Fall Sports 2019

Odd to be talking about fall sports when it's like 90°F outside, but it is that time of year.  Sampson is heading into his junior year of Cross Country and Peach is playing 8th grade volleyball.  I watched the volleyball team scrimmage one game and they looked much improved from last year.  They did add a couple girls that are pretty good, and a couple of the girls have gotten much better from last year.  Also Peach got her first spike ever in the scrimmage so that was pretty cool.  On XC side Sampson's team should be really good.  They got every scorer from a regional team back and none of the scorers are seniors.  I think at some point they should be ranked in the state this year, if not, it is because they don't have a dominate number 1.  Sampson is trying to fill this role but will have his hands full not only from his team but from some local competition.  Honestly I can see his team getting 8 or 9 guys in before some teams get 5 guys across, and there is the possibility that they can have 3 sub 18 guys early in the season.  I think Sampson's goal is to get to state, be all-OVAC, and all Buckeye 8.  If he could sneak out a win somewhere that would be icing on the cake, but as long as stays healthy and is able to compete I'll be happy.  There are several guys that will be right on his heels for this season, but last year I thought he made some good changes to concentrate on the season.  From icing his legs before races, no cutting out certain foods.  This year he needs to concentrate on the training to have his best races at the end of the season.  The one thing he may be lacking is mileage, but he has probably run more than he ever has so I can't complain.  The coach said he needed to be in the 500 mile range for the summer and I don't think he got close to that, so we'll see.  For perspective, I have run 126 miles since May, and I couldn't even qualify to be on the team, but I'm also not 17.  Like I said I just hope he stays healthy and is able to improve from last year, if he does that he will be in a good spot and if the rest of the guys improve, they could be really good.

For Peach, her team was kind of up and down a little last year and as the season progressed I think other teams got more better (yikes) then they did.  If that makes sense.  Basically they started out better than other teams but they didn't get all of the passing and 3 hitting plays down by the end of the season where some other teams did and they could handle the ball if you just passed it over rather than having a good striker.  Peach says she wants to be the spiker and she has grown a good bit over the last 2 years (still no where near as tall as Dad, but way taller than Mom) so she could fill that role now.  They are also playing on high school nets, no more shorter nets for the jr. high. It will be interesting to see how this season goes as it looks like the summer work has them playing a little more like a team.  It will also be interesting to see how bad Peach can cut herself since she is growing out her nails and she refuses to cut them even though there is absolutely no advantage you can have in volleyball from having long nails, you can only cut your self.  So far she has cut herself twice.  Well here is wishing the kids good luck and good luck to my wallet to get into all of these games.