(This is the time of year when the horse racing season for the Ivory Pine Syndicate is winding down, but the soccer season for the Rosevelt Soccer Club is gearing up. Here's a 90-day glimpse of the day in the life of a horse racing managing partner and soccer club administrator.)
Awoke, 5a
Let out and fed Jasper, 5a-5:15a
I'm the early riser in our house, so letting out our 4-year-old British chocolate lab Jasper and feeding him every morning is usually one of the first things I'll do after waking up.
Walked, 5:15a-5:45a
Our neighborhood features a roundabout that's almost exactly a mile in distance, so it's great for the walks that I should be taking more often.
Listened to the Jason Beem Horse Racing Podcast, 5:15a-5:45a
Jason Beem is probably one of the most likable personalities in the horse racing industry here in the U.S., and his podcast is one of the longest-running podcasts in the sport. Episodes every Monday usually feature a recap of the previous weekend's racing at Thoroughbred tracks, but most every other episode features an interview with a stakeholder in the Thoroughbred industry.
Prepared breakfast and ate breakfast, 5:45a-6a
A peanut butter and jelly sandwich with a cup of dark roast coffee. That's usually my go-to breakfast on weekday mornings.
Updated journal, 5:45a-6a
I've consistently maintained a journal since college, even if the journaling has taken different forms. It's rarely been a narrative diary, but my journals (or index cards, which I've also used) mostly just consist of lists of a previous day's activities. I don't have the best on-demand memory, so these journals are mostly intended for when I'm older and get nostalgic about the past. But they're also helpful to jog my short-term memory, and to also help me be more cognizant about how I spend my time.
Played chess, 6a-6:15a
I've been playing chess for most of my life, and I currently have three daily games going on Chess.com. Even though my opponents and I have 72 hours to make our next move, a new opportunity to move a piece in each game is usually waiting for me every morning, and I've recently been playing against opponents based in Canada, Mexico, Scotland, South Africa, Sweden, and Uzbekistan.
This digital "correspondence" chess I'm playing is a far cry from the correspondence chess my dad would play while we were growing up. He's one of the top-ranked players among U.S. Chess Federation members in Maine, but had to largely give up playing in over-the-board tournaments when we were growing up. So he instead took up correspondence chess, which consisted of him juggling dozens of games at once and exchanging moves via postcard with opponents around the world.
An annual gift of a stack of postcards from my grandmother for Christmas was a staple of my childhood growing up, as was the daily receipt of postcards (including some postmarked from prisons around the U.S.) featuring the unique lingo of a single chess move.
Ivory Pine Syndicate admin, 6:30a-6:45a
One of the reasons I founded a Maine-based horse racing partnership in 2022 was to do my small part to make horse racing more visible in the Pine Tree State.
I have fond memories of attending races at Scarborough Downs as a kid and as a young parent of two daughters, I think horse racing is one of the most under appreciated features of Maine life, and I've only gained a greater appreciation for the sport, the sport's horses, and the sport's stakeholders in recent years.
So our partnership has always been PR-forward, whether it's being quick to accept an invitation to be featured in a column about our partnership early on or being active on social media. In other words, we may not have the fastest pacers in Maine, but we probably have the most Facebook famous pacers in Maine. And one reason our pacers are digitally-renowned is because we almost always post pre-race and post-race updates before and after each race, as well as Twitter threads on in-person race days.
Rosevelt SC admin, 6:45a-7a
Another social media-related task that's part of my morning routine most days is to find mentions of our club's players in recaps of high school games on the Portland Press Herald's web site, take a screenshot of said mentions, and post a quick shoutout blurb on our club's Facebook page.
Those shoutouts usually only featured players who scored goals, contributed assists, or made saves. But last year we started being more conscientious about giving defenders more public credit whenever possible.
Worked at Westbrook High School, 7:30a-2:30p
Both my roles as a soccer club administrator and managing partner of a horse racing partnership are side gigs that pay or require me to pay relatively small amounts of funds every once in a while. My real job is as public school teacher at my alma mater Westbrook High School in Westbrook, Maine.
Watched Crimson Pine's race, 2:45p-3:15p
Our 3-year-old pacer Crimson Pine has raced thirteen times in 2024, and all of his races have been at Plainridge Park in Plainville, Massachusetts. That track is more than a 2-hour drive away from where Westbrook, so I've had to stream all of his races since school started in August.
A week after breaking his maiden and earning his first career win, Crimson Pine had to step up a rung in the competition ladder and drew an outside post position that is one of the toughest post positions to earn a win from. And to make matters worse, he didn't handle the first muddy track he'd ever raced on very well.
He came out of the race in good shape, but finished last with one of his slowest times this year. And since he finished outside the Top 5, we didn't earn a piece of the purse and were reminded of another hard-earned lesson about the highs and the lows of the sport, only one week apart.
Watched Parx racing, 3:15p-3:45p
Speaking of the highs and lows of horse racing, I hit a $34.80 Double wager with a $2 bet at Parx, a track outside of Philadelphia.
My wager included two of the my favorite races to handicap--maiden races featuring first-time starters--and my picks included two of my favorite types of horses to bet on, the debutantes in such races. To make the hit a little sweeter, one of the winning horses (Tip Line) is trained by Uriah St. Lewis, a blue collar trainer from Trinidad and Tobago whose trainee Discreet Lover earned an unlikely spot in the Breeders' Cup Classic in 2018. That was a formative experience in my earliest days of learning more about potentially starting a horse racing partnership from afar.
Compiled Eleanor's highlights, 4:15p-4:45p
One of the silver linings of COVID-19 is high school soccer programs have really improved their recording and streaming capabilities over the last few years. Our club does pretty well helping our oldest players compile game footage and highlights with our Veo camera, and most high school programs offer a similar resource with either the NFHS Network or Hudl.
Our older daughter is a reserve holding midfielder on one of the top high school teams in Maine, so her playing time can be uneven at times and the ball probably spends more time going over her head than being played through the midfield. But I've tried to stay diligent about marking potential highlights to include in a potential compilation video in the future.
She's really strong academically, and her best on-field fit would probably be a DIII player here in New England. And even though she's a Junior, she's still not definitely committed to the idea of trying to play in college. So a highlight video is more hypothetical at this point, but the running list of potential clips in my Notes app will be helpful if such a video becomes more realistic in the future.
Watched Beating Bobby Flay, 5p-6p
Another staple of my television diet. It's formulaic in a comforting way, yet diverse enough to still be interesting. Oh, and Flay is a devoted owner and breeder of successful Thoroughbreds.
Checked Soccer Maine final standings, 9:45p-10p
Our younger daughter's Gorham Youth Soccer Association (GYSA) U14 Girls team wrapped up its 6-game regular season yesterday, so the final standings have been updated. It was an odd experience coaching in the game yesterday when both coaching staffs were unsure of what the playoff format would be for our age group, and it's still a little odd to not know exactly how these standings should be interpreted within the context of a playoff format.
But the standings reflect a pretty even league performance: We beat the two teams we were probably supposed to beat, we lost to the two teams we were probably supposed to lose to, we won one game that could've gone either way, and we another game that could've gone either way.
Read Uglies, 10p-10:30p
Speaking of our younger daughter, she isn't the most enthusiastic reader. So I've checked out a copy Uglies from the Baxter Memorial Library, and we'll read it simultaneously. I have to catch up to where she's at, and we'll each try to read another chapter every day. We'll see how it goes.
Asleep, 10:30p
No comments:
Post a Comment