Still More Excuses

Had a 9th grade football miss yesterday because he had to shoot his horse. A new one for me and the rest of the staff.

Ya'll ain't gonna believe this. Not a kid, but a varsity coach. He took a personal day from school today. Not for golf. Not for a vacation. But to go to a yoga class with his wife.....are you freakin kiddin me?

We got a new one yesterday. His mom's boyfriend's mom was sick in another town and they had to go check on her.

Coach so and so won't be a practice because he is in jail. Happened during two a days.

Had one miss yesterday because he got hit in the back with an instrument this weekend at Area Band competition.... He is out for a week.

Had a note handed to me during homecoming week...Due to extremity of little Johnny's school spirit, please excuse him from athletics today.

Quote of the Day

He uses statistics as a drunken man uses lampposts -

for support rather than for illumination.

Andrew Lang

More Excuses

Those football guys on The Old Coach have added some more excuses for missing practice to the list. Here are a few:

Had a kid last year give me a note from his parent that said "Please excuse so and so from football practice today. He is allergic to grass and cannot get in the grass. The Dr. said he can get on grass next week."

Had a freshman kid ride the bus home instead of going to practice a few years back. He said he was hungry...

It was a little chilly out the other morning and we had a kid that hid in the lockeroom. His excuse..."Coach, I don't like the cold"

The chickens my mom and dad take to the cockfights in Louisiana got out and I had to round them up before they'd bring me to school.

Had an 8th grader yesterday miss practice because of butt spasms. Yes I said BUTT spasms. I couldn't stop laughing. Same kid broke his nose a couple of weeks ago trying to jump over a pop up dummy!!!!

Band practice

It was cold outside and the temp was around 32. I was out with the 7th graders and when we came in there were a few crying. One of the them couldn't button his pants b/c his hands were too cold. This was before school....7th grade came back 2nd period. I look around and the kid is not there...he comes out on the practice field about 10 mins before the bell rings with a note from the nurse! He went to the nurse bc his hands were so cold!! Couldn't believe it!

Had a Freshman kid miss FB practice one day because he had to go with his gramma to get pinstripes on her car. Also had a high school girl try to get out of a track meet because it was her little sister's birthday.

Had a kid tell me last week he wouldn't be at practice bc he had to get a haircut. He also asked to to relay that message to the head coach.....

Had a JV kid miss practice last week because he went with his mom to get her fiance out of prison........I was speechless.....

Had one go to the track meet only to leave early and miss his event. I asked him why he needed to leave. He said his mom had gotten a promotion and they were going out to eat to celebrate. Mom said he had to leave.

Had a jv kid miss two Mondays in a row because he had to mow his grass. Said he couldn't play on Thursday if the grass wasn't cut. He is no longer with us.

Had a kid come up to the office not too long ago and said his mom wouldn't let him play anymore because he stopped wearing his cup....

Had a kid once tell me he had to miss because his aunt's cat was having kittens.

Had to watch the dog

Had missed the previous two workouts and his mother came up to us after school saying that he hadn't been coming to practice because his helmet made him Claustrophobic

I have to take my dog to obedience class

When I was playing, one of my teammates missed a weeks worth of practice because he wiped his butt with poison oak.

Had a couple of kids on the varsity miss twice last week...when they came back we asked them where they had been for two days - we had seen them at school...their reply, "coach, we don't want to practice anymore we just want to go straight to offseason." to which I replied, "So, you want to quit football with 3 weeks left in the season, after you have worked so hard all year until now?" Which they answered with, "No, coach, we don't want to quit football we just don't want to practice anymore - we just want to do offseason all the time."

Haircut, mama said I need to babysit, had to go to eat with family, tired of getting beat up

Had 1 say that he was crossing an electric fence and touched it and it blew his left testicle off.............sounded bad so I had the reciever coach check it out......he was lying!

Had a kid miss practice because his dad stabbed him, on purpose. Had kids also miss because of haircuts, sick girlfriend... the list goes on forever.

We had a kid studying his band music during the the game on a friday night

Quote of the Day

He that is good for making excuses

is seldom good for anything else.

Benjamin Franklin

Black Drum & Redfish

Quote of the Day

Whenever the people are well-informed,

they can be trusted with their own government.

Thomas Jefferson

Quote of the Day

What does not kill me, makes me stronger.

Friedrich Nietzsche

Quote of the Day

Man is a goal seeking animal. His life only has

meaning if he is reaching out and striving for his goals.

Aristotle

These may be the last of the season:

Quote of the Day

At this point I've got a bit of a track record.

So people realize that when 'Weird Al' wants

to go parody, it's not meant to make them look

bad...it's meant to be a tribute.

Al Yankovic

Quote of the Day

If one morning I walked on top of the water

across the Potomac River, the headline

that afternoon would read:

"President Can't Swim."

Lyndon B. Johnson

Thinking Ahead

Nine or ten years ago, I cut down a dead tree out back. Leon must have been about eight and Bobby about six.

I'd buzzed it up and split it into smaller pieces and they were "helping" me haul it out front.

After about a half-hour of grunting and sweating, I overheard this conversation:

Leon: Bobby, are you goin' to college?
Bobby: I don't know.
Leon: If you don't go to college, you gotta stay here and work for dad.
Bobby: I'm goin' to college.

Quote of the Day

We can't solve problems by using the same

kind of thinking we used when we created them.

Albert Einstein

Quote of the Day

I am more afraid of an army of a hundred

sheep led by a lion than an army of a

hundred lions led by a sheep.

Charles Maurice de Talleyrand

Quote of the Day

It's better to explore life and make

mistakes than to play it safe. Mistakes

are part of the dues one pays for a full life.

Sophia Loren

From this week's Chronicle of Higher Education

In a Liquid State

I have photographed a women's swimming group on Staten Island since 1984. They meet on Wednesday nights and swim in a dimly lit, extremely humid YMCA pool. The oldest members have been swimming together for more than 40 years, and every fall new acolytes arrive, some as young as 6 years old.

Photographing these swimmers has enabled me to be in a relaxed setting in which female bodies move in and out of water, each carrying her own lightness or weight of years. This is a society of girls and women who have created a gliding, floating world for themselves, apart from societal constraints.

Being a part of this landscape has been a gift. I have been a witness to a world of extraordinary beauty that few people notice. Photographing women in bathing suits is a loaded issue in our culture. Young women are rarely photographed on their own terms, and aging women are largely unseen. Sometimes I think that maybe we aren't looking at life well enough.

When I first began this project, I may have been as interested in the quirky, cultural aspects of the swimming group as in each swimmer's physical form. But as we all became more comfortable with each other and with the camera, I began to make portraits of individual swimmers. The water itself became a subject, as the girls and women moved from solid to liquid states.

The photographs and text are by Christine Osinski, a professor of art at the Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art. The photographs are from the exhibition "Pool Studies," at the Westover School's Schumacher Gallery, in Middlebury, Conn., through December 1.

Quote of the Day

The trees that are slow to grow bear the best fruit.

Moliere

Quote of the Day

Let us put our minds together and see what

kind of future we can build for our children.

Sitting Bull

Quote of the Day

Talk sense to a fool and he calls you foolish.

Euripides

Quote of the Day

People don't know my real self,

and they're not about to find out.

Yul Brynner

Gregory Gym

Quote of the Day

If everything seems under control,

you're just not going fast enough.

Mario Andretti

Quote of the Day

Every immigrant who comes here should be required within five years to learn English or leave the country.

Theodore Roosevelt

One of Many Caught on Columbus Day

Quote of the Day

Nobody in the game of football should be called a genius. A genius is somebody like Norman Einstein.

Joe Theismann

Quote of the Day

Early in life I had to choose between honest arrogance and hypocritical humility. I chose the former and have seen no reason to change.

Frank Lloyd Wright

Quote of the Day

The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter.

Sir Winston Churchill

Bonus Demotivator

Real Women Don't Cry Over Title IX

By Request:

A pair of bullreds from last night:

Quote of the Day

It's too bad that male sports are being eliminated on most college campuses. Except for Texas, USC, and a few other places, radical feminism rules in the athletic departments at the expense of popular male sports.

Phyllis Schlafly

Quote of the Day

I never did give anybody hell. I just told the truth and they thought it was hell.

Harry S. Truman

From the Football Guys

A few of the football coaches' favorite lines:

I've seen better hands on a digital clock.

Young and cocky defensive coach at the chalkboard teaching all the older heads about 'his' defense. At the end of his 'lesson' he wanted to know what our older, wiser offensive coordinator thought....and he said, "I don't think I would run but two plays against that defense; and the second one would be an extra point."

You're going to run until I puke!

Don't be scared. If you are, go over to auto mechanics and get some nuts!

Son, what you need to do is take two weeks off - then quit.

Someone needs to slap that kid's parents. That's just bad breedin' right there.

Had a fellow coach tell a kid in the weight room that he was so weak he couldn't hold his pecker up to pee.

Heard a flustered coach yelling to a ref," You don't know your hole from an ass in the ground!"

She is trying to sell a pick-up for $11,000...but then she said she would be willing to "Go down on it." So, for $10,000 you can get a pick-up and...

A DT got hurt and he was calling for a back-up. Kid starts running out on the field and he stops him and says "Hold up, I haven't given up yet."

Going over personnel, I tossed out a name for a position and he looked at me and said "That kid couldn't play dead in a Western!"

Mom- I don't see why you won't play Michael.
Me- Well, he still has a little developing to do.
Mom- So should I take him to a camp? Should I get him lessons?
Me- You should probably get him a nut transplant as soon as possible.

Heard a coach tell a receiver with bad hands: "Son, you couldn't catch gonorrhea in Chinatown!!!!"

Boys if we don't make a play somebody's fight song is going to be playin' and it ain't going to be ours!

When asked what he did on base slant strong, our DT replied that he "Shot through the A-hole." Our DC told him that what he did on his free time was his own business, but out here we go through the A-gap.

You guys are small, weak, and untalented. So tonight our goal is to not get anyone killed. Let's Pray!

Coach Abe Gibron told his pathetic and winless San Diego Charger team as they left the locker room: "Okay men, let's go. If we win the toss try to recover the fumble. If they win the toss, try to block the extra point."

"That went over about as well as a pregnant pole vaulter!"

Reporter: Coach, what do you think about the execution of your offense?
McKay: I'm for it!

Coach, can we on-side punt?

"I don't know how many touchdowns I had but I scored a whole bunch of those 3-point conversions."

With about 3 minutes left in a game we were losing 35-0, a kid comes up to me and says "Don't give up, coach. Miracles happen, like on January 1st, New Year's Eve, when Jesus was born."

Our JV is short one guy on a field goal attempt...Coaches are shouting out his name. On the sidelines, he responds "I'm not on field goal! I'm on extra point!"

This morning, a short junior high kid says "I know I will get taller, my brother-in-law is 6' 4".

Me - Did you ice your knee after practice yesterday?
Kid - No, but on the drive home I turned the A/C on full blast in my truck and I put my knee in front of the vent.

Quote of the Day

Now I want you to remember that no bastard ever won a war by dying for his country. He won it by making the other poor bastard die for his country.

General George Smith Patton, Jr.

Quote of the Day

If God had wanted man to play soccer,

He wouldn't have given us arms.

Mike Ditka

Quote of the Day

The trouble is not that players have sex the night before a game. It's that they stay out all night looking for it.

Casey Stengel

Quote of the Day

Always do sober what you said you'd do drunk. That will teach you to keep your mouth shut.

Ernest Miller Hemingway