VFW

Dear Force Parents,

We want to thank all of you who made the trip to San Francisco this past weekend a memorable one. Our team played very well this weekend beating the San Francisco Flying Eagles 6th grade team 50-38, we then ran into the number one 6th grade gold team in the BAAS Dragons, if we don't count the first four minutes then we would have won 34-32 but we had a tough time at the start of the game so the final score was 50-36. Today's game was much easier especially when you play your own age group, we ended up playing the San Francisco Flying Eagles 5th grade team winning easily 44-24. All our players played so well this weekend, we are so proud of our team.

The weekend was full of fun and laughter for the team, watching the "Blue Angels" and the seals on Pier 39 on Friday afternoon, a great dinner at Pompei Grotto, shopping and eating at "Ghirardelli's"chocolate shop, fried clams and Ben & Jerry's at Fisherman's Grotto, our private "Force" breakfast room at the Hotel, watching "Transformers" in Coach Scotty's room, seeing "Chip" boxing in the arcade, eating miniature doughnuts for dinner?, having Japanese lunch and manju in j-town, and having Brady say "Blast-Off" in the airplane.  

The boys and parents of the "Force" would like to thank Auntie Tracie and Coach Scotty for all the planning and preparation that they did in making our first team trip to San Francisco such a memorable one.

There is no rest for this team as we will be preparing for the VFW Tournament in two weeks, we will have practice this Saturday at Valencia HS but are unsure of Sunday. We hope to have some answers by tomorrow for Sunday.

Let us know if you cannot make practice,

Thanks again,

 Mark

Dear Force Parents,

Those of you that are flying on Friday to San Francisco be sure to print out your boarding passes tomorrow (Thursday) 24 hours before your flight. If you are on the 11:55 a.m. flight you can start printing anytime after 12:00 noon tomorrow. Please be sure to do this earlier than later.

We also are taking some gifts either shoe bags or t-shirts that were given to us by the VFW organization so that our boys will be able to give them to both the SF Flying Eagles teams (6th and 5th grade). We need to explain to our boys that even though this is a tournament we needed to be invited and as guests we should appreciate the opportunity to play there. This attitude and perception will be much needed in other Northern California Tournaments in the future as some organizations only invite the best eight teams in the State.

Obviously there will be no practice this weekend due to the tournament but we will practice twice next weekend 10/13, 10/14 in preparation for the VFW Tournament the following week 10/20, 10/21. The Saturday practice 10/13 will be at Valencia HS from 2:30-4:00 p.m. but we are waiting confirmation for gym time for Sunday 10/14. We will try to let everyone know as soon as possible.  

It should be cool in San Francisco so dress appropriate. The wind is definitely a factor on pier 39 for the Saturday night social. The forecast is Sunny for all three days with the high in the low 60's and the evenings will drop to the low 50's.

Let me know if you have any questions, we will post a tentative agenda probably later tonight or tomorrow for the weekend.

Thanks,

Mark

Dear Force Parents,

We have tried to put together a tentative schedule for this weekend, as we did not make it too tight. We did make it so that the parents and players could maximize their time in San Francisco this weekend. We also forgot to tell the players to bring their swimming suits for Sunday.

Here is the schedule:

Friday afternoon - Families on their own...

Friday Evening - Dinner reservations at Pompei's Grotto, check out menu at www.pompeigrotto.com, Childrens Menu for 10U is $6.50 per person.

Saturday Morning - Breakfast at Embassay Suites (included with room) with a special "Force" seating area for all of us.

Saturday Afternoon - After games head to Gourmet Carousel in Chinatown for late lunch  http://sanfrancisco.menupages.com/restaurantdetails.asp?areaId=22&restaurantId=7569  we should be able to walk from gym.

Saturday Afternoon - After lunch we will visit the Fortune Cookie Factory and will work our way to Pier 39 for the Social on the Pier.

Saturday Evening - Tournament Social from 8:00-11:00 p.m., we will probably stay until 10:00 p.m. and start heading back to Hotel.

Sunday Morning - Same as Saturday with Breakfast and Game

Sunday Afternoon - "Swimming at the Hotel Indoor Swimming Pool"

Again, these plans are just tentative but we wanted to have something in place so we don't waste too much time deciding what to do.

We want to send a huge "thank you" to Tracie for all the research and hard work that she has done to ensure that our "Force" Team has the best time while in San Francisco this weekend.

See you on Friday, don't forget to print your boarding passes tomorrow !!!

Mark

Dear Force Parents,

 We will be having our final practice in preparation for the San Francisco tournament tomorrow 9/30/07 at Mariners from 5:00-7:00 p.m. We will run through our entire offense and defense to prepare for next weekend.

We will be playing next weekend at Stuart Hall High School, 1715 Octavia Street, San Francisco, CA  94109 Our game schedule will be 11:15 a.m. on Saturday against the San Francisco Flying Eagles, our second game Saturday will be at 1:45 p.m. against the BAAS Black Dragons. Our third game for Sunday will be at 11:15 a.m. which the Eagles coordinators scheduled for us so that we could make our flights home on Sunday.

We told the boys to pack the following items: Red and White uniforms, shorts, basketball shoes, two pair of socks, shooting shirt, sweatshirt, extra t-shirt and beanie.

When we return from San Francisco we will need to have two practices the following week for the VFW Tournament as this will be our only practice time. We also need to practice using the womens ball for the tournament.

Please let us know if there are any questions, thanks.

Mark

Dear Force Parents,

We will be practicing a little longer this Saturday at Valencia HS, originally the practice time was scheduled from 2:30-4:00 p.m. but we will be scrimmaging the 6th grade VFW team (Mike Price's team) from 4:00-4:30 p.m. This will be a good experience since we have not had the opportunity to full court press and to practice our press break other than our own team.

We will use this 30 minutes not only for the full court press but for offense and defense sets as well.

I will also discuss with the boys this weekend on how we will be traveling to the San Francisco Tournament. This will include why we will pack and carry on certain items such as uniforms, shoes, shooting shirts, etc. and why and what we cannot bring such as basketballs, scissors, gatorade, water, etc.  This will be good information for them.

There also was an emergency SEYO Board meeting this week due to the increase of gym fees that the Anaheim School District was imposing starting this December. The current fee is roughly $40 per hour. The increase was to go to $115 per hour, this would have caused a significant increase to every team. The decision for this SEYO season was to not use any Anaheim gyms and move to Garden Grove School District and run all Pee Wee and Midget divisions (including ours) side by side and to only utilize one referee instead of two to result in a break even for all costs for this year. The SEYO board will immediately look into alternate sites to resume the games back to normal for next year.

If you have any questions please let me know,

Mark