A Tale of Three Boys

Today was what has increasingly become a typical day in the Muntz household . . . shuttling boys here 'n' there for various activities. It started at 7:30 AM--painfully early given how busy this past week has been--with delivering Phillip and Jameson to OIT for the LEGO Robotics competition.

For the last six weeks or so, Jamey has been working with a group of other 4th and 5th graders on building a LEGO robot that they programmed to accomplish several assigned tasks. Phillip did the same thing last year, and Jameson was on that team, though not in a key role. Well, with the team being so young this year, and having a young first-year coach as well, it was pretty challenging to make progress so we kind of drafted Phillip to help out at the last minute. He got the software and their programming loaded onto our laptop, then did some additional programming this morning.

They ended up doing fairly well, partly through good luck I'm told. In terms of the tasks their robot accomplished, they apparently ended up with the third best score out of nine teams. I think the kids had a good time and it was neat to see how Jamey fit in with them and that they clearly liked and accepted him. To see a boy with Asperger's socialize the way he does is nothing short of a miracle.

Around noon, I went over to Hosanna with Jordan for his first game of the season. He's clearly playing much better this year, with confidence and more strength, but has a ways to go. He's on JV again. In the pre-season, they will often play the freshman teams from the larger schools, because there aren't very many small schools within easy driving distance. Today they played the Mazama freshmen. Jordan didn't start but he got some good minutes . . . probably playing 12 or more out of 32. No shots but a couple of nice plays.

On the scoreboard, the game was a disaster as HCS lost 74-35 but it was encouraging in some ways. Last year, they lost to Mazama's freshmen by a much more lop-sided score, and the coaches were pleased with much of what the boys did on offense. On defense, well, there's still some work to do.

I now run the clock and/or scoreboard for a lot of the games, which I kind of enjoy . . . even though it's pretty stressful. Today was the first time that I have done both at the same time. Other than forgetting to start the clock for a second several times--which is almost inevitable--I managed to stay on top of things. At least no one yelled "Start the clock!" at me.