Category: sports

Keys to a Soccer Team

therightliberalLeave a comment

Although there are some great Champions League games on today, I want to talk about something else. Football (or soccer to some of you) is a great sport. It is fun and enjoyable for me and may others to play. It teaches teamwork, perseverance and many other skills. But to have a good soccer team there are somethings that a team needs.

1. Coach-Although there are good teams with bad coaches, a coach/manager can make a team great. They control who plays and who doesn’t. they control how the team is run and how the team trains. In most teams they are the head and they control everything under them. A bad coach can ruin a team. They can ruin moral, ruin chemistry and not play the right people at the right time. they may not even run practices correctly which can also damage a team. The first step to building a great team is having a great coach.

2. Players-Although having players with motivation and character is important, what a team really needs is players with talent. You cannot compete with a team that has 10 times the amount of talent you have, trust me I have tried. A team with no talent is not a team, it is a group of people looking to have fun. To be competitive you must have players who are invested in winning, can take advice and build with it, and strive to win. Without that a soccer team will fail.

3. Support-This can come from many places but every team needs it. At a school it would come from students and faculty with help from the athletic department. At a professional team it would come from having a large fan base with support from the people with the check book. In today’s world of soccer, you have to invest a lot of time and money if you want to be succesful. If you are not interested in that, get of the field.

Tom Baldy: “It runs in the family”

shredicusmaximusLeave a comment

Tom Baldy

Now for the guys, doesn’t this make you smile just a little bit? I’m sure the girls are equally terrified.

Tom Brady‘s car was spotted at a hair transplant clinic in Rhode Island earlier this month thus prompting thousands of conversions to Christianity from jealous guys all over the world. “There is a God after all, this is just too “friggin” perfect” my friend Blaise Dolcemaschio said.

Still, I pity Brady. The media is making a huge deal out of something natural and his super model wife Gisele Bundchen‘s desire for an ideal image is causing him extreme stress. She has been pressuring him to get hair plugs.

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Qatar and Russia Beat out US and England to Host WC

therightliberalLeave a comment

Today, 22 FIFA members voted to put the World Cup in Russia and Qatar in 2018 and 2022. This comes as a bit of a surprise when there were countries like the US and Australia bidding against Qatar. Russia receiving the 2018 bid was not a huge shock after allegations surfaced that England FIFA members had possibly participated in unethical business practices (To put it nicely).

Sepp Blatter hands over the world Cup to Russian minister of Sports Vitaly Mutko

So some stats on Qatar. First for all of you who have never even heard of it, it is in the Middle East, a peninsula sticking off of Saudi Arabia. The population is just over 1.5 million with 4, 416 square miles of land, making it the smallest country in land and population to ever host a World Cup. Qatar has the second highest GDP per capita in the world, with wealth coming from its large amount of oil and gas reserves. The country is an absolute monarchy, being ruled by the al-Thani family since the mid-19th century.

Qatar

Obviously Qatar has the resources to build stadiums and other necessary infrastructure for the World Cup but there are some potential problems. First Qatar is a strict Muslim country, and soccer hooligans have a tendency to make religious people upset.

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Shorted Shortstop

shredicusmaximusLeave a comment

Ever since the offseason meetings began, Derek Jeter‘s contract fiasco with the Yankees has had more curves than many of the starlets he has dated in the past. Coming off the worst season of his career where he set career lows in Batting Average (.270), OPS (.340), and Slugging Percentage (.370), Yankees GM Brian Cashman told him to “Shop around the free agency market.”

Jeter NY Post Cover

This almost dooming quote stemmed after Jeter rejected the Yankees offer of a 3 year $45 million contract. His 10 year $189 million contract from 2000 has just expired and he has officially become a free agent. Most Yankee fans will agree with me that we love having him in New York, however we have to admit that a contract this lucrative is simply asking too much.

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UCLA Bonfire

smackyjackjack2 Comments

Yesterday (Wednesday, Dec. 1), the UCLA Bruins held their annual beat ‘sc bonfire.  The bonfire is a burning of all things Trojan. The students at UCLA brought their old red shirts to burn. Any student who brought a red shirt was given a free blue one. The bonfire was held at Wilson Plaza at UCLA.

The great rivalry between the two schools has resulted in major pranks. The students at UCLA have been taking turns guarding the massive Grizzly Bear statue. This year, however, they failed to protect it enough. The bear was painted red and the surrounding fountains were spewing red dye.

Blazing Berba

therightliberalLeave a comment

The Red Devils are at it again, proving that they are the best team in the world. Ok so that is an overstatement but a 7-1 victory is impressive.

Dimitar Berbatov

This Saturday, Manchester United faced an admittedly less than decent Blackburn Rovers side. United proceeded to score 7 goals, allowing only a late consolation goal by Blackburn.

Even more impressive was Dimitar Berbatov’s 5 goal scoring binge. he joins only 3 other players who have managed to score 5 in a game. I admit that up until this season, I had not been at all impressed by the Bulgarian. But his effort and his performances so far during this campaign make me proud to have him.

Dimitar Berbatov

This might seem like a statement based on one performance but it is far from the contrary. I have seen a large increase in effort and he has developed more awareness to the players around him. I feel that it is another example of the potential Sir Alex is able to release in so many players. he makes good players great.

different reactions

weirdjennyLeave a comment

On November 18, the varsity boys’ basketball team try-out results were announced. Only 15 players out of 25 were admitted onto the team. There are two totally different kinds of reactions for those participants who didn’t get admitted.

Some of them are complaining why they can’t get in, and they said their basketball career is done. However, others are willing to accept the results, and they said they are going to go for the manager position.

The team has offered 7 managers position for those people who didn’t get into the team. And the coaches had stated that the managers will have the opportunity to participate in the practice, and when some of the players are injured, the managers can have the opportunity to play on the game too.

So I encourage those people who didn’t get in should not get disappointed because your basketball career has not ended!

Excuse My French

therightliberalLeave a comment

Many an Englishman will tell you that the only problem with the 100 Years’ War is that it did not last long enough. Well today the war was reborn, with England facing their rivals: the French. The battle was quite one-sided, the French looked the more dangerous and came out the victors in a 2-1 win.

England look disconsolate during the defeat to France

Although this is a cause for depression amongst the English there are multiple good things to be taken away from this. The first is that there was a very good performance by Andy Carroll, a promising young player. Peter Crouch continued his scoring, grabbing his 22nd goal for his national side.

But what really should make the English happy is that it looks like the national squad is finally realizing that the key to success comes from youth. Look at Germany in the last World cup, all but two or three of their players will easily be young enough to compete in Brazil in 2014.

This is the key for England and with players like Carrol, who knows, they might be able to make enough progress to get through the round of 16 in Brazil.

However France finally showed that they have the potential to win after their stunningly abysmal World Cup performance. They do have some up and coming youth that could give them the opportunity to build a team that can win and not have to use their hands to make it to the finals.

For a full report of the game go to: http://soccernet.espn.go.com/news/story?id=843399&sec=global&cc=5901

The end of Volleyball :(

pikachu04Leave a comment

The end of the first trimester marked the end of the first sports season as well. Unfortunately, that means there is no more volleyball. I have been playing volleyball since my best friend, Veronica Crisafulli, taught me in 7th grade. Through the last four years Ms. Haldeman has shared her passion and love for the sport with me.

More than a sport, volleyball has become a way of life to me. When I am feeling down, I go to the court and hit a few balls. It is so sad that I will no longer have that option here. But all good things must end at some point right? And I plan to continue on with volleyball through college. I hope to play at college level if I make the cut. Volleyball has taught me much more than just what my athletic abilities are.

Volleyball has taught me how to push myself, how to express myself, and most of all it has taught me the value of relationships. I just want to thank the people in my life who support me and have pushed me to do my best, because I realize now the value of those lessons.

To Haldey, thank you so much for teaching me all that I know about volleyball , and furthermore , sharing your passion and love for the sport with me, I love you. You have taught me so much and I will always be thankful for that. To all the girls on my team, I truly love you all. Thank you for always being dependable and having the positive attitudes to push on and keep smiling even when we should have won. My senior year has started off very strongly, and I will certainly hold this memory as one of my fondest at my home away from home, OVS.

Philadelphia Eagles Fans

shredicusmaximusLeave a comment

eagles fans are morons
You can see them, you can even smell them. The stench of hoagies and cheesesteaks can only mean that a sea of green that screams real friggin loud is coming your way. They are so confident with themselves that they show you how good they are at spelling by doing it constantly and they boo’d the best quarterback in franchise history because he lost Superbowl 39 to the equally unlikeable Pats.

They have a guy in a green body cast at every home game. They once pelted a man dressed as Santa with snowballs during a game in the 80’s and not one person in the crowd dislikes Rocky movies, foul language, or having Michael Vick pet sit. We call this group of degenerates Eagles fans.

Sure I have the fact that I’m a New Yorker and that all of my teams have a rivalry to one extent or another with this town to support my claim but that’s not the main reason why. They’re like flies and mosquitos who drain a players life source and energy to the point where playing for Philly is a nightmare. They are self hating and at the same time self promoting.

You know someones an Eagle fan through one trait, they always spell the word “Eagles.” E-A-G-L-E-S, for goodness sake it’s like a spelling bee for what the 21st century calls “special people.”

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