Satori

Satori is a Japanese Buddhist term for enlightenment, meaning “understanding”.

“People are often unreasonable and self-centered. Forgive them anyway. If you are kind, people may accuse you of ulterior motives. Be kind anyway. If you are honest, people may cheat you. Be honest anyway. If you find happiness, people may be jealous. Be happy anyway. The good you do today may be forgotten tomorrow. Do good anyway. Give the world the best you have and it may never be enough. Give your best anyway. For you see, in the end, it is between you and God. It was never between you and them anyway.”

— Mother Teresa

“Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle.”

~Plato

“It’s the repetition of affirmations that leads to belief. And once that belief becomes a deep conviction, things begin to happen.”

-Muhammad Ali

212 Lacrosse in the news

212 Lacrosse growing in Park City

Coach says its all for the kids

Gina Barker, The Park Record

Posted: 02/28/2012 04:20:46 PM MST

Long Island native Mike Acee has his heart in lacrosse. He moved to Park City in 2005. During the summer of 2009, he decided to pick up his passion and started a lacrosse clinic, 212 Lacrosse, for children offering one-on-one coaching, clinics, and camps to boys and girls in the area.

What started with two Park City middle school students, Taylor Watkins and Cameron Perry, quickly grew to over 400 players. Now, Acee is on the hunt for coaches to help meet the growing demand.

“The most important part of this business is how lacrosse is a platform to mentor kids and give them a positive force in their life,” he said.

But Acee’s relationship with the sport goes much farther back than his move to Utah.

Lacrosse began for Acee when he was a small child. His father Fred Acee coached the sport for more than 40 years and gave his son his first lacrosse stick at age 3. As a starter on Attack for The University of North Carolina, he went on to help win a NCAA National Championship, four Atlantic Coast Conference Championships, was a High School All-American and a gold medalist and the top scorer for team Long Island in the highly competitive Empire State Games.

“Lacrosse is a deep part of my life experience,” Acee said.

He went on to play at for the University of North Carolina on a scholarship, but it was there that the relationship first felt tension.

“Playing at Carolina was an honor and a great experience coupled with some pressure,” Acee said. “When I got out of college I didn’t want much to do with lacrosse. I basically disconnected with the sport.”

After leaving the East Coast for a finance career in California, Acee said he thought he was done with lacrosse for good. But working in finance wasn’t making him happy. Acee started to travel, from Costa Rica to France and finally landing in Park City.

It was in the mountains he decided that coaching was his real passion.

“The spirit of lacrosse started gnawing at my heels again,” “It’s funny how that works. You never forget your first love.”

Carson Dutkanych, a sophomore living in the area, is one student that keeps him headed in the right direction, Acee said. Acee has worked with Dutkanych since the high schooler was in fifth grade. Since then, Acee recently took Dutkanych to his alma mater in North Carolina, showcasing his talents to national recruiters.

“Watching the kids in our programs grow, is the main reason I do this,” he said. Now Carson is being nationally recruited.”

Lacrosse is the fastest growing sport in the country, with roughly 400 children of all ages playing in Park City alone, Acee said. 212 Lacrosse continues to grow at a fast pace.

Acee plans to soon add a competitive team for the under-13 and under-11 age brackets, and a year-round development course. Even as his business expands, Acee said he will always keep things in perspective limiting the pressure put on kids to succeed.

“I work to instill high hopes without the high pressure,” Acee said. “I think that’s where the really positive results come from, getting rid of all this unnecessary pressure.”

“I want kids to love this sport, to take something away from it that will not only make them a better person, but also a happier person,” he added.

Boredom

Stuck in line at the grocery store? Sitting in a dark theater before the movie starts? Waiting for the subway? Don’t let your mind sit idle – play a game of Angry Birds, send a text, or check Facebook.

Driving? Out to dinner with your spouse? In a yoga class? In a meeting at work? Don’t get bogged down with a sustained focus on your responsibilities – check your e-mail or see how the stock market is doing. I won’t even pretend to admonish you to avoid these last examples.

Many people associate boredom with unhappiness or laziness.We all know better, but for some reason, we just can’t help ourselves.

We go to great lengths to avoid the possibility of being stuck with no distractions.

“An idle mind is the devil’s workshop” goes the saying. Conventional wisdom holds that boredom leads to trouble. Bored kids start fights, do drugs and look for unhealthy distractions. There’s nothing more dispiriting for a professional than a boring job.

But boredom actually holds the secret to something we all want: contentment, personal growth, and perhaps even professional success. Boredom may be a source of despair and is certainly an undesirable psychological state in which to linger, but it can also serve as the foundation for inspiration, creative breakthroughs and open the space for the beginnings of self-reflection. Boredom can agitate us to take action, reawaken curiosity and serve as a reminder to engage the world around us.

Rather than judge boredom as a negative experience to be avoided, embrace it with a sense of curiosity and openness. Think of boredom as an internal nudge to evaluate your current circumstances, a reminder to set meaningful goals, a challenge to grow. The next time you find yourself bored, don’t complain or feel depressed, and don’t reach for your iPhone. Instead, appreciate the brief and increasingly rare opportunity for introspection.

New practitioners of meditation sometimes hear this advice: when trying to meditate for the first time, sit quietly for five minutes. If you’re bored, remain sitting for another five minutes. If you’re still bored, try to hang on for another five minutes. Pretty soon, the experience will become quite interesting.

What are we losing collectively in a world of anytime anywhere connectivity that attempts to obliterate boredom? What happens when we allow constant distraction to eliminate moments of quiet reflection? Albert Einstein had a prodigious ability to sit in contemplative quiet for long periods. J.K. Rowling explained that she came up with the idea for the Harry Potter series while staring out the window on a train ride. In his book Life Is What You Make It, Peter Buffett, the son of billionaire investor Warren Buffett, described his father’s remarkable ability to pour over annual reports for long periods of time: “… he could as easily have been a rabbi studying Kabbalah or a Buddhist monk puzzling over Zen koans. His focus was that fierce – that pure.”

This ability to remain fully engaged and focused for extended periods is, I think, a critical component of creativity, innovation and success in general. I suspect that Einstein, Rowling and Buffett learned at a young age how to turn moments of boredom into opportunities to tap their imaginations and curiosity.

But we are living in a society that caters to and encourages a short attention span. Intel Corporation experimented with attempts to resist this trend. For example, implementing voluntary No e-mail Fridays or dedicated “Quiet Time” – a half day each work week when employees disabled phone, e-mail and IM, and put up a “Do Not Disturb” sign on their doorway so they could focus on “thinking work” without interruptions. These are good ideas, but in the end, it is up to each individual to set appropriate boundaries in a world that is constantly crossing them.

Are you bored? Do you feel the itch to find a distraction? Don’t reach for your anytime anywhere device. Close your eyes, breath deeply and embrace the value of boredom. You may be surprised where it leads you.

Nutrition Matters

Please click here for a simple guide to superior nutrition http://paleonutritionnotes.blogspot.com/

BE THERE FOR YOUR KIDS AS PARENTS…NOT AS COACHES!..by Trevor Tierney

So, since I am surfing every day down here in Costa Rica, as I described in my last blog, I’ll be relating to that subject a bit more. This weekend, I went to watch my first surf competition. Even though it felt like the sun was going to melt me into the sand, it was a blast to watch! I was inspired from some of the interactions between the parents and their young surfers to write this blog…

At the local surf competition, there were a bunch of different groups that were competing and it went all the way down in age to “grommets” which were boys and girls from ten to twelve years old. It was amazing to watch them surf, because the waves were double overhead and powerful! But, they all just paddled out fearlessly and caught as many waves as they could. They were tearing it up!

When I first got to the beach, I noticed how all the competitors were hanging out together and having fun with each other’s families. The parents seemed laid back and had brought their cameras along to film or take pictures of their sons or daughters. At first, I thought, “Wow! We could really learn a lot in lacrosse from this surf culture!”. And that is true! It would be great to see parents of other teams on the sidelines hanging out and having fun together instead of yelling at each other and the refs. It would also be amazing to see the players spending more time with other teams and making new friends. I think that sense of family and friendship is sorely missed in our sport when it becomes so ultra competitive at such a young age.

However, there was a dark side to this paradise. As the surf competition was winding down, I noticed a father berating his son on what he was doing wrong out in the water. The father was saying something along the lines of, “You were not being aggressive enough! You were just sitting on the outside and letting them take all the waves! You have to get out there and paddle…blah…blah…blah!!!”. The boy, who was all of ten years old, just stood there and stared at his father as tears welled up in his eyes.

I believe this is one of the most painful things that parents can do to their children. Basically, a parent like this is taking his / her own shame out on a child. When a parent is ashamed of their child in some way and projects it out to them, then they are causing their own child shame. Shame is one of the most painful emotions in the world, so why would we want to to that to our own children?

Most of the time, a child already knows where he / she has come up short in competition. I guarantee that this little surfer knew he was hanging back and there was probably good reason for it. Maybe it was too big out there for him. Maybe he was tired. Whatever the cause, kids are smart and aware of what they are doing.

Surprisingly for me, I did not have to deal with getting ripped into after one of my competitions with a coach as a father. He knew when to be my father and when to be my coach. If I had a bad game, he usually did not say anything unless I asked or said something first.

So, my suggestions to any parents who are open to them would be this :

1. Be there for your child after a bad game or performance. A lot of times, children are trying to earn their parents’ love or attention through performing. It’s really important for them to know that you love them whether they win or lose, play great or play poorly. This will give them a healthier outlook on themselves as human beings and will allow them to not attribute their overall self worth to performance.

2. Ask your child if they want to talk about their performance, so you can help them to understand what went right and wrong, and support them. If they say that they do not want to talk about it, then drop it. If they do want to talk, then ask questions so they can make their own assessments. Ask questions like : What did you think went well today? What could you have done better? What can you do or practice to help do that better next time?

3. Gently guide them away from any excuses. If they are not taking personal responsibility and blaming teammates, coaches or referees, then keep asking questions that get them focused on what they can control in the situation.

4. Tell them that you understand that it hurts to do poorly in competition or to lose, but it’s just a stepping stone towards success. Every athlete loses or plays poorly, but the great ones use those as opportunities to get better!

5. Take them out for a Slurpee or ice cream and help them maintain perspective that there is more to life than just winning or losing a game! Man…I don’t remember my games that I played when I was five to ten years old, but I remember those Slurpees afterwards!

Just remember, kids want you to be their parent, not their coach. They have more than enough of those in their lives. Honor that relationship by loving them after a game and not shaming them. This will make them stronger than any coaching tidbit you think that you can give them.

“Want to be cool? Wear the proper equipment!”…Hall of Fame Coach Fred Acee

So you think you are cool or can move better if you wear minimum sized shoulder pads, or arm guards? Well, let me tell you that after 48 years of coaching I have seen many injuries which have caused great players to become seriously injured and miss weeks of playing time. The rules dictate that you must be properly equipped to play the game. However, many players will compete with shoulder pads and arm guards which do not fully protect the area they are meant to protect. If you are confident in the protection your equipment provides, you will be a player who can dodge and “take a check” and not be portrayed as a “soft player”. Soft players are not held in high regard. WEAR the most protective gear available. You will greatly decrease your chances of missing a game due to injury, allowing you to play your best at all times. Lacrosse is a great game, but only if you are on the field to play this great game.

Park City Lacrosse, how does it compare?

True, Park City lacrosse isn’t Baltimore, Long Island, or Upstate New York lacrosse. But, that doesn’t mean our kids don’t compete as intensely as any kid in the country. We have inherent difficulties finding the depth of high quality coaching that becomes commonplace in the East. Our kids also lack the high level competition found all over the east coast. So, what’s an aspiring Division 1 lacrosse player to do? Work harder. Keep yourself in top shape, eat right, abolish one habit that is detracting from your aspirations, and play a minimum of 1 hour of wall ball per day. And, take 200 shots on goal every day. Also, watch a lot of film. See our videos page and watch the Maverik instructional clips. Play defense? Work on your agility. All great defensemen have tremendous footwork. Goalies, find a great coach, and a willing and able shooting partner. Not sure where to start when it comes to fitness. Easy answer, join CrossFit PC. We have two of the best trainers in the world right in our backyard in Chris Spealler, and Eric O’Connor. Crossfit gives you the benefit of a personal trainer at a fraction of the cost, and you WILL, with hard work, achieve tremendous fitness levels. Avoid the excuses of living in snow country. Shovel a space for the lax wall and goal and dress warm. Or, find an empty gym. These habits have to become a lifestyle if you want to succeed at a high level. Finally, tryout for one of the best club teams in the West. This can give you exposure to college coaches that kids on the East coast get in their backyards. So, how bad do you want it? Click here http://vimeo.com/27933991