My name is "Coach" George Zaleuke, and this is my first experience with blogging.  Hold on, I just lied. Before my son (Mike) entered the US ARMY, he started a popular blog which followed his adventures before, during, and after his training at Ft. Benning, Georgia.  Of course, Mike did not have internet access during his training, so he would hand write these long detailed letters which I (and my daughter Kristin) entered into his blog.  We were ordered to enter the information into his blog EXACTLY as he wrote it.  This was not always easy to do for me.  I spent many hours with tears in my eyes as I typed the words into his blog.  I would feel his pain, and I could feel his joy in his written words.  I finally had to turn over the job to Kristin.  I just had a hard time with it.  Besides, Kristin types like 150 words per minute, and I could only type about 10 with my hunt and peck method.  LOL.

This blog will hopefully follow our football season from spring ball through the entire season. This blog may be a little boring for some of you; however, I really want to document this season so my kids (Kristin and Mike) can follow my thoughts in what could be my last season.  If my blog is sometimes boring, I am sorry for that.  Sometimes a coach's life is not so exciting,  but it is my life, and I still love every minute of it.  Here is my problem.  I will not know who is reading my blog, so I will need to stay pretty generic on what we are working on.  Believe it or not, even at this level, our offense is pretty complicated.  We work hard on relaying information to our kids, so I will have to be careful not to tip our opponents to what we are doing during a particular week. 

 Today is April 23rd.  We begin spring training on the 1st of May.  The Florida High School Athletic Association (FHSAA) allows us twenty (20) days in May to complete our training and allow for a spring game if we choose to do so.  Coach Bethel is pretty strict on following the rules, so up until now, we are lifting weights and conditioning.  Our kids are looking pretty good right now, and I am excited to get started.  I am really excited about our 8th graders.  Great looking bunch of kids. 

What did I do today?  Remember the "Not exciting" part I mentioned?  Well, here it is:  I am sort of the "team mechanic" of the coaching staff.  If it can be repaired or built, the guys generally come to me.  Remember, we are a public school. Naturally, we do not have the funds to waste on anything.  We have these old water machines that I have completely taken over and rebuilt several times.  We have 2 (battery operated) water lift pumps (water cows) and 2 coil coolers.  We fill all these machines with Ice and pump drinking water through them.  The kids just tear the hell out of these old machines, so I try to stay on top of the maintenance.  I have three of them ready to go, and I have the other one on the back of my truck right now.  By the weekend, it too will be ready to go. 

In my next blog, I will introduce the coaches to you all.  All of these guys are like brothers to me, and we are all very close. 

Not too bad for a first blog, right? 

"Coach" George