The first half of the school year.
Brenden Gilbreath 12/10
Basketball
We started basketball as soon as school started. First, we split up into JV and Varsity. We started with simple, easy steps to getting back into basketball shape. Second, we all watched a video together regarding the new offensive system coach had. Once, we were familiar with the offense, we set it up and got ready to use it in the game. When our first game rolled around, we were all excited to see what we had as a team this year.
FFA Meet
This year was the first year we could participate in the FFA events. Since I am only a Freshman, I had to be in the Junior Events. I signed up for Chapter Conducting and I accidently signed up for Quiz. We had been practicing for chapter conducting for 6 weeks. Every time someone had a question about how to do something, we would all go over that topic together. The day before the event, Mr. Janacek informed we that I had signed up for Quiz. That night, I went home and went over questions from last year's quiz so I would at least know some of the questions. The next day, we all went to the event at Blinn in Brenham. Quiz was the first event, so we went down to the room and, as they passed out the quiz, I was very nervous as I had only been studying for one day and these kids had been studying for weeks. I flew through every question, I never even stopped to think about one of my answer. I probably only knew about 10 out of 100, so I wasn't expecting much when Mr. Janacek was giving us our scores. When I found out I got 40/100 and got our team's highest grade(40/100 isn't very good)I was a pretty excited. Next was Chapter Conducting, so our team got together and discussed each other's roles, so when the event was about to start, we thought were going to win. Boy, were we wrong. We got through the opening ceremonies okay, but we got to the first problem, we went blank. We knew we had screwed up when we finished. We waited and waited nervously for the scores, and sure enough, we got last. On the way home, I was thinking about what went wrong and how I could have fixed it when I realized, we could only get better. I am very excited and optimistic about our chances next year.
Texas A&M Trip
Towards the end of the semester, we took a trip up to College Station and toured the Texas A&M campus. The campus was very impressive. I don't think I had never been somewhere that large but yet so welcoming. I had heard people talk before about just how friendly the people on campus were, but I hadn't thought anything of it. When we got there, I realized just what they were talking about. It really speaks volumes about what kind of place the university was. I had been to Sam Houston before, and it was a nice campus, but it was nothing compared to Texas A&M. Sam Houston was a lot smaller, while A&M is the 4th largest college in the U.S. They both had a lot of traditions and the people at both places were happy there and respected their traditions. Texas A&M had renovations going on everywhere, whether it were the football field or the Student Recreation Center. They had to have money growing off the trees there. On the other hand, Sam Houston still had a lot of their original buildings that were still in use.