Happy Birthday! Let me know if all the guys sang happy birthday or if they chickened out. If they didn’t, tell them that at the next birthday gathering I’m going to attend and make everyone wear party hats. Your responsibility tonight is of a more serious nature. As you know Coach Ponsford and I have been meeting to decide how we are going to implement our summer program and work around the two-week dead period. I have enclosed a couple of documents that I want you to share with everyone and get some feedback in regards to what we plan to implement.

The first document is the lifting schedule that will go into effect once classes are over at the end of this semester. As you can see we want to try something different and we will be asking you to make some small sacrifices. It is important that we do more things together as a team because you can’t expect to find true success if you are only a team on Friday nights. Lifting as a group will bring you all closer together and give us an added edge on game day. I know getting up early is a pain for many of you but you can all do it. It just takes a little mental discipline and determination. My suspicion is that if you can’t get yourself to do something simple like this, you probably won’t be able to get yourself to do something truly difficult like taking on a 300 pound lineman, or stopping an opponent on 4^th and 1 on the goal line. It is our belief that by getting our lifting done at this time we will eliminate many of the excuses we get for not lifting. Summer school will not be an issue and summer jobs won’t pose a problem. We are certain that there will be a few individuals with some type of problem that will require that they lift and run in one of the later sessions, but there won’t be many.

This summer we also want to get more of our coaches involved and we are determined to get good participation from our incoming freshmen. Not having a freshman team last year was a big disappointment for me personally and I need to do a better job with our 8^th graders at Muirlands. We want our lifting sessions to be supervised by a coach as we will be doing a circuit workout that will allow you to perform a quality workout without having to spend two hours in the weight room. Having a coach supervising will help us accomplish this. Since I will be busy running the 40-G workouts we will have some of our young coaches supervising in the weight room. However, we need to provide them with some type of financial assistance because many of them don’t have regular teaching jobs like Coach Pons and I have. As such, we are going to ask all our players to make a $20.00 (twenty) dollar donation so that we can create four or five stipends to give these coaches. By telling you now we can have players plan ahead so that this will not be a big financial burden.

The second set of documents that I enclosed is a tentative copy of our summer calendar. I have circled in red the items that I definitely want you to bring to everyone’s attention. As you can see we will be having a pretty short summer and we will be done with the lifting and running by the 2^nd of August. Lifting and 40-G will begin during spring football. This will give you all a chance to plan ahead in case your parents are planning summer trips. As you can see it will be your responsibility to keep a good level of fitness during the dead period. We have put together a conditioning program to carry you through to hellweek. Those of you who are in town can work as a group and those of you who can’t be here will still be able to get the conditioning done some place else. It doesn’t have to be here in La Jolla. We plan on giving out gear earlier and the only thing you will need to plan for is your physical.

 Nick, what I need now from all of you are any ideas that you might have that can help us put all this together. Review the calendar with everyone and tell the guys to not be afraid to make suggestions because nothing is final. Your responsibility Nick will be to share any ideas with me after you all meet. Also, remind the guys that they can e-mail me at any time if they have any other suggestions later on. Use the Star Chamber e-mail address: wildafricandogs@yahoo.com. Go ahead and have a discussion. Share ideas but don’t argue. After you do this have Shane open his envelope and follow the directions therein.

Thanks

Thanks for getting the Star Chamber together. Since this is Anthony’s birthday we can’t ask him to take on the responsibility for planning this function, so you will have to be the director of social events this evening. I understand that Anthony planned a very exciting evening the last time, with the highlight being the presentation of the inflatable woman. The guys tell me that you have been going to bed with her on a nightly basis, but that you haven’t been getting much sleep. Perhaps you might want to give her to Anthony so that he can get over being dumped by his former girlfriend. This will also allow you to get some rest before the start of spring football. Please try to use good judgement when you present each other gifts in public. Passing around an inflatable woman at a birthday function can give you a bad reputation, unless of course you disguise yourself. If you are going to once again blow up another doll I would suggest that you guys not wear any La Jolla football attire. Put on some Mission Bay shirts and pretend you go to school there.

I am enclosing some things that I want you to distribute. First, if you haven’t done so already, go ahead and order your food and then make sure you sing happy birthday when you cut the birthday cake. I know you guys probably won’t sing because it’s too embarrassing. What’s ironic is the fact that you guys won’t sing in public, but you will pass around an inflatable doll. Go figure that out. After you’ve taken care of all this, distribute the gifts that I have given you. You can probably guess that they are framed pictures just like the one I gave you. By the way, did anyone guess what your gift was last time? It wasn’t easy finding a picture of Anthony as he spent most of his time on the bench. Tell him that next year I fully expect to have a much broader selection to pick from.

After you finish with the festivities I want you to distribute the materials in the boxes. I have put together your summer binders for you. They are personalized in the sense that they have a cover page for each one with your name, number and position written on it. The number is the one you wore last year unless you requested a different one. I honored all requests when possible, except for defensive backs. As you know DB’s can not change their number (sorry Mike) unless they got stuck with an 80”s number the year before. I also included a copy of everyone’s goal sheet. There are still a few people who haven’t given me one and they will be rolling the dice the first day of spring if I don’t have it by then. I have also included a skill pattern run workout for your position only. We will be reviewing the contents of the binders as a group later on. Right now all of you should browse through it quickly and let me know if I left any thing out. You will keep your binders in your possession all summer. We do not want you leaving them in the weight room as there is much information in them that you need to have access to when you aren’t at school.