The Largest Red

I am back home for winter break after wrapping up finals. A bit strange to have one more semester left of college, but I feel that it is time to move to the next stage of my life.  Personal Updates Now that I am back home, my life is really consisting of exercise and dieting while I am trying to lose weight, and then trying to divide up my remaining free time into the job hunt/thesis/reading/spending time with friends. I do not yet have grade updates from all of my classes, so a full update will likely be in next week's post. I do know that I got an A in one class and a P in another, and I am not worried about doing poorly in the two remaining classes, I know I ended up in the B range, but it will depend on how the curves shake out. This spring I will only be taking two courses, and then will likely need to spend the bulk of my time working on my thesis. I have hopes to not push it to the deadline, but as the days and weeks go by it is hard to sit down and get meaningful productive...

It has been a while since my last post on here, the past several weeks have been a bit hectic and I have not taken the time out to update this blog, so with that, this post will be a bit longer than normal to summarize the past month or so. Personal Updates For my personal updates, I think it will be best to divide them into different sections as the past few weeks have covered a lot of ground in my life and I do not want to miss anything important. Football Football-wise, we finished up our season against Penn and won by a pretty decent margin. This allowed us to secure a piece of the Ivy League title, shared with Dartmouth who also had one loss this season. With us beating both Harvard and Yale this year, we also had a bonfire the Sunday after the Penn game which was a great celebration that friends and family were able to enjoy. Coming to the end of my season meant that I had a decision to make as far as where I am going from here. I took a week or two to think about it but ultimate...

This week we beat Yale as our last home game of the year, and my last time playing at Princeton's stadium for my life. Prior to the game we were tied for number one in the league, and after the win we have maintained our top position in the league, still tied with Dartmouth. With one week left, either one or both of us will be league champions. Personal Updates I try not to look back at prior posts before typing a new one, but from memory I believe I said one of my goals for this week's game against Yale as getting one of the top offensive performers awards. I actually was able to share in the week's offensive game ball which was a huge accomplishment and defnitely something to be proud of. I have not yet received the famed bucket hat, but that will likely come on Tuesday. I was pretty happy with my performance overall, but as always, there were things I definitely could have done better with. We have one game left this season against Penn next Saturday and then I am done b...

This past week was our first loss of the season against Dartmouth moving us to 7-1. With the current standings in the league, this still gives us a chance to share in the Ivy League title as long as we win out in our final two games against Yale and Penn. Personal Updates I do not have all that much to update on this week since it was more of a dead week of the semester. I have a few assignments and more interesting events next week and in the weeks to come as my life will continue to change. I think I definitely played a pretty decent game against Dartmouth, but as a team, we really could not get anything going until the second quarter, and by that point, we were sort of fighting from behind the whole time. I have continued to develop and improve my game week to week, and I am excited for the challenge of this next week since the stakes are so high. It will be our senior day and the final time that I play a game in Princeton stadium so I am hoping to go out on a high note. I will do m...

This week we went up to Cornell and faced the Big Red which, if you infer from the name of this blog, is also my nickname. We won the game improving to 7-0. Personal Updates I went into this game pretty confident because last year I felt that Cornell was the best game I played, and probably to this day it is still my best full college football game. I had a really good first half this past week and then had several plays in the second half that I wish I could have back, including one play that was especially bad. Whether I like it or not this is part of the game, and when I am playing 80 or so snaps per game, to have a few not go my way is to be expected. Usually, with football, it is rare for all 11 players to execute a play perfectly because there are so many variables involved in each play that usually all happen in a span of several seconds. However, oftentimes good enough will suffice because slowing someone down by a second can not be that different than a perfect block. Then the...

This past week's game was definitely one for the history books. We ended up winning against Harvard in 5 overtimes. Personal Updates This past week was our break week following midterms week which I think was definitely helpful as we went to face one of our toughest opponents yet. I went into the week hoping to get ahead on some of my class work/readings and also make a dent in my thesis, but I was dealing with a virus that is going around campus and prioritized revocering before my game on Saturday instead. Given the ultimate outcome of the game, I think that this tradeoff was worth it. I was definitely fortunate that I happened to start feeling under the weather during a break week versus during classes or during midterms. Speaking of midterms, I also received my grades back this week. Overall I did decently well, and especially in the class that I was most worried about I ended up only missing the average by a few points. This was a sigh of relief as leaving the test I felt pret...

As we reach the midpoint of the season, it is starting to set in just how little time that I have left playing college football. At this point, I do not believe that it is realistic to think that I will play at the next level based on how I feel I have been playing this season, so these will very likely be the last five games of football that I will have in my life (hoping that I stay healthy for all five of course). Personal Updates Even though dates and times are arbitrary to a certain degree, I still find it helpful that there are these natural checkpoints in my life right now. Whether it be with football each week, midterms and break week with school, or even the start of a new month, I have been trying to avoid saying things like, "I will wait until November to do this," or "wait until after the season," or "after midterms." That being said, I feel like this break week has come at a great time because I think I have started to get into a groove with m...

Honestly did not have that much of an update after Columbia outside of the game, so I figured I would just wait until after Monmouth as well as the past two weeks were relatively similar otherwise. (These fatheads were ordered by my lovely family and will likely be a staple at all of our remaining games) Personal Updates Spoiler alert, we won both games and both were surprisingly tough wins. They were definitely much better opponents holistically than Lehigh and Stetson were, so we were expecting it to be a fight, but it took longer than we would have hoped to get things rolling. I personally had a way better game for Columbia, my best of the year in my opinion. For Monmouth, I came out very slow and think I was in my head a little bit too much as it took until the second half for me to really get rolling. I am glad to see that I am showing improvement week to week, and am hopeful that I can really put it all together in one of these games because I still feel like I am playing at a le...

This week we played Stetson and ended up winning 63-0. I had a lot of improvement from week 1 to week 2 and it has definitely helped to boost my confidence going into our game against Columbia next week which will definitely be our toughest opponent so far. Personal Updates This past week there was a pretty significant amount of change in my social life. I am not sure what sort of impacts this will have on my future moods or how I go about allocating my time, but I think that I may be affected in some other areas of my life due to the changes. We had the first of several larger events of the year at my eating club this past weekend which surprisingly went decently well considering our officer group has not had a ton of responsibility in that way yet. I am excited for the remainder of the semester because I know that we will continue to learn with experience. As far as my physical health, I am pretty satisfied after last week. I thought I may have gotten plantar fasciitis due to both ta...

This week we played Lehigh and ended up winning 32-0. Despite the seemingly big win, I feel like I did not have my best game, but I am excited for the chance to improve. It is always better to learn from a win than a loss. Personal Updates I will start by addressing how I did in the game. I feel like it was a very strange experience to be back on the field again and playing against people I do not know live on TV when the stakes are high. I was lucky that this week's opponent was not as strong as some of our other opponents down the line, and I was able to work some of the kinks out without having it cost the team in any serious way. Actually playing live football for the first time in 22 months was a good wake-up call for things that I need to work on and focus on if I want to hit my goals for this season. All in all I think that I would give myself maybe a C for the game, but at the end of the day, a win is a win and I am happy to be sitting here at 1-0 and complaining about some...