Get the Ball Over the Net

 Pickings are pretty slim here for the end of the my Oct '22 - Sep '23 gaming year.  A lot of cool stuff stuff launches in October, and there's my end-of-year/end-of-month stuff next week, but this week came up absolutely dry.... So let's talk about stuff.

"Get the Ball Over the Net, Everytime" - Millie still has her AAU teammates for the Fall season, but Maja is concentrating on JV Volleyball.  She's worked her way onto the starting rotation, and while things can get ugly, she's persevering, playing her heart out and loving every second of it.  

Millie's doing Junior High volleyball.  With AAU practices taking priority, I wasn't surprised she was third team for their first weekend of games.  I was pleased to discover (a) Millie was named the libero of team three, essentially a defensive specialist that roams everywhere and (b) the third team quickly improved to be play better than the second team.

Thank god I have time for all these Junior High, First-Year, JV, and even Varsity games, because they're every other day from now until mid-October.    

I have developed a very simple mantra to cheer on the younger girls, "Get the Ball Over the Net (Everytime)."   Unlike the grade-school gym glass volleyball rules I learned eons ago (15-point win, only the serving sides scores points), games are 25-point wins and either side earning a point on every serve.   In games with a lot of girls new to the sport, that means a LOT of points are earned for the other team when the serving team faults.  No matter how fancy, awkward, or basic your serve looks, if it doesn't go over the net, the other team gets the point, gets the serve, and it's essentially all your fault.  Once the ball gets over the net, it's a team effort, so do your part and just get the #@!$^* ball over the #!$^&! net.

That mantra has also been working well in other parts of my life, so I hope a good news update is coming in the future.

Two, possibly three of Millie's AAU tournaments may interfere with her weekend volleyball games, including her last one on October 21st.  That tournament is in central Jersey, and with everyone else going down Friday night, I'm tempted to visit Mepacon that Friday night, stay over my mom's and save me an hour of driving time Saturday morning.

Barring any unforeseen circumstances, my events of Fall-In! 2023 are in!  Allegedly Millie's last tournament is Lancaster that weekend, so I'm running two true Intro to Gnome Wars games on Friday, using the a trench board.  This will NOT be a traditional "Bring and Battle" Gnome Wars game, rather a complete novice game for new players, a good test for me, as I'm considering expanding the HMGS Next Gen model into libraries in Eastern Pennsylvania.  

Otherwise, there's a bunch of painting coming up (mostly for October and beyond), Gamma World is still going crazy (Episode #0 drops next Tuesday), and the girls have come over for lots of naps, and a few board games.   

Hopefully life stabilizes by November, because two-kid scholastic basketball will eat my soul in December.