foxbat

These weren't fighting bots per se, but that didn't stop the kids from bumping and banging each others' bots. Kind of like watching basketball players ... not supposed to be that kind of contact, but there's usually enough as you try to figure out where the refs' tolerance is for calling a foul.

That kid in the back looks the kid from the original Karate Kid.

My son played 3rd-6th and, in 7th grade, decided that he wanted to go back to playing soccer again. He also decided that he'd rather coach football than play, so he served as an assistant coach in the youth league this past season while also playing soccer. His younger brother, however, played football this past season and seems to have adopted it as his favorite sport. As for robotics, my oldest was on the robotics team in high school. Started out with no real idea of robotics design, etc., so she started doing things like PR and fundraising. After her first year, she got involved in design and became a controller on the competition team ... the one that operates the "arms" or other toolsets during competition ... along with the driver and other controller. She's carried that on and competes with the robotics team in college too. BTW, if you haven't see these robotics competitions, they are a lot of fun ... especially after you get past the qualifying rounds and the gloves come off.

As part of the CFWM activities, I'm posting a pic of the latest Caddy that was conferred. Thanks to @Coach Nowlin for taking time out of his schedule to travel across time zones to deliver it. Also thanks to Coach Meeks for taking time out to create the Caddy and for his support of the Hoosier Conference GID Pick 'em activities. Hoping for another good year in the CFWM so I can try to catch up with Coach Durham and his legendary four Caddies.

Two different pools of folks with two very different driving forces. For those taking the citizen test, there's a lot riding on it from their perspective. It might be a different comparative result if citizenship wasn't a birthright guarantee. If all people born in the US had temporary status until they graduate from high school and then they had to take the new citizen civics test to be granted permanent US citizenship, you'd probably see those numbers be closer in line to rates of non-citizens seeking US citizenship. For most natural-born citizens at high school age, citizenship is a given and government class is just that ... just another class. Back in the day, early 80s in Texas, we had a trimester setup, so we ended up with two trimesters of government and one trimester of econ in the senior year.

Kind of like missing gum on the sidewalk in a 14-car pileup.

I would agree. When I went to high school and junior high, all of our coaches were on the faculty. Some of them solely taught PE classes, but we had a good number that taught honors biology, history, social studies, some that were admin/vice-principals, etc. You saw coaches everywhere in the school all throughout the day when you went to school. For those of us on the teams, it was a way for us to see our coaches beyond the sport and for kids that weren't on sports teams, it encouraged some of them to come out because they'd gotten to know that teacher/coach in the classroom and gave them impetus to come out and perhaps engage in another activity that would provide an opportunity to interact with that coach beyond the classroom.