Thursday Musings

This has been sitting in my draft folder for a couple of weeks.

Alright, some more news on the home front as we learned the sex of our first biological granddaughter. I won’t come right out and say the sex, but I will tell all of you coaches out there that I do have one women’s coach working on their NLI. Just saying, if you want to get in on the ground floor here, you’d better move fast.

Congratulations to Puget Sound Coach Mark Masey who was elected into the Tacoma-Pierce County Sports Hall of Fame. Mark is currently 4^th in career wins among all active DIII coaches as well as 16^th across all divisions. Well deserved! I, once again, seemed to have been omitted.

More congratulations…this time to St Thomas assistant coach Kat Thomas who has accepted the position of Head Coach at Piedmont. The Lions are coming off a 6-win season and I’m declaring an Elite 8 run for them now that Kat is there. Hey! The Lions and Kat, together! Fun! Okay. No pressure, Kat, but don’t disappoint me!

Melanie Hughes was an assistant at CMS and was previously named DIII National Assistant of the Year. She was also on the 2025 AVCA 30 under 30 list. (As an old man now, I think it’s more of an achievement to be under 30 than being one of the best coaches under 30.) She’s the Head Coach at Lake Forest now and will be entering her second year there. She will be taking her team to the Pacific Coast Classic and will actually get to face off against her old team, CMS, while there. Kind of cool for both coaching staffs.

I can’t remember if I’ve told this story before but back when my daughter was playing, we would drive down from Fort Worth to Georgetown for matches. It’s about a 2 hour and change drive. There is a town just north of Georgetown called Temple and for 20 years or so the state was “improving” the freeway there. Things got really bad during her playing career and there was one tournament day where things came to a standstill. Literally. We were driving down with friends (an older couple who were like my daughter’s grandparents) in their car and I was behind the wheel. We thought we had plenty of time but we hit Temple and there we sat. The GPS went from having plenty of time to having no time to being late. That was unacceptable. I started trying to find a path to the gym that would get us there in time but nothing worked as I had missed the last exit that might have done the trick. So, I crossed two lanes of traffic where no one was moving and went backwards down an on ramp only to hit two lanes of access road traffic that wasn’t also moving. I then crossed that backwards getting applause from one car and the finger from the other. Keep in mind none of them were moving and I just thought why isn’t anyone following me? Anyway, my plan worked. I got to some surface streets and then another highway that got me around the delay that was last reporting at 2 hours. We got to the match early. Why is any of that important? Well, the “grandfather” that we were with at the time now has dementia but he always remembers that story. It’s a special memory now because I know it will reconnect with him, if needed. I think when I get dementia if anyone needs to connect with me, just mention the time that Fontbonne University was listed as FU at the CMS Regional. That will have a real good shot of getting me back for a few seconds.  

The movement in DIII between conferences is simply insane. There will be more coming. I think I mention this every year but the greatest resource for DIII conferences and movement is what Ricky has on his site. The links are not always current but they’ll get you to where you need to go.

I’m hearing that the SCIAC will stay with a home and away format (also called round robin by some) when Azusa Pacific (APU) joins. That would normally mean 18 dates assigned to conference and leave just 4 for non-conference opponents. I don’t think this will happen without some pod matches where teams can save 2 play dates. It will make the schedule unbalanced but 18 dates isn’t feasible for teams trying to get an at-large bid. I’m also hearing that APU will not join until 2027 but that SCIAC schools will try to fit them into their 2026 schedule in some fashion.

Another story just to keep this going. My (hot) wife and I are very close to two other couples. We’ve known each other since the late 80s. Each family is dealing with their parents getting older and needing more help. We all decided it would be great if we could just decide when it’s time to go. None of us want to be a burden on our children. (Of course, our daughter would say the burden has started.) Well, one of our friends said we should just go at 75. My (hot) wife objected saying her mother is 93 and doing great so that’s way too early. After some discussion, it was decided that the (hot) wife would decide when it was time for the rest to go and just do the deed. All this to say…don’t piss off the (hot) wife when you see her.

The President Council met back in April and the meeting minutes were like 26 pages. One item is that student-athletes and staff can now bet on professional sports starting with the 2025-26. This opens up amazing opportunities for our Fantasy Volleyball League.

Also in those notes was an item about the Championship Live Streaming. This is something I’ve been trying to get information on so this is something in that area. I was specifically interested in the ESPN+ numbers for the volleyball Elite 8 and championship. Here was their note on this, “The council also received an update on the volleyball and football championships contests that were aired on ESPN+. There was an increase in viewership for both sports when compared to previous years.”

One other item was a proposed pilot program dealing with allowing student-athletes to continue participating for a DIII team while no longer being enrolled in that institution. The student must be enrolled in another institution that has an existing academic relationship with the DIII school. I’m not really sure what this solves but it’s probably my dementia starting.