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"Be patient, Barbara. The games will come." Such was the advice of Ed, the camp director of the first basketball officiating camp I attended in 2006.  Ed took a personal interest in my career and helped me improve by observing my games and encouraging me to focus on the big picture.  He advised that my goal should be on step-by-step improvement and a conviction that I will improve if I put my mind to it. AND, to give it time, and the games will come.

CROWN first impact while in the act of making a tackle is the PRIMARY cause of all catastrophic injuries on every level of football competition.  Remove the CROWN from the collision and eliminate avoidable injuries.

In 1997, my 12-year-old son Steven (my only son) told me that he was ready to play tackle football.  In that moment, I experienced several emotions.  The first was one of pride: my little man finally wanted to be like his Dad and play football.  I had shown him and his older sister, Ranae, my old tapes on the VCR since they were babies. 

The other emotion was one of fear.  A fear of seeing my little man not getting off of the ground due to a catastrophic injury to his head, neck or spine.

The subject of which has better coaches: private or public school always seems to spark some petty good debate but my experience and insight into the differences between private and public school sports is a subject that I have spent some time studying for the last year, and I have made some really profound discoveries.

The most revealing discovery was the dynamics of the high school teams that I researched from both private and public schools all had one very common thread. They all have the same coaching issues, the same drama, the same politics, the same favoritism, the same  nepotism, and most critically, the same breakdown in coach/player relationships and lack of understanding. But they are all  dealt with in a very different way.

I recently received an e-mail from a hockey parent in Vermont that was so powerful, I wanted to share it:  

Hi Hal

An email from a hockey parent and coach puts winning versus having fun in its proper perspective.

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Since my blog on my interview with April Justin last week I have received many emails, tweets, Facebook comments and phone calls with suggestions, comments, questions and advice on all sorts of things, especially on what my blog should be focused on in the future.

The majority of the mail has been positive, congratulating me on taking the time to answer the question many had after watching the Landon Collins video - what was his mother really thinking. Some, of course, has been critical, both for reporting what April Justin told me were her reasons at all, or for the way in which I reported it, or both.