My first Iowa football game

My first Iowa football game that I ever went to was the best Iowa game I have went to so far.  My cousin was getting recruited by Iowa for football so he got four tickets to the game and brought my dad and I along as well as my uncle. Before the game started we got to eat brunch in the indoor practice facility, and then got a tour of Kinnick Stadium.  During our tour we were able to go onto the field while the players were warming up, and then got to walk by the locker rooms and see all of the championship trophies Iowa has won.  Iowa was playing Penn State that day and the legendary Coach Joe Paterno who has the most victories of any coach in college football history.  We had great seats too, as we sat in the third row in the corner of the endzone.  Iowa dominated the whole game and won easily 24-3.  After the game we went out to where the players come out of the locker room to see if we could pictures with any of the players.  We managed to get pictures with two players, Fred Russell who was the starting running back, and Robert Gallery who was the starting left tackle and a second overall pick in the NFL draft.  It was funny because the two players were complete opposites.  Fred Russell was only 5'8", while Gallery was 6'8".  So to one I looked really short, and the other really tall.  So to this day I can say that I got to stand next to the second overall pick in the NFL draft, and get a picture with him.  By far this was the best Iowa game I have been to only because I got to tour Kinnick stadium and see an Iowa victory, but also because I got a picture taken with an NFL star.

50 Years in the Making

I have many great memories from my high school career that will last with me for the rest of my life, but none stand out more than making it to state in basketball for the first time in our school's history my junior year.  In the 50 year history of Turkey Valley, no basketball team, boys or girls has ever made it to state.  The farthest a team has gone into district competition is the sub-state final, which three teams managed to do.  Our run to state that year was magical as we got hot at the right time.  Before district play began, we had won eleven straight games, but our last two games didn't go so well as we won a very low scoring game and then lost our last game before heading into districts.  Even though we weren't playing the greatest our spirits were still high because we knew we had a chance to make something magical happen.  We won our first district game by a large margin as well as our second game.  In the district final we played MFL who we had beaten twice during the regular season, but going into halftime we trailed them by ten points and thought that this might be the end of our run.  We were wrong as we came out of the half shooting lights out from the field and by the end of the third period we were only down by two.  The fourth quarter was ours to have and I made two straight three pointers to give our team the lead for good as we ended up winning by ten.  We were moving on to the substate final to play Dyersville-Beckman who many believed would win outside of our school.  The game went back and forth the whole way with no lead getting bigger than five points.  With two minutes left though, we were trailing by five pionts, but we scored buckets on back to back possessions to get within one and held them.  So with 15 seconds left we had the ball and one of our seniors make the biggest shot in Turkey Valley history to put us ahead by one with 6 seconds left.  But we still had to make a stop as Dyersville got the ball back with plenty of time, but they dribbled the ball off of their foot with .9 on the clock, so all we had to do was get the ball inbounds. We did but we got fouled with .2 left so we just had to make one free throw to end it.  We made one and purposely missed the second, and when the buzzer sounded we all stormed the court in mass celebration as we were going to state for the first time in school history.  We made it 50 years in the making and were heading to Wells Fargo Arena in Des Moines with a sea of red.  I will never forget the last few moments of the substate final game as I can easily picture everything that went on and how magical it was celebrating, it was the best experience of my life so far.

Dealing with long Distance Relationships

When I came to Wartburg I knew I would have to deal with a long distance relationship.  I have a girlfriend who is still in high school so I won't be able to see her as much as I used to when I was still in high school.  It has been hard to be away from her for so long, but things between us have still been going great.  I'm only 40 minutes away from where she lives so it is an easy drive for me to go back home and see her and she can be able to handle to trip down on her own.  We have been able to make this long distance relationship work because we skype each other every night, text as much as possible, and we try to see each other every weekend.  It'll help a lot when we have our breaks at Wartburg because I'll be at home during that time so I can see her.  My girlfriend has 4 younger siblings who all enjoy my company when I'm visiting them, so I not only get to see my girlfriend but I get to play with her younger siblings who always have something for me to do with them.  When this past summer ended we both we're sure how this long distance relationship would work out, but so far it has been able to work out for the both of us and we hope to continue making it work out for us.

College Athletics

I chose to attend Wartburg for many reasons.  It has a very nice campus with many new buildings, a great business program, and it's not too far from home.  Another reason I chose to go to Wartburg was to have the chance to play college athletics.  I wanted to play either basketball or baseball at the next level and Wartburg gave me the best chance to do that, so in the end I decided to continue my baseball career.  It was hard to pass up on basketball, but I knew I would be very busy playing two sports.  The basketball season would play into the baseball season, so I would miss the beginning of baseball.  I do plan on playing intermural basketball in the winter during my off season from baseball.  We started baseball this past Sunday for our fall league and will continue playing until the end of October.  It has been an overwhelming start so far in the first week.  My first practice was six hours long because I had to go the pitchers practice and the position player practice.  Now the practices are only 4 hours long for me which is still a lot for practice because it takes away my study time.  It's been hard to get used to, but we'll see how this fall goes to see if I want to continue playing baseball or just focus mainly on my academics. 

First Day of College

When I arrived at Wartburg for the Orange Exceleration I was beginning a new chapter in my life.  High school is over and done with and now it is time to move on and and begin my college career.  The Orange Exceleration was a great way to help freshman students get used to college life.  It helped me out a lot because I was not sure how life would be like away from home.  I got to meet new friends at the orientation and also get used to staying in a dorm for a long period of time.  It also helped to have the IS classes because they gave you a heads up to what college classes will be like and how long they will be.  When the first day of classes arrived, I was expecting my classes to right away go to work and begin what we will work on for the rest of the semester.  Was I wrong! My first class was Macroeconomics and all we did in that class was read the syllabus and talk about the history of economics, and the class was only 30 minutes long.  After that I had Lifetime Wellness and in there we just read the syllabus and introduced ourselves and that was it, so class was 20 minutes long.  I was thinking to myself that those two classes were a great way to start off college.  Then in the afternoon I had my IS class, and accounting, and both of those were the full length but we just talked about what we were going to do during the semester.  The only homework I had was to read, so overall the first day of college was fairly easy for me, but i know it will only get harder from here and that's what I'm going to have to get ready for.  I'm also going to have to be able to manage my free time wisely and know when it's time to study and when it's time to be with friends and family.  College is going to give me a lot of challenges and I'm going to have to be ready to take them head on in order to have a successful college career.