Coaching for Pizza: A Birthday, a Weigh-In, More on Mary's Play and News from the Net

Fri.-Sun., August 1-3, 2025

Another solid weekend highlighted by . . .

. . . grandson Kevin's 14th birthday

on Sunday

My favorite picture of Kevin

playing his favorite sport

This year we did not make it out to Las Vegas to celebrate with him. A congratulatory phone call and cherished memories of his recent visit to Camarillo would have to suffice.

Happy Birthday, Kevin!

Granddaughter Mary after her

performance in Annie on Friday night

As I said in our last post, we had a fun family night watching Mary act, dance and sing at her play on Thursday night.

After Friday night's performance Mary and Vanessa dropped by one of Camarillo's iconic eating spots, Chester's Asia Chinese Restaurant, located next door to the mini-theater where they held the performance. In the photo above she is seen with the owner of Chester's whose love of the arts made him give Mary a box of fortune cookies to take home as tribute to her budding acting career.

On Saturday, Mary had both a matinee and an evening performance of her role as Pepper, the mean girl, in the play.

Needless to say, she was exhausted come late Saturday night.

That's Show Biz.

Grandson Jacob in a fine four-point

stance at DE on Friday

It was his first day of contact and, by all accounts, he had a good practice.

On Saturday, literally hundreds of Pop Warner players from all 22 chapters, from Santa Barbara to Saugus, at all age levels of the 2025 Gold Coast Youth Football League met at Royal H.S, in Simi Valley for weigh-ins.

To ease the potential chaos, each chapter was assigned a specific time for their weigh-ins. Your beloved Camarillo Stingers were set to have their turn at 9:30 a.m.

All went well as Jacob weighed in at a solid 130 lbs./59 kilos.

This was my first time accompanying Jacob and Michael to these annual weigh-ins and the promise of a solid breakfast afterwards certainly enticed me to join them, but where?

As it turns out, two years ago after these same weigh-ins on the way back to their car, Michael and Jacob asked a man working on his yard if he could recommend a good hole-in-the-wall spot for breakfast.

They took his advice, loved the place and returned there again last year. Three's the charm, so we all headed there again on this beautiful Summer morning.

Hole-in-the-Wall dining at its finest

1244 Sycamore Drive

Simi Valley, CA

This sign and the dead grass were good omens in my opinion.

A stand alone diner in the heart

of Simi Valley with a definite

Fire Department motif

Guantanamo Bay FD

AWESOME TOUCH!

Large, delicious portions at reasonable prices, this would be a good spot for a pre-game if I were to attend a Simi Valley HS football game this season.

Fully sated, on our drive home, Michael swung by our first home in Thousand Oaks where we lived before moving to Camarillo in 1976.

1219 Calle de Oro

Thousand Oaks, CA

It looked well kept and ship shape to me.

News from the net . . .

More of a plain fact than news really

Being a RETIRED teacher has

its advantages to be sure

A surprisingly close result from

the IFAF European tournament

After 59 games, it is a bit hard to

believe that 12 of the 32 NFL teams

have still not won a Super Bowl

Eight of those franchises have made it to the Super Bowl but have not won the Big Game in 18 total tries.

They are:

Bengals (1982, 1989 & 2022)

Bills (1991, 1992, 1993 & 1994)

Cardinals (2008)

Chargers (1995)

Falcons (1999 & 2017)

Panthers (2004 & 2016)

Titans (2000)

Vikings (1970, 1974, 1975 & 1977)

More distressing are the four franchises to never have earned a spot in any of these previous 59 Super Bowls.

They are:

Browns

Jaguars

Lions

Texans

The shocker in this bunch is the Lions as the Detroit eleven has been an NFL franchise since the 1930 season as the Portsmouth (Ohio) Spartans before moving to Detroit in 1934 rebranded as the Lions.

The other three clubs are expansion franchises with founding dates of 1995 for the Jaguars, 1999 for the Browns and 2002 for the Texans.

Our Israeli American football playing

friend, Elad Ohanna, posted this on Friday

I think that it is a recruiting poster for the upcoming season of his Ramat Hasharon Hammers club in war torn Israel.

The game must go on?

Joanne Sabolić, if you could, a little help on this translation please.

The Colorado State Rams at

the Washington Huskies

on August 30th

26 new names worthy of an updated

Key and Peele comedy sketch

With monikers like these they need to play extremely well this year.

A boy named Sue seems so long ago and mild by comparison.

Divine Love Onochie?

Hard, if not impossible, to

eat street tacos without smiling

in my humble opinion

Arizona State and UCLA were

surprises to me on this list

Arizona State's six Pro Football Hall of Fame inductees are:

DB Eric Allen

DL Curley Culp

DB Mike Haynes

RB John Henry Johnson

OL Randall McDaniel

WR Charley Taylor

UCLA counters with their half dozen Hall of Famers:

QB Troy Aikman

DB Kenny Easley

WR Tom Fears

DB Jimmy Johnson

OL Jonathan Ogden

QB Bob Waterfield

Upon further investigation, I found out that University of Minnesota alumni, including two coaches, have seven busts in the Hall of Fame. They include:

LB Bobby Bell

Coach Tony Dungy

DL Carl Eller

Coach Bud Grant

RB/OL Bronko Nagurski

DL Leo Nomellini

TE Charley Sanders

I guess this list only focused on players and not coaches.

As for Washington, there are four former Huskies in the Pro Football Hall of Fame. They are:

Coach Don Coryell

RB Hugh McElhenny

QB Warren Moon

DL Arnie Weinmeister

We attended all 11 of the Freedom Bowls

held in Anaheim Stadium from

1984 to 1994

Yes, the uniform combinations in this seventh Freedom Bowl in 1990 between the Colorado State Rams and the Oregon Ducks was a tad hard on the eyes but the game itself was a corker with the Rams (9-4) beating the Ducks (8-4), 32-31.

The Washington Huskies played in two of these Freedom Bowls.

In the 1985 Freedom Bowl, the Huskies (7-5) took the measure of the Big 8 Conference's Colorado Buffaloes (7-5), 20-17.

Returning to Anaheim in 1989, Washington (8-4) dominated the SEC's Florida Gators (7-5), 34-7.

So few NCAA DIII schools

in the Golden State

Even more depressing than only having ten NCAA DIII schools in California is the fact that only six of them still field football teams.

All in the Southern California Intercollegiate Athletic Conference (SCIAC), they are:

California Lutheran Kingsmen

Chapman Panthers

Claremont-Mudd Stags

La Verne Leopards

Pomona-Pitzer Sage Hens

Redlands Bulldogs

It is hard to fathom that California, the most populated state in the Union with over 39 million inhabitants, only has six of these DIII colleges still fielding American football teams after the recent shuttering of the programs of both the Occidental Tigers and Whittier Poets.

By comparison, the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, population 13 million, has 23 DIII colleges fielding football squads in 2025.

A whopping 11% of the USA's 343 million residents live in California and this is it for grass roots, DIII football in our beloved state.

Damn.

Only one change in the

Spanish DI circuit in 2026

Our Gijón Mariners Western Conference is the same as it was this past season with Zaragoza's Hurricanes and the three Madrid squads, the Black Demons, Camioneros and Osos rounding out the five team conference.

In the Eastern Conference, the holdover Dracs, Pioners, Reds and Voltors will be joined by the Valencia Firebats who were promoted from DII. The Barcelona Pagesos were relegated to DII for the 2026 campaign.

I'm looking forward to seeing how the Mariners progress next Winter.