MCL

For the last month or so, Elizabeth has been playing winter lacrosse for two different teams.  We drive 35 minutes (each way) on Sunday mornings and afternoons so she can get in the extra touches in the game she loves so much.  In mid-February, she scored a brilliant goal in an early morning game and then took a tumble.  And didn't get up.  As this is completely uncharacteristic for her, the coaches and Lee were on the field pretty quickly, and then me.  She couldn't feel her toes or foot, couldn't move off of the ground.  Lee carried her off the field and we headed straight to the ER. Along the way, she regained feeling in her foot and ankle, but her knee was starting to bruise and swell. After three hours in the emergency room, we learned that there were no broken bones, and that the injury was likely not to her ACL, but that was about it.  It's been a frustrating ten days, but after an MRI and two appointments with the orthopedic surgeon, who thought that it could be a torn MCL or meniscus, we finally got a diagnosis and a plan.  The MRI showed no tears, but did show a sprain of the MCL.  She will be in physical therapy for the next four to six weeks, but if all goes well, she will be medically clearly by the time lacrosse season starts.

The goal.

Waiting in the ER.

After XRays

She's in a pretty good mood for a kid that can't walk.

NWC Winter Track Part II

Elizabeth had a terrific winter track season.  She barely missed qualifying for states in the 55m (by .03 seconds) and got faster and faster every time she stepped on the track.  She absolutely loves running the relay, although she was frustrated each week with the fact that the coaches kept changing the order on her team.  She was the fastest leg on the relay team every race they ran, regardless of which leg she ran.  In their final race of the season, the coaches put her at the third leg and I challenged her to bring her split under 30 seconds.  She met the challenge, running a 29.1, which really gave her an idea of what she is capable of. I can't wait to watch her run next winter!

55m hurdles after only three days of practicing them - why not?

4x200 relay at the CCC Championship race.

She's running the third leg in this relay, and knew the girl that she was trying to catch (a former teammate from travel lacrosse).  My favorite part of this race is when the girls head turns on the curve because she can't believe that Elizabeth caught up to her.

CCC Championship race.  Elizabeth ran the third leg.

JPII Basketball Ends

Emily's regular season of middle school basketball ended this week.  She gave it her all in every game and really racked up the steals and rebounds as the season went on.  Although they came up 1 point short in their final home game (Emily's 3 point attempt with less than a second left on the clock hit the rim, circled around and then fell out of the basket which was a heartbreaker), they played better and better with every game. Emily played almost every minute of every game, sitting only when the game was way out of reach for them or when the other team got too chippy and it looked like they were trying to hurt her.  As a coach, it was really great to watch them grow as a team and to finish the season strong.

Final home game of the season. 

8th graders

January Odds and Ends

Father Daughter Dance 

Hamilton

Last year, Emily's literature teacher introduced her class to the play Hamilton as part of a section on Revolutionary War history.  Emily was immediately hooked and has been listening to the soundtrack on repeat ever since and I knew that she would love to see the play in New York.  I spent the better part of November scouring the internet for (affordable) tickets and finally found three for the February 2nd show - which also happened to be Super Bowl Sunday.  Apparently, if you want to see a coveted show, that's the Sunday to go. The girls and I took an early morning train to New York, had brunch in Hell's Kitchen, and after a little bit of window shopping, took in the show.  It was far better than I anticipated - simply spectacular.  At one point I looked around, and everyone was leaning forward in their seats, hesitant to miss a single word.  At the end of some of the songs, there were tears streaming down people's faces.  It was funny, clever, moving, educational - just spectacular.

We were literally in the last row of the theater, but there wasn't a bad seat in the place.