Team Manager – Texas Spirit 94 Girls Red

I’ve accepted the position of Team Manager for my daughter’s select soccer team. I actually performed in this role about 4 years ago and am back at it for the same coach, Eddy Kovarik. Eddy has a great love for the game and his players. He’s great to work with both as a Team Manager and as a Parent. I don’t envy his job… that is trying to keep 18 sets of parents and players happy.

Briana’s team is the Texas Spirit 94 Girls Red team (formerly Texas Spirit 94 Girls White). They were in the Lake Highlands Classic DIII league. We’ll have to qualify again to be in the league at the end of July.

My Team Manager duties will kick in strong this week as we have tryouts. Player contracts, medical releases, uniform purchases, payments, etc. to keep track of. Should be a fun couple of weeks.

I’m excited about the players that are still with us and the new players that are coming on board.

Here’s what our crazy schedule looks like over the next few weeks…

Monday, June 29^th – Practice at the Plano YMCA – 7:00pm – 8:30pm

Tuesday, June 30^th – Practice at the Plano YMCA – 7:00pm – 8:30pm

Wednesday, July 1^st – Tryouts – 7:00pm – 8:00pm

Thursday, July 2^nd – Scrimmage with the 93 Girls Team – 7:00pm – 9:00pm

Friday, July 3^rd – Practice – 8:00am – 9:30am

Monday – Thursday, July 6^th – 9^th – Tryouts/Practice – 7:00pm – 9:00pm

Saturday, July 11^th will be a fun busy day!

· Team Car Wash at Wendy’s at the corner of Preston & Rolator – 8:00am – 11:30am

· Scrimmage against FC Dallas – Time TBD

· Team Signing Party at the Damons house (address info will be sent out later)

Sunday, July 12^th – 4:00pm – 7:00pm – Texas Spirit Club Signing Party at the Plano YMCA – 4:00pm – 7:00pm

Monday – Friday, July 13^th – 17^th – Speed Week (2 a day training sessions) – times & locations TBD

Saturday & Sunday, July 18^th & 19^th – Puma Cup Tournament, Arlington

You’ve got to love soccer for a schedule like that! Now if the temperature wouldn’t be in the triple digits it would be a little more bearable.

New Role at FT

Starting this last Monday, June 1st, I’ll be transitioning into the Business Analyst role in Product Management.  I’m really excited about working with the Development Team and having a positive impact on the Fellowship One product.  The transition into this new role will be over the next couple of months as I’m finishing up a large project in the Dallas area.

I’ve enjoyed my role as a Delivery Manager at Fellowship Technologies since September 2005.  I’ll get to use my 3 and a half years of experience in this new position.

As a Business Analyst, I’ll be assisting/working with the Product Owner/Product Manager, Scott Lowrie.  The Development Team uses Scrum which is an Agile process for software development.  One of my biggest responsibilities will be creating user stories and user acceptance tests.

I’m looking forward to getting into this position full time.

An Evening With FC Dallas

Briana, Ursula and I got to check out a scrimmage with FC Dallas against Midland’s West Texas United Sockers.  Our hometown heroes won 3-0.  We got to see Peri Marosevic score up close.  He worked hard for that goal beating 2 different defenders to slide it in past the keeper.

It was great to see the action up close at ground level.  There was so much talking out there that you don’t get to hear up in the stands.  It was a great thing for Briana to see/hear.

After the scrimmage, Briana and I got a picture with Brek Shea.  He’s been one of the latest up and comers on the team.  He’s very exciting to watch.

Star Wars is Star Trek

I got to see Star Trek last week with Cairo.  It was awesome!  Go see the movie even if you’re not a trekie!  It lives up to the hype.

I stumbled upon this video and just had to share it.  Too funny!

Saving Money is FUN! Kind of… Sort…

Last week, I had that dreaded moment of having the radiator steaming out a warning sign to me.  I took the car into my usual auto repair place and was sticker shocked by how much it would cost to fix it.  Times are a bit tight for us and everyone, so I was determined to fix the car myself.

Below is what the auto repair shop was going to charge me and what I was able to do it for…

Them

Me

Radiator	$355.00	Radiator	$184.00
Labor	$240.00	Labor	– 0 -
Thermostat	$11.43	Thermostat	$11.00
Labor	$124.80	Labor	- 0 -
Flush Coolant	$38.95	Flush Coolant	$14.00
Labor	$48.00	Labor	- 0 -
Cost	$818.18		$224.92

Cost Savings: $593.16

By the way, the originally gave an estimate with replacement of the Water Pump which would have been another $440.  I did purchase the Water Pump, but decided against once I saw the additional time it would have taken to replace it.  I wanted to see how the car would do with just replacing the radiator and thermostat --- great news is that it’s doing very well!

Looking back at the experience, I tip my hat to the auto repair peeps!  It’s a crazy time working on a car.  It takes a lot of patience and the ability to fit your hand in places that normally a hand shouldn’t be able to fit.  Oh yeah, you have to do this while turning a wrench.

I did have some great help from a neighbor friend.  He helped tremendously.  He definitely seemed to enjoy this more than I did.  Then again, I wanted to keep running into the house to wash my hands.  Just kiddin’!

Kudos to my Dad for dragging me out while he was working on his cars.  Without that experience I wouldn’t have had the courage to work on the car.

If you ever need to get a radiator, check out www.radiator.com!  They have great customer service and I was able to pick up the radiator locally.

OKC Half Marathon

A bit late with this blog post as I had one crazy busy week.

I had a great time this weekend in Oklahoma City with my family and 18,000 of my closest friends.  My family and I enjoyed getting there on Friday night and relaxing.  Saturday, we went sightseeing.  First, we went to Midwest City to show the kids where we lived when in the Air Force and in the first four years of our marriage.  Everything always looks smaller when you go back to visit.  We drove by Tinker Air Force Base… the kids agreed that it doesn’t look as glamorous as the commercials make the Air Force out to be.  I enjoyed the 8 years that I served.

We checked out the Expo after the walk down memory lane.  The expo was smaller than others I’ve been to, but we all snagged a cool knapsack bag.

Sunday morning came pretty early.  I decided to let the family sleep and I’d take the bus from the hotel down to the start line.

The buses were suppose to be at the hotel every 15 minutes.  After waiting for 40 minutes and no buses, I was able to ride with a mother/daughter duo.  Very nice!  You’ve got to love the running community!  Always willing to help each other out.  There were so many people waiting for the buses.  I doubt that everyone was going to make it on time.

I got downtown in time for my bathroom rituals.  I only had about 5 minutes to get into the staging area.  I wasn’t able to make it into the pace group that I wanted to.  I was forced into the back since the barricades were blocking the way in from the side. 

In the beginning couple of miles, I had the usual excitement and adrenaline pumping.  Since I started in the back, I had to pass a lot of people to get into a comfortable groove.  The early miles weren’t too bad, I felt pretty comfortable.

About half way through the run,the humidity was turned up like crazy.  I was dripping buckets.

There weren’t any major hills, but it seemed that the rolling hills wouldn’t stop.  I was like “come on already, enough with the hills!”

It was such a huge lift to see my family cheering me on along the race.  They were able to find me a couple of times.  I text them each mile along the way.  I also sent text messages to my running sister, Denise along the way.  They both sent me encouraging messages along the way.  Sometimes it was hard to read their messages since I was going soooooo fast!

The race started to the north and then on the return headed to the south.  The south wind brought the humidity that I talked about it.  The wind was a crazy Oklahoman wind.  It kicked up pretty fiercely.

I was really hoping to beat my PR of 2:10:20 for a Half Marathon, but I missed by a half a minute.  In the last mile and a half, I turned up the pace, because I really thought I had a chance to beat that pesky PR.  Check out my race results.  To check out the couple of pictures that were taken of me on the race course, click here and search on the BIB Number of H1570.

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I cannot stay away from racing.  Tomorrow morning I’m running in a 5 mile race.  I’ll set a PR for sure since I haven’t run a 5 mile race yet.  I’ve ran in 5K, 10K, 15K, 20K, and Half Marathon races.

After 10 Years, I got to meet him again

It’s been 10 years since I asked Christ to be my Lord and Savior.  Until that point I thought that I was in control of my life and lived just for myself.  I’d love to say that I’m the perfect Christian, but feel that I have a long way to go to be pleasing to God.  I’m definitely a work in progress.

This coming up Father’s Day will be 10 years since I’ve been saved at Grace Outreach Center in Plano, TX.  There were many people that laid seeds on my heart toward my eventual conversion, but there was one person that led me through that prayer of salvation. 

As many of you know, I have the great responsibility of implementing Fellowship One at churches locally and nationwide.  Fellowship One is a Church Management Software used to care for people in a church.  Recently, I was assigned to a church in Carrollton, TX which is not too far from where I live in Frisco.  The project has been going well and I’ve met a lot of great people there.

At one of my recent meetings where I train the church staff, there was a man that looked familiar.  After the 2 hour long training session he came up to me and said that I looked familiar as well.  Of course, we went through the normal sharing of where we might know each other.  We settled on that it might be Grace Outreach Center as he went there several years ago.

On the way to my office after the training, I kept thinking about this man and the familiarity of his face.  It finally came to me that this was the man that prayed with me as I accepted Christ in my life.  At that moment chills ran up and down my spine.  I was overcome with a flood of emotions and memories about that season of my life.  I couldn’t believe that after 10 years, God had our paths cross again. 

I wasn’t sure how to contact this person.  Of course, God already had that orchestrated.  I was again at the church yesterday and saw him.  I stopped him in the hall and shared with him how we met and the huge impact that he had on my life.  I thanked him for obeying God and volunteering/serving on that pivotal Sunday morning.  He was appreciative and touched by the connection.

The thing is - this was the person that I needed at that time to help me have the faith to believe.  He had the right words and the God given answers to my questions.

This blessing by God to reconnect with this person has placed a huge smile on my face that has overshadowed all of the things that have been stressing me out.

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By the way, only a couple of more days until I run in the Half Marathon in Oklahoma City.  I cannot wait to get away and have some fun!