Over the weekend

Friday and Saturday the home town high school hosted the Region V 2A volleyball tournament, and the girls' only home games this season. For such a young team this year they did remarkably well, this makes the sixth straight regional tournament they've earned.

My niece is the the team's power player, well step niece but the family so close and I've helped raise her she's like a blood relation. Anyways I digress, I was up at the school by request to help take pictures of her playing, me having a nifty Canon Digital Rebel and some ok lens for it.

The whole town finds it amusing to watch her play sports, she's an animal, very athletic and tough to boot. I can chuckle to myself knowing I have a hand in early weight training.

Back when I was in high school, I basically had the only other TV in the house upstairs in my room, so when the step brother and family came over to visit I was usually stuck entertaining the kids with whatever Disney movie that had just come out on vhs. One night we had the youngest daughter up watching Beauty and the Beast I think it was, I rarely paid attention to what they watched. My other sister was up there to keep an eye on JS and was watching the movie at the same time.

I was deeply engrossed with the latest model airplane I was building at the time and wasn't really paying attention. I just heard my sister tell JS to take it over to me. I heard her grunting and gasping so I looked up and here JS was struggling to hold up one of dumbbells. Mind you the dumbbell was probably 1/3 her total weight, and she carried it about 7 feet. I took it from her and said 'thank you'. A few minutes later her she came struggling with the other of the pair to bring to me.

I waited a few minutes and picked it back up and told her to take it back to my sister. So she did. Got to the point that every time she would come over with the parents she'd go right to those dumb bells and start lugging them back and forth to us. I believe after a year she could pick up the one easily and was slowly working towards carrying the pair by the time I left for college.

So all these years later, she's just one tough girl. If she ever took up wrestling I'm sure she could match any guy her weight for strength. Not to mention the amount of coaches she'd have, her father, a couple uncles, cousins and brother who wrestled.