people who rock

YAY MIT!!! So proud of my kids...it was so awesome to see them all yesterday. I couldn't tear myself away from the tournament, but forced myself to go to sparring practice for a couple hours and come back. It was SO GOOD to be with the team again...with the obvious exception of the newbies, it was just like old times. Agh I miss the INCTL and all that ... though I realized I must be getting old if I found it too stressful. Everyone just looked so good, and it was really nice that Dan let me coach a bunch of the teams. Just like old times. I almost got on the bus to go back to Boston with them, but alas, being old means needing sleep. *sigh*

One of the things I really miss are the days of riding the bus back from tournaments. All the games of Mafia, the "storytimes" where I'd whip out the brackets of teams that won and do my silly trashtalking narrations that people actually thought were funny, the bad kung fu movies, teaching people how to play violent Korean games that involve hitting as punishment, taking pictures of people sleeping, always having a shoulder to sleep on, even the bad food at McDonald's on the pit stop...there is really no way for me to measure how much I miss those days and more so, how much I miss my teammates. I've been on a lot of teams - All-star teams, Collegiate teams, NY teams, even with WS - but none of them are like my experience with MIT, and how comprehensive that was.

But I'm glad that you didn't get on that bus back to Boston. Because life isn't about always looking back to the past and what you did way back when - it's about embracing the future. As in business and in life, it's about "what have you done lately?". Relish and appreciate and be proud of what you have done, but always look for what you will accomplish next.

I know he's right. But still...uprooting is never easy. There are pros and cons, benefits to cover the things you give up...but it's still hard and it's still sad.

*********************

On a miserable note, I lost my USA hat yesterday. I left it at the tournament and apparently the tournament directors decided to leave it to the janitor to toss when no one claimed it. I don't recall hearing any announcement, and besides that...it's a very specific hat, don't you think you'd leave it to the lost and found and not the janitor? MMPH.

*********************

But on another positive note - I love hardworking kids. Scott makes me so happy. We had a lesson today, and in the middle of some drills he says

"Can I make a request?"

"Sure"

And I'm thinking he wants to work on a specific kick or something.

"Can we work on pushups? Mine are really bad and I want to have good pushups"

And as we did the pushup drills, he didn't complain. Red faced and grunting, he gave 110% to do the best pushups he could do. This after all the kids in our Fri sparring class got severely chastised by me and James for faking pushups, and having to stay in pushup position until they cried last week - the rest of them are probably hiding from us. But not Scott - he took the lesson to heart and is determined to do them properly.

Sometimes you have kids who make it all worth it.