Ellensburg, where the livin' is green! GARDENING!

In the spring of 2009, Mother and Father Jones decided, "We should grow a garden this summer. Devin Colby, invent us a garden." Traditionally, we try to grow some sort of garden, at least an herb garden, but this year, we've finally got it right!

The water bed was a core value of the Jones family in the 1980's and early 90's so we had a couple water bed frames sitting around. We decided to use the frames to create elevated growing beds for our garden. On the ground, lining the beds, we laid down special weed blocking cloths, then filled the beds with soil. And the area we chose to place the beds receive ample water from our automatic sprinkler system!
In our garden we grow spinach, zucchini, squash, kale, cucumbers, tomatoes, yellow pear tomatoes, tomatios, bell peppers, Anaheim peppers, eggplant, Japanese egg plant, a bunch of herbs, Swiss chard, and two types of lettuce. We grow some other veggies that I cannot remember the names of.

Last Sunday, I invited Cam and Sara to dinner, where we harvested the veggies for dinner and cooked together! It's a teriffic feeling knowing that we grew and picked the vegetables that we're eating.
My favourite vegetable right now is kale. Kale is very nutritious with a large concentration of vitimin K and vitimin C. "Loves me some vitimin K and vitimin C!"

I really wish I could share some tips or tricks for gardening, but our garden is very low maitinence. All I do is eat the vegetables. The weed cloth keeps the weeds from growing in our garden, and the garden area is automatically watered every Day!

Football Plays! Zone Option!

Dear Blog reader,

This is my attempt to write intelligently, creatively, non-pretentiously, and inclusively about football strategy.

Love,
DCJ
Common sports journalism cliches explore different ways to introduce each new season of football. "The air is crisp and the leaves are changing, must be football season," any writer or broadcaster might proclaim. At Ellensburg High School though, we began practicing in June, lifted weights and conditioned each week day of the summer, and took a week of team camp squeezed in the last week of July. It is now officially football season but the players have been hard at work all summer and are now an elite band of brother warriors ready to challenge the biggest and best in the CWAC.

My roles and responsibilities as a coach for the Bulldogs are many, but my favourite role as a coach is that of an offensive coordinator for the C-team and Junior Varsity. I'm blessed with a head coach, Randy Affholter, who encourages me to be creative in compiling an offense that best suits our athletes. I say compiling because we truly have an offensive playbook as thick as a text book.

My favourite play, that we've been running with our C-Team group is called the Zone Option. To first understand Zone Option, or Zone Read, as we call it in the huddle, one must first grasp the Zone play. Zone, is a running play where the running back's initial aim is to run towards and through a certain area designated by a number in the play-call. The lineman though, block in such a way where importance isn't placed on creating a specific hole, but rather moving defensive lineman and linebackers away from the line of scrimmage, creating seams. A seam is open space like a hole or gap, but can be described better as a lateral hole. (I wonder how many lady readers I just lost) The running back begins running with the football towards the designated area, finds the first seam and runs through the space. There is much debate in Offensive blocking schemes between zone blocking and man blocking (attempting to create specific point of attack holes in the defense) which might be another blog entirely. Zone can be run out of any formation, in almost any situation and is often the core running play of any west coast offense.

At some point in the history of the zone play, defensive ends from the side opposite the zone is being run (usually the last man on the line of scrimmage for the defense) started to make tackles by chasing the runningback straight down the line of scrimmage and vacating their normal responsibilities; greedy defensive ends. Offensive coordinators answered back with bootlegs, counters, and most recently the zone option.

Usually run from shotgun, zone option, begins looking like Zone, and for all intensive pourposes, is Zone, but the Quarterback now has the option to give the ball to the runningback or to take it himself, depending on how he reads the Defensive end. The lineman who are on the designated zone side run Zone like normal, while the lineman on the back side, or away from the disignated zone area leave their Defensive end completely unblocked. Once the ball is snapped, the quarterback holds the ball out for the runningback and watches the unblocked defensive end. If the DE runs up field or stays in the same spot, the quarterback will release the football to the running back who then runs zone. If the DE goes towards the runningback and into the zone play, the quarterback will pull the football out and run in the space now being covered by a block or two and vacated by the unblocked DE. This play is awesome because it forces defensive lineman to be very disciplined, which High School defensive lineman struggle with!
Examples: Imagine much smaller and slower humans running these plays, and you'll have the EHS C-team!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZwpXXWJA2m4