Another soccer tournament...

Yes, ISP played hated Riverside, a small Christian school here in Prague, in a soccer tournament on Wednesday. The weather was absolutely horrible with a steady rain that lasted all day. They played, though, and ISP crushed Riverside 7-0 in the first game and somewhere between 7-0 and 9-0 in the second game (different sources had different scores but by that point the actual score really didn't matter). The ISP side was all boys, while all but one or two of the Riverside team were girls. I make no judgement about relative ability except to say that the boys were much more aggressive in their play.

Noah loves soccer and is convinced that because he has played in Europe he will dominate when he gets back to Minnesota. We'll see. He did score 3 goals over the two games, though, so he doesn't do too badly.


Exuding confidence prior to the first game.


In action against Riverside.


Proud but damp parents.

Bowling in Horomerice...

The weekend before last we had another bowling party at the local alley and restaurant in our litle village of Horomerice. There are only four lanes so it is usually crowded, especially in the winter.

We rented two lanes for an hour and the kids bowled on one and the adults on the other. I bowled in the 170s, which is higher than the 150 that I usually bowl. When we move back to the States I may get in a bowling league again. I still have the bowling ball that I bought in 7th grade, but I would probably upgrade. Bowling, like golf, has been greatly influenced by technology and just using the latest and greatest tools will inprove scores.

Anyway, Noah did better this time. Even though the bumpers were up to prevent gutter balls he was able to (mostly) throw the ball down the middle, and actually got a strike or two.

After bowling it was upstairs to the restaurant for dinner. For a bowling alley the restauant is excellent and reasonably priced. We made reservations ahead of time and they actually took our orders while we were still bowling, which worked out well. The only problem came when two in our group ordered a chicken dish, even though it was on the menu, they no longer served. The staff decided, instead of going back and having the two people reorder, to substitute a different dish with pork. This might have worked had the two people not been Jewish. The dish had pork, ham and bacon, so it was pretty obvious that the couldn't eat it. Anyway, they replaced the meals with a different chicken dish, but it took 30 minutes to prepare those.

More Noah soccer...

Yesterday was the first Jaro soccer since before the holidays. Jaro is the Czech coach, and he is well known enough that his soccer classes/camps fill up quickly and have waiting lists. Noah loves it, but (as I posted before) when he started he was made fun of because his skills were so underdeveloped compared to the European kids (I don't think there are any other Americans in the group).

Noah had his new soccer uniform (more correctly known as a "football kit") consisting of shirt and shorts that we had bought at a market in Rome for 25 Euros. He loves getting new soccer clothes - this kit is from Inter Milan and it has the name of the club's star, Adriano, on the back.

Here is a short clip showing Adriano in action.


The kids do warm ups and drills for about 25 minutes and then spend the rest of the time in a game. Noah has had success recently both as a goalie and a scorer, but today his team went down to a 6-1 defeat. He spent about 1/3 of the game in goal and gave up two goals.

Noah and the rest of his football mates warm up with some skill drills.



Noah (far left) is the goalie and this shot that got by him couldn't be stopped by his defense (in blue).


Noah deflected this shot up and off the metal - the ball is visible just hitting the crossbar. It was a highlight in a game filled with lowlights.

Noah at soccer...

Noah played soccer yesterday for the first time since having the "lucky cast" removed and it was the last soccer session before the 3-week holiday break that starts today.

He had another stellar outing, scoring 5 goals and again surprising his compatriots. Kathy told me that a couple of mothers commented to her how much better Noah is playing. So I guess it wasn't the cast.

Basketball...

Basketball for Noah started up at ISP last Saturday, but we were in Germany, so today was today was his initial session. He still has his cast, but we decided to let him play anyway. Sports are such a big part of his life that it's almost impossible to keep him from playing.

Considering he had his cast he did very well and probably led the 25 or so kids in scoring. He was quite pleased with himself. Anyway, I would guess that basketball will overtake hockey as Noah's winter sport (and that would be OK with me).

About half way through the hour practice the coach walked up to me and said something like "I coach high school kids who won't play because they have a jammed pinky, and here I have 9 year-old who won't let a cast stop him from playing".

Noah is on the 21-day disabled list...

Noah was playing team handball after school today and was backpedaling fast when he fell backwards and fractured his left wrist. Kathy was at school at the time and took him to a clinic close by called Unicare. ISP had called ahead and they were waiting to look him over. They were great but unfortunately their x-ray technician had left for the day so Kathy had to get him to MOTOL, the largest hospital in central Europe, and where foreigners generally go.

This is where it gets a little frustrating. Kathy called me at work to let me know what had happened and that they were going to MOTOL. Even though it is only about 10 minutes away from the clinic I suggested that they take a taxi since it was rush hour and (since it was later than 4:30) pitch black. I had to figure out how to get there since it isn't on a metro line. So instead of both of us just driving there like we would in the States it was like planning an invasion.

Noah ended up convincing Kathy to drive to MOTOL and thank goodness she got directly there. We had done a driving dry run to MOTOL last spring - just in case - and it paid off. I got there about 15 minutes after them but it was a trick finding them because of the size of the complex and the language barrier. Twice I went up to an information desk and said "X-ray?" hoping they would point me in the right direction and twice the nurse picked up her phone, dialed a few numbers and handed me the receiver. Yes, I was talking to someone in the X-ray department, someone with very limited English skills. I guess they figured that calling the x-ray department was less work than trying to give me directions. Anyway, Kathy ended up texting me and got me to the orthopedic waiting room while they were getting Noah's arm X-rayed. A few minutes later they were back and we were all together.

The doctor, who had decent English, asked Noah what had happened (and I got that "son, you can tell us if your father beat you" vibe) and he relayed how he had fallen backwards at school. The doctor pressed various spots on his arm and you could really tell when he hit the "spot" as Noah almost hit the ceiling. But he was a real trooper and didn't cry.

The doctor left to review the X-rays and came back a few minutes later to say that nothing was dislocated but there was a small fracture and Noah would have to be in a cast for three weeks. So the plaster cast (yes, plaster) was on in ten minutes and we were on our way.

The good news - the whole thing only cost $50 (and we should get that back from the insurance company).

End of the year soccer...

Noah's Saturday soccer came to an end today. Afterwards there was a final game and then a lunch with hot dogs, chips, cookies. etc. He had his best game of the season so he was thrilled. He started in nets and gave up three goals - none of them weak - and then switched to offense and scored five goals. The final was 9-9 after a shootout (they normally continue the shootout until there is a winner, but the hot dogs were coming off the grill, which necessitated the draw).


Big save in the shootout.














And another.















This one got past him.

Rugby in Prague...

Noah started playing rugby today. I have always thought that his build was well suited to the more physical sports like football and rugby, and now we will get to see if that hunch is right. He plays on Sundays from 11:00-12:30. They have two groups - on for the younger kids (third grade and younger) and the second group for everyone else. The younger groups plays flag rugby, with no real contact. The older group, of which Noah is a part, is full contact, with tackling and scrums. He had a tendency to be ahead of the ball on offense, which isn't the palce to be since rugby is a game of laterals. Be he enjoyed it and made one "try" (equivalent of a touchdown).

Golf tournament in the Czech Republic (yeah!)...

I spent the day at a golf tournament at one of the nicer courses around here, in Karlovy Vary, about 70 mile west of Prague. The tournament was sponsored by Citibank. I met one of their reps a few weeks ago and she invited me to attend. Here she is along with the rest of our foursome - Jan and Frantisek.

The weather this morning was far from ideal. About 50 degrees and drizzling. The invitation didn't say "play rain or shine" or give an alternate date if there was rain, so I decided to make the drive (thanks again, Garmin). It ended up staying in the 50s, but not a drop of rain during the 5 hour and 45 minute round.

I didn't play very well - a score of 100. But I had some good holes and made some good shots, particularly with the driver. The hole distances are in meters instead of yards and I should have looked up the conversion before I played. I know that a yard is close to a meter, but don't know if a yard is longer or shorter.

Here is the clubhouse coming up the 18th hole.


This is a downhill 191 meter par 3. I hit a solid 4-iron and stuck it about 8 feet from the pin. Of course I missed the birdie putt (but tapped in for par).




This is the par 5 9th hole. I got a par here as well thanks to a long drive down the middle of the narrow fairway.








There was free food before, during and after the round. Alas, no drink carts. Because of the zero tolerance on drinking and driving - any alcohol in your blood results in a DUI - no beer. Still, it was very nice to get onto a golf course and use my own clubs. I still suck at golf, but it was fun.

AC Sparta v Arsenal

Premiership top-tier Aresnal will be playing a "friendly" match next Wednesday against AC Sparta, one of the Czech premier league teams. I am attempting to get tickets, but it could be tough since the stadium only holds 25,000 and there is likely to be high interest in the match from the locals.

AC Sparta doesn't really stand a chance, though, unless Arsenal rests some of its better players (and the rest are made to hop on one leg for the entire match). I will update when I find out if I can secure tickets.

Here is a bit on Arsenal from Wikipedia:

Arsenal Football Club (also known as Arsenal, The Arsenal or The Gunners) are an English professional football club based in Holloway, north London. They play in the Premier League and are one of the most successful clubs in English football. Arsenal have won thirteen First Division and Premier League titles, ten FA Cups and in 2005–06 became the first London club to reach the UEFA Champions League final. Arsenal are also members of the G-14 group of leading European football clubs.



Arsenal were founded in 1886, in Woolwich, south-east London, but in 1913 they moved north across the city to Arsenal Stadium, Highbury. In May 2006 they left Highbury, moving to their current home, the Emirates Stadium in nearby Ashburton Grove, Holloway. Arsenal have a long-standing and fierce rivalry with neighbours Tottenham Hotspur, located four miles away in Tottenham, with whom they have contested the North London derby almost every season since 1913.

What to be when I grow up...

Noah is nine years old and in the past when pressed what he wanted to be when he grew up the answer was either a Jedi knight or a professional football (soccer) player. Last night Kathy relayed to me an interesting story that shows that he is getting more mature and understands the real world better. Here is what she said:




Noah and a friend were talking about playing professional sports when they grow up & doing that for a living. I reminded them that they better have a back up plan because they can't play sports all their lives. Noah said right away that he was going to college & going to be a math major. I asked him what he thought he would do for a living. He said he could either be a math teacher or an accountant. He said he might like to be an accountant at ATK where you used to work!! I was very surprised--both at knowing he wants to do something with math & that he even had thought about a job!

Golfing in Minnesota...

Well, I was able to golf 45 holes during my visit home to Minnesota. First, I golfed with my friends from grade school, Hank, Joe and Orr, last Saturday in Siren, Wisconsin (very close to Hank's cabin). I shot horribly - a 114. I don't think I have had that high a score in quite some time. My excuses, though, are legion. I was using borrowed clubs, it was my first time golfing in almost a year, it was a course I was not very familiar with, and the temperature was about 98 degrees.

I golfed 9 holes with Jerry up near Pelican Rapids, and I used an extra set of clubs that he has. They were Fat Shafts - the same as my clubs - so I shot better. Not great, but certainly better than the first round. We didn't keep score since it was just nice to get out and walk around in the cool air (low 60s). Noah walked along (you can still do that in rural Minnesota!) and we let him hit a few balls off the tee and putt a few on the greens. He did pretty well considering he hasn't played before and he was using right handed clubs when he is left handed.

The last round was yesterday at River Oaks in Cottage Grove. The weather was again good, despite a few short showers on the last four holes. This time I used my nephew's clubs. I played better - a 95, or 19 strokes better than last Saturday - but I still have a long way to go. My round was typified by what I did on the 18th hole. It's a relatively long - 481 yards - par 5, dogleg left, uphill all the way. My drive was very good - long and on the right side of the fairway. I decided to hit a 3-wood off the deck and really connected well with it. Because the hole was uphill I didn't see the result of my shot until we all got up by the green. My second shot was on the green, about 20 feet short of the hole. So I was putting for eagle! I only have two eagles in almost forty years of golfing, so legitimate eagle attempts are not very common. Anyway, my eagle putt was the correct length but four feet to the right. My birdie putt missed right and I tapped in for par. Now par isn't a bad result for me, but an eagle would have been a lot better. Maybe when we get back I can play more often and improve my game.




Here is the motley group I played with at River Oaks. On the left is Lowell, who I met around 1984. He is an all-purpose friend who over the years I have golfed and played cards with. He is retired from the Government. In the middle is my brother-in-law, Dan. He married my oldest sister in 1968, but he was hanging around the house long before then. So I have known him for probably 43 years or so. On the right is Hank. I met Hank around the fourth grade, which would have been in about 1968, so I have known him for almost 40 years. No matter how long we go without seeing each other (and sometimes it's for a year or more because I have lived in Saudi Arabia and Ohio throughout the years) we can always egt together and it seems like old times.

The three of them represent over 100 years of friendship for me. Needless to say, I had a lot of fun with these guys and I can't wait until we get the opportunity to do it again.

ISP versus hated Riverside...

Yesterday was Noah's second real soccer tournament - the first was last month at the British School. ISP hosted this one, and the only other participant was Riverside - a small Christian school for expats. Noah's team played two 30 minute games, and there are so many kids on the team that they basically each played one of the games. Noah played the second game that ended in a 2-2 draw. Unfortunately, he failed to convert on an early penalty kick and so he was unconsolable. Some of his teamates blamed him for failing to win and he took it very hard. The lessons of team sports are many, and he learned some yesterday. I guess it was "character building". Anyway, today it's forgotten and we're on to the next shiny object.

Going to the match - Hertha BSC

When we visited Geneva in February, Noah and I went to the local professional soccer team – AC Seville. AC Seville plays in a very nice, new stadium that seats about 35,000, but the day we were there the announced crowd was about 2,900. Just by chance I noticed that the Berlin team in the Bundesliga – Hertha BSC – played on the Sunday that we were here in Berlin. So I decided that we would go and continue the new tradition. It was quite a different experience from Geneva. Hertha BSC plays in Olympic Stadium – the same stadium where Jesse Owens humiliated Adolph Hitler in the 1936 Games. We stopped by the stadium on Sunday afternoon just to make sure we could find it, and as long as we were there we decided to try the ticket office. They were open and there were only a few seats left, so we bought a couple (I don’t force Kathy to attend these games, and Noah doesn’t encourage her to attend anyway). There must have been 80,000 fans at this game, and we were in the absolute last row of the upper deck. Unfortunately, Hertha lost a man to a red card in the 36th minute, so they played most of the game shorthanded. They fell behind 3-0 and were able to salvage a single goal, before going down to a 4-1 defeat. It was a great time, and it was certainly cool to be in a stadium with such history (compared to, say, the Metrodome).

Noah's first baseball game of the season...

Baseball isn't big over here, but since ISP is an American school they offer at least some baseball. There are enough kids interested to have two teams in his age group and they end up just playing each other over and over. The first game of Noah's Marlins against the hated Orioles was Saturday. They don't fomally keep score but the kids do anyway (and somehow each side believes that they won). Noah can hit from either side, but prefers left. I'm trying to keep him in the habit of switching between right and left. Look at that form!

Sparta win!....Sparta win!...Sparta win!...

While the Minnesota Wild are suffering through the first round of the NHL playoffs, the professional Czech Elite League has just finished its equivalent of the Stanley Cup finals. Prague has two teams in the league - Sparta and Slavia. Sparta plays in an old smaller arena - kind of a cross between the old St. Paul auditorium and the old Met Center (that sentence made me realize how old I really am), while Slavia plays in a brand new 18,000 seat arena along the lines of the Xcel Energy arena. We support Sparta but mostly because that is the team that my company gets season tickets to. Nice seats, too - VIP box seats.
The tickets are occasionally used to entertain Czech politicians but often they are available for employees to get and we went to three regular season games (a lot of our jounalists are from the "Stans" - Afghanistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgistan, etc. where ice hockey isn't a big thing). So we lucked out and got to see game 6 of the final series between Sparta and hated Parduvice. Sparta had been up 3 games to 1 but was beaten handily on Thursday night, 5-1. They needed a win tonight to avoid a seventh game in Parduvice.
It was a great game with Sparta dominating but the Parduvice goalie singlehandedly keeping the game close. In the end Sparta prevailed 2-0 to take the championship, their second in a row.
The energy and the noise were amazing. There were two coworkers of mine who left after the first period because it was just too loud for them. The feel is a lot different than NHL playoff games. It's closer to a European soccer match - must be a European thing. Lots of flag waving. Non-stop chants. The arena is multi-level but the first level behind each goal has no seats and everyone stands. These are the areas for the young, rabid, chanting fans from each side (each team has its own side, of course). I was a bit concerned that a riot would break out at the end of the game - very much like European soccer - but there was nothing but good sportmanship all around. Lots of police, too, which probably encouraged the sportsmanship.
Here are a few pictures to give you a flavor for the evening. It was a lot of fun! Go Sparta!!