Month: December 2022

Reflecting on Senior Year so far

Rewarding. If I had to choose one word to encapsulate my senior year thus far, that would be it. I knew coming in this summer that it would at times be difficult. In terms of academic rigor, my class schedule this year was slated to be the most challenging so far in high school. I was taking three AP classes, and on top of that two other classes that were weighted. Having to balance school with playing soccer, work, college apps, and my other extracurricular activities did not give me a lot of free time, but I wouldn’t change anything. Embracing the challenge,  I became more in tune with myself as an independent worker, and also deepened my relationships with my teammates and my friends. 

I have a younger sister who is going to be a junior next year, and I was thinking about pieces of advice that I could give to her as she becomes an upperclassman. I think that I would tell her to not be afraid of undertaking too much. While I was incredibly busy at certain times during the semester, the feeling when I accomplished everything that I needed to do was so gratifying. And also, high school doesn’t last forever, so I think that you need to take advantage of all of the opportunities that you have to get involved and make memories. 

Here are some of my biggest takeaways:

–Spend time with your friends: With as much as you may have on your plate, it is still so important to make time to hang out with your friends. A random Saturday night could turn into the most fun that you have ever had. Ultimately, it will not be all of the work that you remember from your senior year, but the people that you spent it with. 

–Go to school events: Go to all of the school events. I don’t care what it is. The 80’s dance, homecoming, football games, crosstown, basketball games, Mr. NNHS, the musicals. Go to everything, because sometimes this will be the last chance that you get to do these things.

–Meet new people: This kind of goes along with my other two points above, but I’ve gotten to know a lot of new people this year. Even just getting to know better people that you are already familiar with is enough to make new connections that you will treasure forever.

–Watch the World Cup: Obviously this is not going to be applicable every year, only once every four, but I can really say that watching the World Cup this year was the most excitement I’ve ever felt watching a sporting event on TV. I watched almost all of the games from the group stages through to the knockouts, oftentimes in class, silently reacting to whatever happened in the games. Rooting for Croatia, I remember watching their group stage game against Belgium during my third period class and seeing every other guy in the class looking at their computer screens with a shocked expression whenever Lukaku missed an open goal. My heart dropped at least four times watching it for that very reason. And I will forever remember coming home after school and racing to my living room to turn on the TV to see the penalty shootout between Argentina and the Netherlands. Also sitting and watching the World Cup Final with my dad while simultaneously trying to review for my calculus final will be a moment that I will forever cherish.

As I look back on this first semester, I certainly remember being swamped with schoolwork as I tried to finish my college essays, but I think that when I look back on it in the future, the moments that I will remember will be the times spent with my friends and my family, and all of the memories that I have made.

Welcome back everyone, for what is sadly the last blog post for the year. In this post I’ll be going over how my team performed the past three weeks of the fantasy football season.

For a quick recap, my record after Week 9 was 6-3, and going into Week 10 I was cruising on a three game win streak, just coming off my biggest win of the season against Anton. My entire team had been going off, especially my running backs, and I was looking to make it four wins in a row against my next opponent Carter Kotrba. 

I wasn’t missing any of my key players due to bye weeks, though I was without Chargers WR Mike Williams, who was still out due to his ankle sprain. Carter’s team was devastated by injuries to some of his top players, namely Ja’marr Chase and Damien Harris, but his team was still surging thanks to great production from Deandre Hopkins and his new pickup Justin Fields. I was confident though that my team had what it took to come away with the W.

And I was right. While Fields had another absolutely insane performance with 39.38 points in a narrow loss against the Lions, my star receiver Justin Jefferson was able to nearly equal him in Minnesota’s historic comeback win over the Bills. He scored a whopping 35.3 fantasy points in this game through multiple highlight plays, including coming down with a contested one-handed catch that might be the greatest in NFL history. Despite good games from Carter’s receivers Hopkins and Pickens, and a bad 1.7 point game from A.J. Brown, I was able to get the win 148.2 to 119.28 backed by solid games from Hurts, Kelce, and Tony Pollard.

Next up in Week 11 was a matchup against Jakob Pawlikowski and his team led by King Derrick Henry. I was aided in this one by his two top receivers Mike Evans and DK Metcalf both being on bye, though my two top RB’s Etienne and Walker would miss the week as well. 

The Titans played the Packers on Thursday night, and I had to watch Derrick Henry rush for one touchdown and pass or another en route to a 25.36 point fantasy performance, as well as Allen Lazard catch a few passes for 10.7 points, putting me in a bit of a hole to start the week. However, Mike Will was slated to make his return from injury this week against the Chiefs, so I had some optimism, albeit with some concern too. Unfortunately, Mike Will reaggravated his injury very early into the game, and was ruled out for the rest of it; having recently sprained my ankle, I felt a lot of sympathy for him. But one positive that came out of that game was that Travis Kelce had another trademark huge performance, scoring a hatrick of three touchdowns and 35.5 points. That wasn’t even the biggest scoring affair on my team for the week though, as Tony Pollard had an insane 36.9 fantasy points in Dallas’ thumping of the Vikings. And as if that wasn’t crazy enough, my kicker Tyler Bass made not 1, not 2, not 3, not 4, not 5, but 6 field goals against the Cleveland Browns for 23.0 points. I ended up taking a commanding victory 155.8 to 106.82, increasing my win streak to five games in a row.

But coming up in Week 12, I would be facing a big test in the form of Zane Anderson and his team the Boston Benchwarmers. His record at the time was 6-5, but that did not reflect how scary good his team had the potential to be, as many of his players had been underperforming on the season. Built with possibly the best running back core in the league with all of Dameon Pierce, Jonathan Taylor, and Saquan Barkley,  and good receivers in Godwin and Ceedee Lamb, the only real weakness his team had was at the QB with Tom Brady. But I had the confidence that my team could go toe-to-toe.

This was the week of Thanksgiving, and we each had a few players playing in the NFL holiday games. Justin Jefferson had another jaw-dropping game, exploding for 29.34 points in a win over the Patriots that was made all the more sweet by the fact that Zane had the Patriots as his defense. Unfortunately though, Tony Pollard had a letdown of a performance compared to what he had been doing in the previous three weeks and finished with 8.1 points, while Ceedee and Saquan both had solid statlines in that same game. Ceedee Lamb could’ve actually had an even bigger performance if he had managed to get his left heel in on what would’ve been a spectacular one-handed touchdown grab, so I was lucky that didn’t happen. Bass also kicked his way to another good showing with 10.0 points.

Before I talk about the Sunday games, I need to talk about an important (and ultimately very stupid) lineup switch that I made. I was planning to start the Jets defense, but they were playing against the Bears, and I couldn’t do that to my hometown team. Also, there had been a viral Instagram post that I had seen of someone attempting to predict the Jets’ season record by flipping a coin for each game, and so far every single result had been correct. And wouldn’t you know it, the next prediction was that the Jets would fall to the Bears in Week 12. So maybe it was the coin, or just my delusion as a Bears fan, or maybe even a combination of the two, but with stalwart belief that the Bears would kick the crap out of the Jets and take the victory, I swapped out the Jets defense and started the Bears defense instead.

Unfortunately though, Mike White and the New York Jets proceeded to smoke the Bears 31-10, delivering them an absolutely embarrassing Sunday morning beatdown. The Bears defense is atrocious, and they ended up giving me -5.0 points, detracting from my total for the week. And when all was said and done, that decision would be what ended up costing me the victory. Godwin had a great game with 29.0 fantasy points, and even an equally great game from Jalen Hurts wasn’t enough to offset it. To make matters worse, Etienne left the Jaguars game against the Ravens in the first quarter with a foot injury, so he finished with only 0.3 points and more importantly may miss Week 13 as well. Prayers up for a quick recovery. I ended up taking the L 130.64 to 117.76, and all respect to Zane for his team’s performance.

Although my win streak ultimately came to an end, I still had an overall record of 8-4, and am virtually locked in to a spot in the playoffs of my league. Hopefully Etienne and Mike Williams can get healthy and my team can go on to win it all.