Day: July 2, 2025

I had the benefit of watching my kid play in his next to last 7s of the season. He did good–made big plays throughout. It showed me a little something about their team too: Desert Vista is a Top Tier team of Lower Tier Teams. They are not quite ready to face the big boys–that is a certainty, but they are at the point where they will be having Coach Wiz level success that we haven’t seen in some time.

Oh, and Coach Wiz is back… at Chandler. So, we won’t be dealing with them until the playoffs and it will not likely happen at all given the likelihood that Chandler immediately returns to a power stance and makes the tourney. Basha is the only squad I see beating them. Centennial doesn’t have Nikko anymore, so they’re not quite as solid. Liberty and Mountain View will also be in contention.

So, what do I see happening in the High school ranks? Well, on the eve of the Summer Camp, this is what I think is going to go down:

DV opens against a tough Cesar Chavez team who has a standout Tight End. This is where my kid earns his looks or doesn’t. I think he does, if the scheme lets him roam enough to cover this TE and lay down some licks. This is a game DV very much needs to win. I think they do, late, by a FG.

We’re on to Mountain Pointe. Not as good as they were and lacking the same coaching team. DV wins again.

Valley Vista is game 3. They are not a very good FB program. 3-0 start or, if I was wrong about week 1, 2-1

Mountain Ridge is a tough draw. They lost a lot of games badly last year, but so did we. Like us they had a bad freshman team. I think we might be better than them if the momentum of previous weeks is on our side. Tight win here. 4-0/3-1

The next two games are against Westwood and ALA-QC respectively. Those are two Ls for the program. 4-2 or 3-3

For the sake of time I will argue that we lose 1 more game (Queen Creek) out of the final 4, which makes us a playoff bound school at 7-3 or 6-4. This is based on strength of squad and strength of schedule. I expect that down the line of the season these kids will gel. Even if they are not there in time for the Chavez game, a 6-4 season means we have made an incredible turnaround. As a bonus, we have this schedule for the next two years–enough for my kid to graduate and get some looks.

Good times await Desert Vista…. So long as we don’t sell this bag.

Rough day for the words. I’ve been on a tear, going through about a chapter a day and I hit the wall today. I didn’t get the chapter done. It’s a 5,000 word mess that probably should be split in two, but I don’t know that it will be. There is a natural break point that I could use, but it makes the next one about a thousand words, which is no good either. I will probably solve the equation with a line break consisting of three asterisks, and keep the flow of the thing going.

What I learned today was why I struggle with writing at home: Too many distractions. At home I started putting the phone in a different room. That helped a bit, but I work on three screens in that house, which gives me plenty of screen space to screw off. I need to change that dynamic. Perhaps change to full screen mode and only have specific data on the side screens. There needs to be less going on in order for me to slip into story. I live in complete chaos, so that rarely happens. There is always madness about. I need to get better about shutting out the madness and about making a better balance of work vs. break.

Break does not mean relax. There are plenty of things I can be doing. Exercise above all. I need to work mind, body, and spirit. That last one drags most of the time while in Arizona, because of what the place truly is and the stressors attached to it (also impacting mind and body). There needs to be a deeper dive for me into how to get it right. I need a plan. Maybe I can publish that plan as part of my 10 for sixty.

That’s the new plan: 10 major pieces of writing by 60. I want it to be 10 books, but who knows what I will get into over this next decade.