Saturday, March 10, 2018

A Haircut, a Practice and Scouting an Opponent On-Line


Saturday, 10 March, 2018

Coaching for Pizza blogpost #2,200 today . . .

That's a lot of pictures and even more words!

A rainy morning put a damper on my plans to explore so I opted to get a few mundane things done today.

But first and definitely not mundane, only . . .

. . . more days until the
Contreras Reunification!

It was good to hear that
Kevin "The Enforcer" Contreras
was back on the ice for the NHL
Vegas Golden Knights

Doping Scandal hitting
Italy's top calico league,
the Serie A

After the mandatory, daily trip to the Esselunga Supermarket, I perused the pink La Gazzetta dello Sport newspaper while sipping my usual morning cappuccino and eating a delicious brioche at a bar in Venegono Inferiore while I waited for . . .

. . . my haircut and beard trim
appointment at JC Beauty Concept

It had been four weeks since my last visit to this stylish barber shop for women mostly and a few men too and I was starting to look like a hippie.

Because it was my second visit, thus making me a regular, I even got a two Euros discount.

Italy . . . WHAT A COUNTRY!

At 4:00 p.m. it was time for a 90 minute, high tempo Senior team practice.

I got to run the Defense today

The Skorpions practiced hard and the Defense had fun today.

I love coaching Defense, it's all about effort and heart!

In the evening, I settled in to do a little scouting.

While all four teams in our Group C had byes this weekend, our two non-conference foes were playing tonight.

The Sarzana Red Jackets (0-1), who we play at their field on April 15th, were playing a road game against the Brescia Bengals (0-1) starting at 8:30 p.m.

This game was about a two hour drive away and between the driving and the weather, I opted to stay home.

Which was all right because the other game, the Sant'Agata Knights (0-0) at the Bologna Warriors (0-0) starting at 9:00 p.m., was being live streamed on-line.

We play the Knights at home on April 7th.

Thus I was able to sit in the warm comfort of the Villa Skorpion and scout an opponent . . .

COOL!

Of special interest to me was the Bologna Warriors WR Eduardo Gulisano.

Eduardo is from Sicily and has played his entire career with his hometown Catania Elephants who I coached in 2008 and 2009. At that time he was just getting started and was following in the footsteps of his Dad Antonello "Call Me Pony" Gulisano.

Pony is an Elephants Hall-of-Famer for his exploits on the field.

He is in the Contreras Hall-of-Fame for his positive, fun attitude, friendship and wonderful family that includes wife Ika and their four children Eduardo, Alicia, Ruggero and Federico.

Pony was winding down his career during my two seasons coaching the Elephants. He would play another couple of seasons so that when Eduardo was a old enough to play on the Senior team, they could have one campaign playing together for Catania.

How great is that!

Besides being the first game of the season for both the Warriors and the Knights tonight, it was also Eduardo's first game not in Elephants livery.

For the Warriors, in blue tonight, he would wear his familiar #31, the same number that his Dad wore all those seasons in Catania.

Again, how great is that!

Let's take at Eduardo's
Big Play of the Game

Besides this TD catch he was also 3 for 4 kicking PATs.

We had a good, clear picture

The Warriors were cruising

Up by 35 or more points means
Mercy Rule running clock

This Bologna TD was called back due to the ever popular block in the back penalty.

It's over in Bologna!
Warriors Win! 

The Federation's Announcers
and Production Crew did a
GREAT job on the podcast!

Not as good as the Ventura County Star's Prep Game-of-the-Week team of course, but solid nonetheless!

As always this week . . .

BEAT THE BLUE STORMS!

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