Thursday, September 13, 2012

Clague AG 2012-13

Welcome Back,

I hope everyone had an enjoyable and restful summer vacation. Academic Games begins for all interested students begins this Friday Afternoon from 3-5 pm. Our practice schedule will remain the same this year as it was last year, Mondays 7-9 pm, and Fridays after school until 5pm.

Our first Saturday tournament will be September 29th at Detroit MacKenzie. A complete schedule is posted to the right, and is included in the Welcome Letter that is also posted on the right. Please make sure to complete the registration form attached to the welcome letter and bring it with you to your first practice.

We would like to start something a little different this year.  As many of you can attest to, as our children get older and add more and more activities, the time and energy we parents once had for oiur non-work related pursuits gets ever smaller.  For the last few years that has been happening for me, as my son gets older (he's in 5th grade now) and more involved with travel soccer, AG, swimming, etc., the amount of time that I can dedicate to AG related preperation has gotten slimmer.  For the last few year we as a team have been really lucky to have Vivek Thanabal with us to help be a mentor for our team and to relieve me of some of the coaching burdens during practice times and at tournaments.

This year, however, we will likely not have Vivek around at practices much.  Although he is still in the UofM engineering school, his workload has increased as he prepares to graduate this year and move on to the next level of education. While we will still see him from time to time, we have made it clear to him that we want him to put schoolwork first, and he should feel no obligation to attend any one particular practice this year.

To fill the rather large gap created by his absence, I would like to put a call out to all of our AG parents out there.  As the wide range of talented students on our team suggests, we have a myriad of gifted parents among our AG group.  And as the recent success of parent run teams at both King and at other schools throughout the league shows, one need not be a lifetime Academic Gamer in order to be a successful coach (or co-coach). 

So if you have an interest in learning any of the games, or have already learned some of them and enjoy playing them, and if you have lots of patience, good communication skills and a good sense of humor, and are generally available Monday evenings or  Friday afternoons, please let me know. 

If you have any questions or concerns about any of these items, please feel free to email me (ericnelsonag@comcast.net)

Thank for your support,

Eric