Okay, I admit it two things are ironic about my last blog. The first it was titled Keeping in Touch and yet I haven’t blogged since May 19th. The other is by not keeping up with the blog over the summertime it just lends itself to the misconception that we just take off for the summer and do nothing in athletics.
I will agree that the pace is a little slower in the summer, but if you kept the pace we do around here in athletics for the entire year the normal person would be totally burnt out in a year or less.
All of that being said I can’t tell you how excited that I can see right around the corner the fact that I will hear whistles blowing and pads popping and the sound of Heger saying you aren’t going to get a ring like that.
When you see over 150 games in about an eight month span and then you go four months not seeing much it all you really do start to miss the games. I have said in this space before that is one of the best things about my job is I get paid to watch a lot of games. By the Fourth of July I start to get the itch again to see a game.
I agree the content slows down in the summer but over the next few weeks you are going to see a lot of new stories and information on the web site, along with all of the schedules for 2008-09 (most of them are already up) and the fall sports rosters will be up soon after everyone reports. I will be updating the season previews in the next week or so and before you know it we will back into the game routine.
One of the things that you will see a lot more of this season is video. Not necessarily video streams of games (although you may see some) we are going to have interviews with coaches and players frequently and we are going to have more video highlights of games as well. I am going to have a new camera this year and we are going to make this more of reality than before.
Here are a few of the things that have gone on since I last blogged in the athletic department.
Ashley Huston won about 100 awards for her amazing season. The most amazing is she was named the Honda Award Winner as the Division III Female Athlete of the Year. She also won ASC Female Athlete of the Year, was the national field athlete of the year, was Academic All-American and was selected as the ASC representative for NCAA Woman of the Year. She truly had an amazing year, including three individual NCAA titles.
The summer time is always a fun time of the year, because not only are there always freshmen announcing they are coming to campus, there is always a buzz about some transfers. We will see some of those in a few weeks at football practice and the Cowgirl basketball team will now feature the two best rebounders in the ASC from a year ago.
On a sad note, Susan Keeling was diagnosed with colorectal cancer and has spent a lot of the summer under chemotherapy and radiation. The chemo part is over, but we still need to pray for Susan and Jimmie and the family.
We have not had any coaching staff changes in the offseason, which is a good thing in building continuity in our programs. We have had some of those years where we were pretty good in a lot of sports and this year seems to be looking that way.
Just wanted to say congratulations to a pair of former Cowboy and Cowgirls that ended up getting married, who have just added future HSU student-athletes.
Zane and Beth (Ulrickson) Jillson and Garet and Becca (Neal) Black have both recently had new additions to the HSU family.
Don’t forget to signup for our Hardin-Simmons Athletic Department page on Facebook. If you are a facebooker and want to join you can click here. Twitter is something new to me, but I think it is a great way to get information out quickly. You can join the twitter page here.
I promise it won’t be two months before I update again.
