50 Year Old

So the half-century birthday was bound to come, and it is always more enjoyable to mark this milestone with good friends. It's even better when those good friends turn 50 just a little bit ahead of you. Kelly's milestone day was August 27, just about a week before Sarah, so our wine group decided it all deserved a night out on the town.

The evening started with some tasty beverages and live jazz at Creaux, a great establishment downtown. We are all so used to gathering at each other's houses that it is nice to venture into the public arena now and then.

Our next stop was the Infinity Bar on top of the Centre City complex in the middle of the city. It was a great view and we had a fantastic time just being together. As a side note, this screen shot captures Sarah's most consistent foray into social media to date. It may not last long, but BeReal has made an impact in her daily life and allows her to document such fine moments as this.

The celebrating didn't stop there. The following weekend we headed to West Virginia with the Abrahams to keep the party going. A primary destination was New River Gorge National Park. We were looking forward to some hiking and some great views. Fortunately we got both. Some really cool views came from our bridge walk.

The bridge that crosses the gorge is the largest steel arch bridge outside of China. The arch is about 1,700 feet long and the roadway of the bridge is nearly 900 feet above the New River below. On Bridge Day held in October each year there is a lottery to bungee jump off the bridge or even BASE jump off. We went with the safer option of a guided tour walking across the underbelly of the bridge.

The arch is 1,700 feet long but the actual bridge is about 3,300 feet long, so it is not a short walk. The morning of our tour was foggy which made for some eerie but cool pictures. We were worried about not getting to see the views we had read about, but in the course of the hour we were walking the fog cleared and we got to see it all.

Everyone was pretty comfortable with the height. It helped that we were all attached by ropes to a safety line. However, Reese took some time to get to her comfort zone. She has a healthy respect for heights and so was not immediately excited when we had told her what we were doing. 

We had a great guide who shared a lot of insight but also allowed us to take our time and enjoy the views. She also knew the perfect place to stop and get a group picture that captured the bridge and the New River so far below. We do love our National Parks and this was another great experience to add to our family history.

We also managed to fit in a nice hike up the New River that had waterfalls and swimming holes. Reese was the only individual that had any interest in swimming, but from her report the water was cold so it didn't last long. Overall the weekend was a blast and a great way for Sarah and Kelly to acknowledge another trip around the sun and the joy that comes from making that trip with family and friends.

Fall Sports

High school soccer comes at you like a freight train. The season starts in mid-July and ends in early October. In between the weeks are filled with practices and night games that don't get you home until 10pm. Needless to say, we love it.

Callie had made varsity, but as the season began, we didn't really know what that would mean. How much playing time would she get and how would she perform on the field with girls that were up to three years older than her?

Our first inkling of what might happen came in the form of a text message from a friend who pays more attention to the local paper than we do. "Made the paper as a freshman...AWESOME!" That message accompanied a picture taken of part of the Herald-Leader's girls high school soccer preview. Callie's coach pointed her out as one of the standouts for the team. John went right out to buy a copy of the paper. This certainly set high expectations for Callie to live up to, but she was ready for the challenge.

While Callie was getting to know the life of a varsity soccer player, Reese was getting acclimated to her new club team. LFC is no more and instead we have Lexington Sporting as our primary club team. It's part of a larger effort to also bring professional soccer to Lexington, so it's pretty cool all around. This is the first year that Reese will play 11v11 on a full field and after two years with Coach Tom she now has a new coach, Coach Paul. 

For the last three years Reese has played with most of the same girls. This new team brought together girls from a number of different clubs and teams, including some girls who had been playing up an age group. And on top of that this was one of the teams chosen by the club to play in a national league called Girls Academy. Among other things this meant our fall schedule included weekend games in Illinois, Indiana, Detroit, Tennessee, and Ohio. We didn't know what to expect, but everyone was excited. The picture above was taken after their very first game, a 5-0 victory over a team from the Chicago area. Seemed like a good sign for us.

To make things even more hectic, this year Fayette County changed up the middle school sports schedule. Instead of girls basketball starting in late October and being a winter sport, it started in August and therefore completely overlapped with soccer. Reese and several of her teammates had to juggle basketball and soccer for a couple of months, which wasn't easy.

The basketball coaches had to be flexible because without the soccer girls they wouldn't be able to put a team on the floor. And Reese and company were also good helpers at the fundraising carwash, so they were doing their best to contribute across the board.

In August, Grammy flew out so that she could see Callie play high school soccer. Due to the timing, unfortunately Reese didn't have a soccer or basketball game while she was in town. It is hard to believe that this was the first opportunity Grammy Gayle had had to see either of the girls play, but it was nice to have her join in craziness for a week.

Her visit also coincided with her 75th birthday which meant we are able to treat her to a nice dinner at a great restaurant that we could walk to from our house. It's always fun to have Grammy in town.

A fun aspect of high school soccer is playing your club teammates who happen to go to different schools. When Henry Clay played Dunbar, for example, the game featured five girls on Callie's club team. And this was almost the case every time we played another Lexington high school team. However, this also put extra pressure on Callie as she wanted to prove herself against those same teammates. Overall, Henry Clay was having an up and down season. They had some games where they clicked and others where they couldn't make anything happen. Through it all Callie was getting a lot of playing time, starting at forward, and scoring goals. She was learning a lot and gaining confidence as the season went on.

Reese was also going through a learning curve with her team. Coach Paul decided early on that he was going to have Reese play outside back, a position that was never on her radar. To her credit, Reese rolled with the punches, played where she was asked to play, and never stopped giving 100 percent. It must be noted that Reese is the youngest on her team and the way they create the age groups it means she is often on the field with a lot of girls who are almost a year older. The size difference, especially at this age, can be alarming and Reese was often guarding forwards who looked like they were twice her height. However she never backed down.

Her team didn't back down either. By mid-September we were feeling pretty good about the team as they kept winning games even against competition at tournaments from Georgia, New Jersey, and Maryland.

We had the good fortune of seeing Nana Banana and Sport in late August as well when they made the trip down with the same idea that Grammy had. They got a bit luckier because they not only got to see Callie play a couple of games but they also got to see Reese play basketball.

One good thing about 6th grade basketball is that they had a league just for 6th grade teams. The games were played every Saturday, which wasn't ideal for soccer, but we tried to make as many of them work as possible. Another great thing about basketball is that she got to play on a team with her good friend Mary. These two have played on the same soccer team for three years but this year the club made a strict rule about age groups, and since Mary was born in 2011 and Reese in 2010 they were now on different teams.

The Morton coaches are a husband and wife team who brought a lot of energy to the task. They were great working with the girls and had them running drills, learning plays, and above all, having fun.

Reese has played a lot of rec basketball over the years, so she knows the game. And she was a little bummed that she wasn't part of the starting five every time, but she still played a lot. The fact is, she plays basketball the way she does everything else - she hustles and doesn't give up. Her speed and feistiness kept her on the court.

The basketball season ended with a 6th grade championship tournament on a Saturday morning in October. At least three of the girls had to miss because of soccer conflicts we didn't think our Mustangs would last too long. Shame on us, because these girls won their first game and then they just kept winning. In the championship they scored the last five points of the game and secured a come from behind victory. Reese played almost every minute of every game and it was a blast to watch. Needless to say the coaches were overjoyed and the players were exhausted. 

With basketball in the rear view mirror we now turned our attention to high school soccer's playoffs. It started with the 42nd District playoffs. Henry Clay has won their district something like ten straight years, but this year it was a new coach and the season had been up and down. The Blue Devils had a 6-10 record entering the playoffs and Frederick Douglass had only lost three games and was coming in with a lot of confidence. 

The first game for Henry Clay was a rematch against Scott County. Just weeks earlier on Henry Clay's senior night, the Blue Devils pulled out a victory in penalty kicks. We were hoping our girls could play a bit better this time around. They started off hot with a goal early in the first half as Regan Spivey scored with an assist from Callie. What happened after was a bit surreal. With ten minutes to go in the first half, Henry Clay was still up 1-0. In the span of seven minutes, Callie scored three goals. A hat trick in seven minutes. Impressive for anyone, much less a freshman. The game ended with a 4-2 victory and two days later they played Frederick Douglass.

They had lost to the Broncos 2-0 earlier in the season, a score that didn't reflect how well they had played. And on this night they were fired up, especially because the Douglass team and supporters were a bit cocky coming in to the evening. Towards the end of the first half Callie scored a goal off of a corner kick. It certainly got the Blue Devil fans rocking in the stands. Douglass evened it up 1-1 in the second half and the stage was set for a tense final 20 minutes. With about eleven minutes to go, Henry Clay got a corner kick. Callie was taking the corner, and in a fun twist of fate, Reese was the ball girl on that side of the field. The first corner was solid but cleared by Douglass. Reese gave her another ball. Corner number two was cleared yet again by Douglass out of bounds. Reese provided the ball for corner number three. This time Callie put it right at the six-yard box and Grace Plummer headed it into the back of the net. Beautiful goal followed by some mayhem and high fives in the stands. When the ref blew the final whistle the Blue Devils were District Champions!

After the game they not only handed out a team trophy but named the all-district team. And since we had never experienced something like this, we didn't realize what was going on. Neither did Callie, and when her name was called she wasn't sure what to do. But there she was, one of four Blue Devils named to the squad. And it doesn't take being a biased parent to know that she deserved it. In two games Henry Clay had 6 goals. Callie scored four and assisted the other two. 

One thing that makes high school sports so fun is that you play for your school and therefore your classmates come to support you. There were a lot of kids from Henry Clay there to cheer on their friends and the whole Blue Devil squad. Not sure we'll be able to duplicated this experience, but we are still looking forward to keeping the streak of district championships alive for years to come.

That finish in districts put Henry Clay in the Regional playoffs, where they faced Madison Central. Unfortunately it was a game that brought an end to the season with a 2-1 loss. The season ended on a down, but overall it had more ups and the girls have a great future ahead of them. As one final set of ups, Callie earned a couple more post-season honors. She was Honorable Mention for both the all-region and all-city teams. It truly was an incredible year for her and we are so very proud.

We had a long break in between the last game and the banquet, but it was great to have the opportunity to revisit the accomplishments of the year and celebrate the seniors. We missed most of the banquet last year to it was great to be able to experience the whole deal. We were so excited for Callie as she was named Rookie of the Year for the varsity team. Her friend Janie was MVP of the junior varsity. These two will be doing great things on the field together moving forward.

Callie is lucky to be part of a large freshmen cohort. There are a lot of just good people in this crew and just as many great soccer players. The future looks bright.

But before we can dwell too long on the next high school season we have to turn all of our attention to the club schedule. Reese's team was in full swing in October and Callie's team started practice in early November. As they say, no rest for the weary!

School Starts

Summer ends early around here since the public schools start in mid-August. One clue that the first day is coming is the final wine club before the college kids head back to their respective campuses. Ella, Ian, and Jacob were all set for their sophomore years and Claire was preparing for her senior year of high school. This is always a bittersweet gathering - so sad to see them go but so proud of who they are becoming.

Since Callie was starting high school, the mom of one of her friends thought it would be great to kick of the high school years with a mother-daughter dinner. These six girls made it through a challenging covid-middle school experience and were ready to tackle the next phase of their academic careers.

Although we started some new traditions we had to keep some of the old. Out came the poster board. High school for Callie and middle school for Reese meant that we needed our annual pictures and signs. The girls knew it was coming so were happy to comply.

Or at least they didn't put up too much of a fight when we got them on the back patio for the photo shoot. They were also pretty excited since we finally got them new backpacks. It's the little things that make the first day easier.

The main thing Callie was nervous about was getting from class to class in a new school that was much bigger than Morton. Henry Clay has over 2,000 students, so we could understand her concern. She took time to prepare for the first day by creating a color coded map of where to go for each class period. It was pretty impressive and our understanding is that it worked well.

Now that she knew where she needed to go she wanted to meet up with her friends so they could all go through metal detectors together. Yes, it is a sign of the times. She and her schoolmates have to pass through metal detectors every morning.

The first day went well, aided in part by her map and her soccer teammates. She loved seeing the upperclass teammates in the hallways, and she even had one senior in her first period class. 

Reese also seemed to have a great first day. The 6th graders have their own wing of the school, but she still had a plan for moving from room to room. You can see here that she had to double backpack on her first day since she would be going straight to soccer practice after basketball tryouts in the afternoon. Talk about hitting the ground running. We're hoping for great years for both of the girls and they each got off on the right foot.

High School Soccer

Last year Callie played Henry Clay soccer as an 8th grader, which meant she could only play JV. This year was different because she was now going to be a student at the school and she could set a goal of being on varsity. For months she and her friends talked about whether or not any freshman would make the varsity squad. What also made this year different was that there was a brand new coach who didn't know anything about the players from the previous years. Tryouts started on July 15 and Callie was a bit nervous but was determined to do her best. We were nervous too and didn't want to have any expectations about the results. Turns out Callie knows what she is doing and she was one of only three freshman to make varsity. She was over the moon to say the least and especially enjoyed the traditional welcome the varsity bestows on its new members. It's amazing how long toilet paper can stay on trees.

Training over the summer was a little different than last year. The new coach has a day job so there were only evening practices. Callie was perhaps one of a small group upset that they did not have two-a-days. But she was excited to play with the sophomores, juniors, and seniors that she looked up to. It took a while for her to feel like she belonged, but when she got her uniform she certainly looked the part.

The varsity began playing games only a couple of weeks after practices started. The first slate of games occurred in the Bluegrass State games. Now an important coaching detail is that the new head coach, Haydon, had coached Reese when she was 8 years old and first starting at LFC. Her husband, Tom, coached Reese for the past two years and is the one who led Reese's team to the Village Cup championship. Reese adores Tom and the feeling is mutual. At the first game of at the Bluegrass tournament, Tom asked Reese if she wanted to hang with him on the sidelines. She jumped at the chance. This had so many more benefits than we could have imagined, because Reese learned first hand that many of the girls on the varsity squad were excited to have Callie on the team. And we loved this picture of Reese and Tom striking a similar pose on the sidelines as they analyzed the competition.

On the field, Callie started to prove herself right away. Not only was she in the starting lineup, but she scored the first goal of the season for Henry Clay in that first game. It was almost too good to believe and it certainly helped her feel like part of the team.

One of the great things for us at this point is that we have professional women's soccer just down the road in Louisville that we can watch. We had made plans with the Abrahams to watch Racing Louisville play the Portland Thorns. The Thorns are Ella's favorite team and they also happen to be really good. Of course, our girls would go with the Abrahams to watch paint dry, but professional soccer on a beautiful day makes things that much better.

Coincidentally, Callie's high school team had also arranged to go to the game as a group for some good old team bonding. We saw a great game in which the first goal was scored on a great run by Sophia Smith, a striker on the Thorns who is also a star on the national team. She was amazing to watch. And led by Ella, we did some post-game lingering and managed to get a photo with Sophia. Awesome doesn't even begin to describe it. The new soccer year was starting off very well.

Camps

As the girls get older and our schedule gets busier, camps are harder to fit into our summers. However, the girls have always wanted to go to sleep away soccer camp, and while we were with Callie in St. Louis, Reese got to attend soccer camp at Centre College about an hour away. Good thing that the carpool connections stayed strong so that Reese could get a ride there. It was only for three nights and four days, but she had a great time.

When we asked Reese what she liked most about the camp she said, rooming with Emerson, staying in college dorms, and getting to play soccer every day. It didn't hurt that her team at camp won the tournament held on the last day. It was a great camp and we hope Reese gets to go again next summer.

Reese was also able to fit in a couple of other camps after the soccer one, She spent a week at Cathedral Domain for the first time. She finally got to do all the things that she had been hearing about from her sister who has gone to Cathedral for years. And once again Reese spent a week at Bluegrass Christian Camp. It was supposed to be with her friend Ella, but then Ella got sick and couldn't go. Reese was not excited about the idea of going without her friend, but she ended up having a wonderful week. It didn't hurt that she had a girl named Haley Flynn as her counselor. Haley is a great soccer player from Lexington, so Reese was excited to hang out with her. Another plus was that Annie Sewell was also a camp counselor in training that week and she looked out for Reese and gave her hugs.

Callie also got the opportunity to go to Centre Camp, though her experience was slightly different. It turns out that at the high school ages most of the campers attend as full high school teams. Callie and her friend Addie were part of a relatively small group of "Independents," which made some of the activities and team exercises a little more challenging. In the end, though, Callie had a great time because she got to sleep in the dorms and play soccer every day. 

Centre ended on Saturday and less than 24 hours later Callie was packed up and heading off for a week at Cathedral Domain. She loves this camp and was very disappointed when she missed it the last couple of years. The week was a lot of fun and as always she needed a lot of sleep when she returned.

Now this may not have officially been a camp, but Sarah also got to pack a bag and leave her family for a few days to spend time with friends. In this instance she hopped in a car with Kelly, Ella, and Ella's friend Sophia and they headed down to Atlanta to see the Chicks in concert. It was a great weekend and the Chicks lived up to expectations. Maybe one day John will get to go to camp.
 

Soccer Cups

 Once school had ended we turned our attention to the flurry of activity on the soccer field as both Reese and Callie's teams entered the postseason competitions. Reese's team would play in the Village Cup, which is a statewide competition. At their age, the season ends there and there are no regional or national progressions. Over the course of the year Reese's team dominated and had only lost one game, including tournaments. In short, we had high hopes entering the Village Cup.

The girls did not disappoint and played like champions. The first weekend they won 6-0 and 5-1. They headed into the semifinals against the other Lexington-based club team called Commonwealth. Safe to say they wanted the win because the final score there was 9-0. This set up a rematch of last year's final against Javanon out of Louisville. The girls scored two goals early, dominated for much of the match, and held on to win by a final score of 2-1. 

This state championship ended an impressive two year run for this team and their coach. They grew as players and as a team and made it clear that they were the team to beat in their age group in Kentucky. Just as, if not more important, they are a group of fun-loving and goofy girls. They are going to miss playing for Coach Tom, Reese especially, but they are looking forward to what comes next.

The immediate future was another pool party. One of the families invited the team and parents over right after the championship to enjoy food, swimming, and even a tractor ride across the farm in Madison County. It was a great opportunity for everyone to relax and soak in the accomplishment.

Reese's age group stops at the state level, but that is not the case for all ages above her. In other words, Callie's U15 team would have the opportunity to move on from state if they won their age group of the President's Cup. Their march to the Cup began with a weekend of pool play in Lexington. They won their first game 3-0 and then tied the second game 1-1 on a rainy and blustery day. Sometimes you need a little luck on your side, and in this case the girls advanced out of their group based on goal differential. That meant that the following weekend we were headed to Bowling Green for a semifinal and hopefully a championship game.

The semifinal brought a rematch against a team they had lost to 1-0 at the beginning of the season. This time was a bit different. After it was 1-1 at halftime, Callie broke the game open with a goal in the second half and the floodgates opened. Callie scored another and the gamed ended 6-1. The finals awaited the next day. But we had a few more things to do before we could even make it to Sunday.

The soccer game had started at 8:00am, which gave us just enough time to hop in the car to drive from Bowling Green to Louisville so that Callie could run for Morton in the state track meet. It was a lot, but Callie really wanted to do it and not let down her team. She ran well and we got to watch some cool pole vaulting, so it was a win-win all around. Once she was done it was back in the car to head back to Bowling Green.

It was a hot summer weekend and after a long day the girls wanted slushies. Sarah was more than happy to be one of the parents to drive the crew to Sonic. Pictured here, the girls were in a state of bliss, unaware of what was about to unfold. When Sarah and her crew drove back to the hotel it was dark and as she turned into a parking spot the headlights illuminated quite a scene. A young couple were showing their passion in public and both of them were topless. Sarah was mortified, they girls were shocked, and this episode was told and retold many times over the next hours, days, and weeks. 

Fortunately the girls were able to sleep well that night and the next day delivered a decisive 2-0 victory in the championship game against the Lady Pumas. It was a great win and it meant that not only had they won their state but they also moved on to the Regional playoffs in St. Louis.

Callie loved playing with this team for many reasons, but getting to know and play up top with Una was a big one. The two had a great chemistry and combined for some great goals during the season and in Bowling Green.

The regional playoffs are a pretty big deal and we were going to spend at least four days in St. Louis to play three games and hopefully more. But this was a veteran crew because this was the second year in a row they had made it this far. They fell short in 2021 but were hoping for better things in 2022.

Last year Callie had the opportunity to play in some of the regional games but we weren't able to attend any of them. This time was different and we were excited for the whole experience. As you can see from the picture above, the players and their coach were pretty excited too.

The team moms were very prepared as well, having purchased mostly matching Eye of the Tiger t-shirts for the occasion. You will also notice the fan and misters in the picture. The forecast for St. Louis was scorching heat. There were mandated water breaks during the games because the heat index was in the low 100s.

In their first game out against a team from Kansas the girls fought hard. The heat was a factor but the other team had a lot of fight in them as well. The girls gave up a goal late in the second half and deflated a bit. The final score was 3-0, but they still had two more games to go. 

On Friday they played a team from Michigan and this time around the result was positive. Coach Taylor had made sure that the girls were not feeling defeated and they responded well. Callie had a goal in the 2-0 victory and the door was still open for advancing to Nationals. Their third game of pool play was another 2-0 victory over a squad from Ohio. This time, however, the goal differential was not in their favor. Although they finished with two wins, a team from another bracket advanced over them. It wasn't the overall result they wanted but they showed a lot of fight over the three days and we were all proud of them.

They also had a lot of fun on the trip. With only one game each day there was plenty of time to see the sights, including a visit to the famous arch downtown. After making a trip to the top of the arch they struck a handstand pose outside.

It was a strong end of the season for what turned out to be a very strong season overall for Callie. The team had 17 wins, 5 losses, and 2 ties. Callie and AK were the top goal scorers with 9 apiece and Callie won the Offensive Player of the Year award from her coach. Not too shabby. And with the club season ending June 18 she had less than a month before high school tryouts on July 15. For Callie, that was perfect timing.