Sporting Madness

[Image from The Guardian ]. "Obi-Wan has taught you well. You have controlled your fear. Now, release your anger! Only your hatred can destroy me!" - Darth Vader “Yes, honey...Just squeeze your rage up into a bitter little ball and release it at an appropriate time, like that day I hit the referee with the whiskey bottle.” - Homer Simpson Seems to me I've probably been taking Homer's advice a bit too seriously for too long. There are several things that have been bugging me for quite a while that I've never really written about, usually preferring to keep this site in the realms of sober, rational analysis and outside the area of raw emotion. Well, that rule's being voided for one day: I'm not having a good week, so I unilaterally declare this to be the first official Vent Day. Of course, my remaining discretion will still limit the venom levels of my writing and I'll try to keep some rational analysis in these posts as well, but I figured it's ...

Apologies for the lack of posts around here lately: I'm currently serving as the Communications Coordinator for the 2008 Canadian Open 17U/18U volleyball championships , which means a lot of writing, editing and dealing with local media (yes, I've gone to the dark side) and not a lot of time to do anything else. We're working 6 a.m. to 1 a.m. days trying to keep everything going, and it can be a little difficult, especially given the scope of the tournament. Anyways, this is a pretty cool tournament with a lot of interesting stories, and it's also related to university volleyball: there's over 100 university coaches, scouts and recruiters here from Canada and the States to evaluate potential new talent for their programs. To give some background on the tournament, one of the lead-in stories I wrote is posted below: you can check out my other pieces on the tournament website . I'll try to check in with an update here whenever possible. There's also good tourn...