anyway because I like them!!
Photos are here from all the games (after Warminster, the first game).
(Warminster photos are here.)
Because Jack’s playing with the Upper Makefield Mavericks, he’s also playing in their rec program. He’s having a great time and his team is really good. Right now, I think they’re tied for third, but have flirted with first place in the league for a game or two.
I’m way behind on photos, but here’s a group of pictures from the games they’ve played so far. (Jack wears #1.)
Although it wasn’t a great game for the team (the Mavericks lost), Jack got to pitch in his first travel game ever!!
It was freezing cold (49 degrees in the second inning), but he did a fantastic of pitching.
Jack came in midway through the third inning and threw about 15 pitches. He had one strikeout and gave up two hits, but didn’t give up a run and got them out of the inning. He’s really wanted to pitch for a while, but only got a chance to pitch in rec ball last year.
I’m sure he’ll pitch in rec this year too and that will help him gain confidence so he can pitch some more in travel.
Kevin was oozing so much nervousness when Jack was pitching that I was worried Jack would pick up on it from the mound, but Jack just swaggered out there and started throwing like he’s been doing it all his life. I can’t wait to see him pitch next time. 
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