Dave and Cathy's Family Blog

April Highlights:

• Celebrate Luke’s birthday
• Lilah and fellow seniors get honored in senior swim meet
• Luke’s team gets second place in last volleyball tournament of the season
• I start the triathlon season with a 2nd place finish at Bonelli Park triathlon
• I visit Google campus for the first time
• Cathy creates inspiring fitness bio for YMCA

Volleyball and Swim Seasons Nearing an End

Luke is Having a Great Season
For a kid who didn’t start playing volleyball until the end of last year, Luke has done remarkably well in his first season with the freshman volleyball team. In their last tournament of the year, his solid play in the middle led to some great momentum shifts for his team. Not only was he able to block or deflect shots (what middle players are expected to do), he was also able keep a few points alive with quick reflexes that kept the ball in play and gave his team a chance to score. The coach even singled out Luke’s play as being one of the keys to their success in the tournament. It was kind of cool to just sit back as a parent and hear the coach speak about Luke in glowing terms.
In May, the season will end, but I hope Luke is at least a little bit inspired to practice his skills in the off season. That won’t necessarily be easy as he has some other goals in mind — like learning how to do skateboard tricks in the hopes that it will improve his snowboarding next season. Obviously, it’s great to see your kids inspired to improve in whatever their pursuits are, but part of me wouldn’t mind Luke spending more time with volleyball, especially if he continues to grow at this rate. He is only a freshman but is now 6′ 1″ tall. If he gets a few inches taller and becomes even better at volleyball, athletic scholarships could be part of this future. But that is up to him to decide. As I learned with Lilah in swimming, your child may have the talent, but that doesn’t necessarily mean they have the desire to invest the time it takes to compete in a sport at the highest levels.   

Lilah Will Soon Be Done with Swimming
This year, Lilah has struggled to keep her motivation up for swimming. One of the big changes was the fact that her old coach, a division one breaststroker (Lilah’s event), stopped coaching and the replacement coach is a water polo coach who simply does not have the experience teaching a swim program. Maybe, over time, she will develop that skill, but the lack of understanding or ability to help swimmers with their technique is something Lilah cited over and over again as part of her reason for not growing this year. She also had a very special bond with her old coach who always inspired her to do better. Despite it all, however, Lilah has had an okay season and has enjoyed being the de facto lane leader of the slow lane group — a crew of gals she’s been swimming with for years. In the end, it will be the friendships she made in swim that I think she’ll remember the most.

The other day I mentioned to her that making friendships, like the ones she has made with her current teammates, would be a good reason to join the swim team at UC Santa Cruz. But Lilah shut that suggestion down quickly, stating that she still has no plans to become a banana slug swimmer. When your kids disagree with you on things that you know would be good for them, it can be tough to hold back and not try to convince them otherwise. But athletics are really a huge time commitment and both kids understand that well. And I know that when they say they don’t want to do something, it’s not because they don’t like the activity. It’s more a matter of choosing to do other things with their time, which for Lilah means devoting time to her studies and figuring out research and internship opportunities in astronomy. 

Starting My 13th Triathlon Season

Kicked off the season with an unexpected 2nd place finish at Bonelli Park this year. I was slower than in other years, as I too have not been as devoting as much time to training, but sometimes races are about who shows up. This year, I had some slower competitors as well so that led to the nice podium finish with my dad their by my side. I’m not planning on doing too much racing this year as I figure that getting Lilah all situated in Santa Cruz will be a bigger priority for us. That being said, I have three more races on my calendar — two of them coming in May — and then no more races planned until the end of September. We’ll see how it goes.

Visiting the Google Campus

Attending a trade show in San Jose this month, allowed me to connect with an old friend, Sandy, who now works at Google. I met Sandy many years ago at a web design conference (in the nineties) and although we have seen each other seldomly over the years, we’ve stayed in contact via how most of the world does it now — social media. When you haven’t actually seen someone in so many years, it makes a face to face encounter that much more special. It’s great to hear someone’s voice again after a long absence. That got me to thinking about how we don’t really hear each other’s voices anymore, as texts and social media posts have become the preferred choice of communication. Talking on the phone or watching TV is something old people do, which may be true, but it can still bring happiness and joy to your world, and that is something I think young and old alike can appreciate. 

We spent a couple of hours on the campus and the first thing I noticed is that it truly does feel like a university campus with tons of people walking, riding scooters and skateboards, and, of course, using the ubiquitous yellow, green, red and blue Google commuter bikes to travel between buildings that stretch for several blocks. The youthful culture also reminded me of being a student again.

We ate at the Google cafeteria which has options for pretty much everyone, Indian food, Mexican food, hamburgers and hot dogs, salads, desserts, etc.. You’ll find it all in the campus cafeteria and it’s all free to Google employees and their guests — now that is something a university student like me would have appreciated back in the day 😉 . One thing that took me kind of by surprise, however, is how many people were still on campus at 7:00 PM. There was no place to sit inside, so Sandy and I grabbed a spot outside and tried to catch up on the last 10-12 years of our lives or so. Definitely a highlight of my time in San Jose. Thank you Sandy, for taking the time to do that, snapping a few pictures of me for the digital scrapbook, and showing me the visitor center and colorful Android garden. 

Cathy Creates Inspirational Bio for YMCA

Hard to believe, but Cathy has not been in the fitness game for 10+ years. Recently she was asked to put together a bio for herself and I thought she did such a nice job that I asked her to share it here on our blog. 

If you want to see how someone went from being a complete non athlete, to someone who is now at the top of her game in the field of fitness, give it a read here. It’s a nice inspirational story.

That is all for now…more next month!