Weekly Blog Update

Well apparently I am on a weekly blog schedule now, which is too bad because I am one heckuva blogger. Much better than Jeff Potter talking about anteaters or Jared Reiner writing about his experience with airplane exit seats.

I have been pretty busy over the last week or so with Mad Ants stuff galore. But we have not had a game since January 31st you say? You are correct, but as some of you may believe we do not hibernate in our Coliseum storage closet between games (at least I don't, I think Kyle Thoms might). We had a flurry of "appearances" and events to attend with us having NINE different appearances on Saturday alone!

This included having the Mad Ant mascot visit six YMCA of Greater Fort Wayne Y-Ball sites. These appearances are always a lot of fun. You have not experienced chaos until you drop a 6-4 ANT in the middle of 50 5-8 year olds playing basketball. The reactions vary from fleeing in fear to some of them instantly going into ATTACK mode and trying to rip off the Mad Ants antennae. The Mad Ant always manages to come out in one piece though and have a good time doing it. He even came off the bench for a couple teams and threw down some Monster dunks! Granted, it was an eight foot rim but still impressive!

I also led a caravan of half the team consisting of Rod Wilmont, Rob Kurz, Anthony Kent, Jared Reiner and Sean Sonderletier to a basketball clinic for the Kosciusko YMCA in Warsaw on Saturday morning. The snow caused the players and I to be a little late, but Ants Assistant Coach Sanders had arrived promptly and was putting the kids to work with drills when we arrived. We had about 60 kids there and the players quickly had them running layup/shooting/passing/dribbling drills at three separate stations. My favorite part of these clinics is always the Q&A session we do at the end with the players. The normal questions came up like "Can you dunk?" and "How tall are you?" . We then had a couple gems like "How big are your feet?" and the best "Do they do these drills that we did?" directed at Coach Sanders. Coach Sanders replied that the players do these type of drills all the time. The kid then said "No, I mean can you make them do them right now?". Probably a "you had to be there type moment" but I found it very funny. The poor kid was tired and thought the players had it easy directing them through the drills but not actively participating in them. Coach told them they were going practice right after this so they had to save their strength.

The other amazing thing was the players ability to eat a full Cracker Barrel breakfast after the clinic and then practice immediately afterward. Sean Sonderleiter's catfish/macaroni and cheese biscuit sandwich concoction was pretty spectacular.

Hopefully this snow stays under control (the weather man says otherwise) and we have a nice turnout for the game tomorrow night (Feb. 9). I know the Rio Grande Valley Vipers are already in town, so the game is going down regardless of the snow situation! This is a great opportunity to come out and see Mike Harris play, a guy who has been putting up 20 and 20 games with apparent ease latley. I am pretty sure we will see him on an NBA team by the end of the season (back on an NBA team as he played briefly for the Rockets earlier in the year). It's Disney Theme night tomorrow, so be sure to dress up if you come out to the game.

This will also be the return of Ron Howard to the Mad Ants court, as he recovers from his hand injury. He is on his way to the D-League all-star game this weekend. Jamelle Cornely's knee has flared up and Ron will be replacing him on the roster. We will retain Jamelle's rights due to waiving him because of injury.