L2K Presentations

 

Through the Legacy 2000 program, and towards the end of the four years, the students do a job shadow of varying lengths.  The junior year, they have to do 24 hours of shadowing with a company and then for their senior year, they have to do 40 hours of shadowing.  Gavin was able to connect to several engineering opportunities through Medtronic, which is a medical device company local to Broomfield.  Here he is giving his presentation on the experience and what he learned about engineering.  Ultimately, he loved the time there and got to work on many things including some sort of tissue suturing device on pig skins to surgical robots.  Pretty awesome and he will continue this interest likely into college.

Dinner Night Out

We are not always the best about getting out with the four of us, but we made it happen this time!  It's sometimes hard to match all of our eating preferences together and find a place that works, but we know we all love Boulder and the downtown Pearl street area.  So, we ended up at this place that has individual food stalls that are different styles of food.  This way everyone can go get their own flavor of cuisine.  It's a bit pricy, as it's kind of a foody place, but we were all together which was awesome!

 

Gavin's Soccer at Pride

 

The away Pride game is always one to regret.  It's a long haul down to Colorado Springs from Broomfield, the actual field is in the Southeast side of the city, it's always windy at the games, and only one of the main four fields has seating alongside the field.  The other fields you have to watch from behind the goals at either end.  This game was no less than expected and you can see some clouds rolling in, whereas it was sunny up in Broomfield when we left.

Gavin's team came through with a tie after leading for most of the game, but the weather seemed to get crazy on us.  After the game as we are pulling out, it turned into a full-on snowstorm to head home in.  Here is Gavin after the game and excited to go get some food for the way hom.

Vegas Soccer with Gage (Pa1rt 2 of 2)

 

The final group stage game was against Pateodores Soccer Club 2010B White.  It was a lunch time game, so we first had a pretty late breakfast and brought some snacks.  We ended up taking care of business here and won 3-0.  Based on goal differential, we ended up winning our group with 6 points and moving on to play the next morning.

We decided to celebrate that evening and took the guys for an early night walk along the Strip.  These guys were psyched, but I think us chaperones were a bit nervous.  We had to keep them corralled with one of us up front and one in the back the make sure we didn't "lose" any along the way. 

Here is Gage as the night lights are just starting to come out...which also meant that it was about time for us to get these boys back to our hotel before the true Vegas nightlife starts to kick off in earnest.

I am not sure that we expected to be here or not, but the next morning we squared off against CDA Slammers 2010B White in the Semi-Finals.  It was a really hard fought and physical game, but we came out with another win 1-0!  However, this is where things kind of started to go south.  When the logistics were originally planned a few months out, we were assured that no games would be played Sunday afternoon.  As it turns out, the finals match that we were scheduled to be in against Empire Surf 2010B Academy was scheduled for 1:30 pm that afternoon.  With out flight being at 4:00 pm, it wasn't feasible to get the game in and still make the flights.  We tried to petition the tournament to move the game up a bit just so we could get it in, but that didn't work.  We let the CDA Slammers take our spot in the final and joked with them that if they won, we would be expecting the trophy in the mail!  They did actually end up winning, through penalties (4-2) after tying 1-1 in full time.  

It seems like we should have at least had a reasonable chance to win that game too, given the final outcome, but we were proud of the team's effort.  We did have some injuries mounting through the weekend that would have made it hard, and we lament to chance to celebrate hoisting a trophy up, but what a great weekend of soccer!  Lots to be super proud of.

Vegas Soccer with Gage (Part 1 of 2)

 

We just arrived for a Vegas soccer trip for Gage's team (2010 B ECRL) with Edge and I was able to come along as a chaperone again.  This is a pretty fun group of guys and generally not too rowdy, so hoping for a good weekend.

We stayed at the SpringHill Suites by Marriot in Las Vegas which is about two blocks off of the Strip towards the North end.  Vegas is one of these destination places for youth soccer tournaments but always pretty difficult to keep teenage boys focused and under control this close to City That Never Sleeps.  We did get them to bed and here we are heading out the next morning for the first game.  We played OV Toros FC 2010B and ended up coming through with a clean sheet win 2-0 to start the day.

The hard thing with these tournaments is that you never quite know where the fields are in the city when you book hotels and you never know the times you will play.  These games were actually over in Henderson which is about a 25–30-minute drive away from the hotel.  We were treated to a nice sunset as the boys were arriving for their second game under the lights.  

Here is Gage, obviously overly excited for me to be taking a picture of him again.  He's got a few fingers lightly banged up but is playing some great soccer with his team.  The second game was against Future FC (CAS) B10 NPL.  They ended up losing their second game 1-0 in a tight match but are playing some good soccer.  There is one more scheduled match tomorrow and then we will see where we stand in the group play to move on to the final games.

More Soccer Games

 

Here is Gavin playing in the icebreaker tournament held by Broomfield Soccer Club each spring.  What's kind of nice is that even though he is playing for Colorado Edge we get all these games in our local backyard.  Can't complain too much about that!

For the finals match they march both teams out and they get a nice formal introduction before continuing on.

Here is Gavin playing a bit as an outside Center Back for his team.

I don't recall what the final score was, but they did end up winning their final match and took first place.  Sometimes, Gavin has a been a bit hot and cold with his soccer career as he sometimes seems like he likes it and other times it is hard to tell.  However, I think everyone loves to win and it was great to see him so excited and proud to be able to wear a champions medal.  His coach is also in the above picture, which is a story in and of itself.  We think the guy is like 23 years old and likely just barely old than these guys that he is coaching.  I think the team liked him, but Gavin would quite often come back from practice and tell stories about the coach asking them what they wanted to do on any given practice.  Either way, I guess it works, great work team!

One final picture of Gavin with his medal and holding the first-place trophy!  Awesome job, Gavin, we are so proud of you and your effort here...especially overcoming having heart surgery during the season.

Soccer Again?

 

During his heart saga, the doctors repeatedly assured us that he could return to his sport after some initial healing from the surgery.  In fact, they said that one of the other early patients of this leadless pacemaker was also a D1 soccer player and had returned with no problems.  I did have to explain to the doctor that our son plays soccer more like a rugby star or middle linebacker, but we were reassured that it could take the punishment.  So, with that, here is what February soccer can look like in Colorado.  I think we had every known piece of ski gear plus multiple blankets that we could gather to try to keep warm.

Apparently, the kids on the field were cold but sprinting around kept them a bit warmer.  Here is Gavin playing with this 06/07 Colorado Edge team.  He was shocked to find out that about a third of his team were actually in college and just came back for their last year in club soccer.  I guess the last year you get some of this weird age split where some kids are in college and some in their last year in high school.  Gavin does seem to like the team and it's great to see him out there again running around.