My Son, The Ace

Guess who shot his first-ever hole in one on Thursday? For those who track these things, Matt used a 7 iron for his ace on No. 8 at the Nicklaus Golf Club at LionsGate in OP. Congratulations to Matt and may this be the first of many! We love you!

No Swimming, But We Do Have "Pool Play"

We arrived at our Ohio hotel about 10:30 p.m. Thursday. It's about 615 miles from home, and we stretched it into 12 hours with several "potty" stops for Bella (and others!). She exceeded expectations for good dog behavior in the car, readily accepting her doggy seat belt, taking several good naps in the back seat and breaking in the "no-spill" water bowl. Bella especially enjoyed our picnic dinner at the Steak & Shake outside Indianapolis.

The Eclipse girls are on a "no sugar" rule and are not allowed to swim in the pool or otherwise exert themselves off the basketball court. This is serious business! They play a lot of cards and braid each others hair.

Coach Knight assures us Friday is a busy day with a team practice in the morning, and the regimented AAU registration in the afternoon. Each girl has to sign in, prove identity, age and AAU membership. It's always kind of a big deal at Nationals.

Late Friday afternoon the girls will attend a player party where they trade their club pins with girls from the other teams. It's always fun to see the pin collection and all the different communities represented at Nationals. That's followed by Opening Ceremonies at 7 p.m. -- think Olympics with every team parading into the arena in their uniforms carrying their team banners.

Then, lights out @ 11:00 p.m.

"Pool Play"* begins Saturday with a Noon game v. Philadelphia Belles and a 7:00 p.m. game v. Central Kentucky Angels. Sunday we play the Illinois Lady Blazers at 10:15 a.m. Bracket play begins Monday and it is very important that we win our pool in order to maintain our No. 3 seed. *Each team in the tournament is assigned to a "pool" of 4 or 5 teams. The purpose of pool play is to determine the seedings for the Championship bracket. Of the 90+ teams registered, only 32 will advance to the Championship bracket.

Please keep Hannah and her Eclipse teammates in your thoughts and prayers. We'll keep you posted!