Cheer Competition today

I coach the freshman cheerleaders at the high school in our neighborhood (my alma mater). The fall season starts in August and we work hard until mid-October to compete in an invitational-type competition at an area school. Several schools put on Freshman and JV competitions around this time of year, and it's completely optional for us to sign up and prepare a routine. Only the Varsity cheer teams compete on a district/regional/state level. This year we only chose to participate in one competition because the others were either last saturday, when the girls had homecoming, or the weeks before that, which was too early to be ready.

The scoring system for cheerleading is similar in theory to a sport like gymnastics. They get scored on both difficulty and execution, so even if they do their routine wonderfully (which they did), if another team has harder skills, their score is going to be higher (which they were).

Today was our one competition of the year. My girls worked very hard for the past 2 months and performed very well today! There were 5 freshman teams and we came in 4th. They were disappointed, but we couldn't know what skills the other teams would show up with.

I'm proud of them! They worked hard! And... whew! It's over! :) :)

I'm not allowed to post any pictures or videos of the girls for safety reasons. (If you know my email, I can send you a video, but it's like 20MB!) so here's a picture of kitty instead:

what's my name again?

For most of my life, I have gone by the same name. I may in another post expound on certain temporary nicknames and their significance, but I largely have been called by the same five letters I was given post-womb (unless I was in trouble, in which case the four letters of my middle name were also added ... and a couple exclamation points). Every once in a while though I run across a person who cannot remember my name, or who thinks my name is something different than what it is. The first instance in my memory of a name foul ball was my tee ball coach when I was four, who (despite countless insistant corrections from my mother) called me Blaine for an entire summer. This later carried on in college when a neighboring coach kept referring to "that runner Blaise" when speaking of me. (On a complete misinformation note, there was a guy in junior high who I considered a friend and who called me Josh for a whole school year. I stopped trying to correct him after a while and I wouldn't be surprised to this day if he thinks my name is Josh).

Well bring in my fairly new job. In this position I finish all emails with a signature that says my name, position, address, and contact info, yet for some reason in replies I have been called these names:

• Brent
• Barry
• Brian
• Brett
  

I guess if it's short and it starts with a B it works. On top of that, there is another employee in a different office who has the same first name, and a week ago he earned a well-deserved and highly publicized promotion. He has worked with the company for more than 10 years (I've worked here a little over three months), but you would be surprised at the number of compliments I received both in person and by email. One lady, who has worked for the company for many years and knows the other Blake, wrote me an email about a business matter and on the top wrote CONGRATULATIONS ON YOUR PROMOTION!! She knows I've only worked here for three months. What have I done in three months to deserve a promotion? Ha. I've had many many congrats. If only they were true!