A Great Sports Week

This a picture of Morgan and Colin and Tippe playing in the water with Dan on Father's Day. More on that later.

Usually, good sports weeks occur in the fall, during football season. But this week featured a diversity of sports, mostly off the radar for a lot of folks, with thrilling contests and great results.

It started with U.S. Open golf. The rain delayed the tournament, so it finished on Monday. The golf was interesting all weekend, but the final round had great drama, several golfers in contention, and quality golf. Lucas Glover, the champion, is as humble a golfer as I've seen in a while, and I hope he's able to parlay his win in a major into big success.

Meanwhile, in South Africa, the United States is playing soccer in the Confederations Cup. (You don't have to like it -- I do.) Last week the U.S. lost two matches to Italy and Brazil, and looked pretty pathetic in doing so. But Sunday they came up with a 3-0 win over Egypt. This exact result, combined with a 3-0 Brazil win over Italy, is what the U.S. needed to get into the semifinals. But the opponent was Spain, the number one side in the world. On Wednesday, though, the U.S. beat Spain 2-0. It was a spectacular match, and maybe the U.S. can do better Sunday against Brazil in the final than they did in the group round.

But by far the most important sports story was the LSU victory in the College World Series. It started on Friday night, when, thanks to a rain delay, I got to watch the end of the victory over Arkansas with Clay. It was a blowout. LSU came back in the ninth to win in the first game of the best-of-three championship series on Monday, and Cara and I were IM'ing all the way through. It was a very intense game. The Tigers were flat on Tuesday, and the result was a 5-1 Texas victory, setting up a winner-take-all Wednesday showdown. I went over to play cards at Wayne and Tina's. When the game was 4-4 in the sixth, I pushed all in, because I could no longer concentrate on both the cards and the baseball game. I went outside to watch the game right about the same time LSU blew the game open with a big sixth inning. The final score was 11-4, and another championship for LSU.

In other news, I spent Father's Day weekend with Matt Parrish and his family. (I'm headed to see my dad next week when Cara is in town from California.) On Saturday Matt and Carrie and I drove down to Alexandria to have dinner with Ben and Jennifer and their boys. We had a great time catching up and hanging out together out for the first time in a while. When we got back to Natchitoches, we picked up Lindsey, Matt's sister, and went out to have a beer. We met Matt's brother Andy and his girlfriend Ellie at the bar. It was a fun evening.

Tippe and I went back to Natchitoches Sunday for a shrimp boil with the whole Parrish clan. We had a blast. I am grateful that they included me in their celebration, and that they have been so kind to me for so long. It's hard to believe that I have now known the Parrishes for at least 17 years, and I have come to love the like my own family.

The last thing I have to add is a bit of culture. I went to a performance of Clue at Northwestern State on Thursday evening with Larry, Kayla, Linda, Julianne, Joe and Carole. It was a musical dinner theatre murder mystery based on the board game. The play was fun, though the ending was a little nonsensical. My favorite part was the interaction with the actors during the breaks. Professor Plum even thanked me for being a good audience member.