Wild Weekend, Weather Wise....and looking towards Kokomo

"Crazy" is the best way to describe the Friday weather...and it ended up playing a large part in my weekend activities, or at least changes in same.

A storm had rolled through Celina about Noon Time, and then the humidity, heat, and sunshine had returned for the afternoon hours.  As I prepared for the varsity football game, 12 miles north in Rockford{one of two games of my 10 varsity games that are within Mercer County}, I checked the Radar, and what I saw wasn't good...several trails of Red, Yellows, and Dark Greens, were coming across the Heartland, from Illinois into Indiana, and heading towards western Ohio.  The Parkway High School Athletic Director had called me, and said that the school had all warning devices in place, in case the looming weather rolled into Rockford, hometown of Parkway....it would do exactly that.

As we walked the field for the pre-game conferences, one of the Marion Local video guys approached me with phone in hand, and showed me the Radar...RED was on the way...and when it arrived, it was going to be a problem.  The visiting Flyers, have won the small school state championships several times in the past decade, including last year...and despite being somewhat young, they were the favorites over the hometown Panthers.  You could not have thought so, as the first quarter came to an end....Parkway came out fired up, and lead 8-7 as we began the 2nd quarter.  Two plays in with Marion on it's own 19, I pulled out a flag, as the right offensive guard for the Flyers jumped....as the same instance, head referee Steve blew his whistle, and pointed behind me...what I did not notice, since it was to the east and directly behind me, a huge bolt of lightning had blasted through the skies.  We saw nothing coming out of the west...the initial strike had passed over and hit east of the stadium.  We cleared the field, and they cleared the stands....we would wait.

When it became apparent that this storm was going to be a long one....we stopped the mystery about an hour later at 9:05pm, and called the game.  We would resume at 2pm the next day.  We were not alone, all but a handful of contests in West Central and Northwest Ohio were "killed" somewhere into them....ours was one of the early games, since we were playing near the Ohio/Indiana Border, while teams like Celina were not so lucky.  The Bulldogs got within 4:13 of finishing their game at Defiance, leading 35-28 the Dogs waited until 11pm and headed home, only to return at 6pm Saturday night, finishing off their win.  Our game resumed and it was a different contest...Marion Local took control and pulled away with a 49-22 victory, to move to 3 wins and no defeats on the young season.

Meanwhile our JV game at Wayne Trace was cancelled, and I had to drop my baseball double header, which, despite 4 inches of rain in the area, was played at Spencerville....they found someone to take my place, as I was finishing up in Rockford....despite getting paid double, I still took a $100 or so loss, because of losing the triple header football and baseball....Sam and I did get a double header in on Sunday with youth football on Sunday.  So I came out OK....despite getting hit in the mouth with a football on Saturday, and run into by a Parkway player coming off the bench.  Pay-wise OK, body-wise, I feel every bit of my 63 years.

Kokomo______

This week begins the 30th straight year of the Howard County/Kokomo, Indiana, Vietnam Veterans Reunion....Wednesday I will make my 3rd straight year, hooking up at The Boar's Nest Campsite of my old VSPA Buddy, Tom McCandless....Tom and Big Sam Lewis are already there....spending a week.  Not sure my body will handle that, but I will arrive early Wednesday and stay until Noon of Friday, when I will head back and ready myself for this week's varsity game at St. Henry, where the Redskins take on MAC Rival Minster...two of the 4 schools, as chance would have it, that I had in the Baseball Districts, back in May, when Minster won on their way to their second straight D4 State Baseball Title.  Minster is 3-0 and St. Henry 2-1 on the young season, it should be a good game.  Hopefully I will be alive and kicking after 48 hours at Kokomo.

http://www.hcvvo.org/

Tom's Boar's Next site is located on the back row middle, next to the field shown to the south....usually some crops there, last year it was corn, the year before soybeans....

Next weekend I took NO games, thus giving my body and mind a chance to recover from football, here in Celina both tonight and tomorrow, and the beating  from the Kokomo Camp Out.  I may post one more time before heading out Wednesday AM, but then again, I may not...either way I will have plenty of photos from the "action" to share when I return....

back later>>>>

Photos-Tom McCandless and some of the gang at Kokomo in 2011....The storms Friday Night into Saturday morning, which caused all the postponements, where much like this photo I snapped back in July 1997, "Sweety Pie" is the centerpiece of The Boar's Next site at the Howard County Meeting site for our Sky Cop Group, and I will sip a bit of "Apple Pie" like last year, as Tom and Big Sam{right} look on, waiting for their turn....