So, where have you been?

Hi all,

I know I've been terribly negligent in posting to this blog. Hey, it's not like I've been lazy! But, yeah, I know there are a lot of you that want me to keep the blog up-to-date, and I really would like to also.

Doing the State Championships was really fun, but I really got tired by the end. I looked at the Track and Field Championships as the biggest event of the year for me and, ugh, I got sick. It might not have been so hard except that I had just done a bunch of State Championships right before it, girls basketball, baseball and girls water polo! I felt it coming as I stepped off the plane in Maui. I still enjoyed the meet tremendously, but it would have been much nicer doing it healthy.

Then I had so many orders for collages and posters to complete that I've been working straight out (with my daughter) to complete them all. The backlog is almost whittled down now, enough so I felt I could write a bit on the blog.

I've had quite a few requests to give my predictions for the top 20 in cross-country this year. I don't really know the boys well enough, and in most cases, I feel I know the girls too well, at least a bunch of them. I'm just not unbiased enough to do it and I'm in trouble no matter what I do. The Iolani team potentially has quite a few girls that will be top 20 this year. I just can't rate them. If I rate them high, everyone says I'm just biased. If I rate them low then they might be upset with me. So, I'm going to take the coward's way out and say, you want a top 20 list? Either send it to me in an email and I'll collate it with everyone else's or you can just post it on this blog. It must be reasonable, though, or I will ignore it.

I just added a new page to the USATF website displaying the home page photos from the summer track meets. I will continue this practice into the future. I may even go back to last year's meets, but I'm not promising anything.

One other thing, I get quite a few comments on what I do. Almost everyone of them is complimentary. I did get one a few weeks ago from an anonymous emailer (he/she used one of those websites that allow you to send an anonymous email) who felt I didn't give Punahou enough photographic space on the State Championship Track and Field pages. Since I couldn't answer the email because this person didn't have enough guts to sign his name, I'll answer it here. I cover Punahou all through the ILH season. They are the largest team we compete against and I think you'll find that if you go through my USATF website there are many more Punahou athletes than any other team, probably more than every other team combined, for that matter. Going to States finally gave me a good chance to see the athletes from the outer islands and other leagues. So, I tried to feature the athletes that I don't see every week.

In the future, I won't even acknowledge emails where the writer won't sign their name.

That's all for now.

Al