German Baseball and Math Competition - A Post About David

I am excited to talk about a few things going on with David right now. He has a lot going on and has had to do some growing up lately. Right now at school, 5th grade is making the final turn to the home stretch. This is the last grade in primary school at BIS, next year he will have more freedom going between classes and such in secondary school. To wrap up the year they have a nine week project they call Exhibition. The students have to show good organization and time management skills, along with extensive research and presentation on the subject that they choose. He is a couple of weeks into this project and we think he is starting to realize the high expectation level and what it is going to take to be successful in this project. We are hoping for the best.

In the mean time he is getting ready for a math competition starting April 3rd. There will be to come after it is over but I wanted to let everyone know what a great achievement this is for him. David has always been good at math, scary at times. The first time I remember thinking that this kid is smarter than me was when he was a toddler. Before we could really understand his words we were reading a book together. With his motions I could tell that he was counting to ten. After doing this a few times we realized that is what not a matter of misunderstanding him, it was that he was counting in Spanish.

Fast forward to this year, his first year at an international school. It did not take the teachers very long to identify David's strengths. A brand new "maths" group was formed. Originally it was only David and one other boy. Each Monday they meet up with Mrs. Mountfield, the teacher that saw in Rome, for the special advanced math class. Later she also created an advanced reading class and David was also invited to that. I have to say they do some pretty advanced stuff in this class. It is not just math problems, she makes them do a lot of critical thinking to find the best solutions to problems. They use a lot physical items in the classroom to create and solve problems, not just pencil and paper. David really enjoys and looks forward to it.

Around the middle of the school year we got a hint that Mrs. Mountfield was looking into bringing her advanced math group to a competition. It was all very secretive for a while, then they hit us with the bomb. They want to take David to Berlin with three other kids from BIS to compete in a math competition between several regional international schools. Our little boy is riding a train to Berlin without us for four days! It was one thing to let him go to Salzburg with the whole 5th grade, but this is just four kids and two teachers.

Well, needless to say we are dealing with our parental issues and are excited about this opportunity. David has given up his after lunch recess time twice a week for the past several weeks to spend additional time preparing for this. While in Berlin he is going to stay with two other boys from his group in a host families house. The host family has kids that go to the international school in Berlin. I am pretty sure I cannot correctly solve the types of scenarios they have been preparing for, for the competition. There are several rounds over two days that include individual challenges, team challenges, the practical challenge round, and the investigation challenge round. At the end there is a construction challenge that they get to team up with the others school's competitors for a fun activity. We are so excited about everything these few days will expose him to, it will be such a growing experience that he will remember.

Definitely more to come after it is done. Please be thinking about David next weekend, and hope that his Mommy and Daddy can deal with him being gone so far away.

Baseball in Germany:
I am so glad to have David playing baseball again, and he is too. Not only that, but he is getting to play at a reasonably high level, more than I ever expected in Germany. A few months ago I was getting really down about not finding a team and not putting together some make shift team or organization for him to play on. One day I was talking to the father of David's friend Drew. He told me he had found this organization, the Garching Atomics, and that he thought they had a team that was around David's age. Two days later we were at the indoor gym practicing with the team. Two moths have gone by and we have been to practice twice a week for two hours each session. A couple of weeks ago the weather was nice enough that we were introduced to the outdoor field for a practice. I just knew this was going to be a soccer field where they moved the goal out of the way for baseball practice. Nope, they have a good facility for practice and games. The same field is used in both cases, and it is used for all age groups, but it is definitely better than nothing.

Here is David in the batting cage above and taking live batting practice below on the field.

Not bad for a mobile phone camera getting the ball coming off of the bat.

So the town of Garching is to Munich what Richardson or Plano is to Dallas, a very close in suburb. You can see the Allianz Arena just south of Garching. It is actually a very reasonable distance from our house to get to the field, so that is nice. The Atomics organization is made up of several teams from younger than David to a men's division. The men have won the Bavarian Championship for the past two years, so the city has rewarded them by breaking ground on a new and much improved field that will be ready next spring. It seems to be a very organized and well run organization. To my amazement our only investment is 45 euros per year to be a part of the organization. That includes the jersey and hat and injury insurance coverage. There are no fees for the season play or tournaments. I am not sure how they do it or where the money comes from, but I intend to find out more as time goes on just out of curiosity.

David's coach is in his 20's, grew up in Bavaria but went to college and played baseball in the US. He still plays for the men's team and is still in school getting a teaching license, I think. He speaks very good English as do most of the other folks involved with this organization. He is a great coach. Very detail oriented and all about mechanics. He knows baseball and knows how to coach, I love it.

In mid march there was an indoor baseball tournament that David's team entered. In was in the city of Rosenheim, which is south and east of Munich. From our house it is halfway to Innsbruck, but only about 75 minutes away. This is the view as we were headed home after the tournament. As usual the picture does not do justice to being there.

This indoor game only slightly resembles baseball. It is very fast moving, the umpire is tossing the ball to the batter, there is a pitch every 5 seconds or so, and the games only last 20 minutes until the finals which are seven innings, which only takes about 25 minutes to complete. If you hit the ball and it hits the ceiling you are out. There are only two strikes and you can foul out if you hit the same foul ball in the same area twice. Here is a little two minute video to give you an idea about the action.

So some aspects of baseball. The upside is they really have to be thinking ahead and work together. The weirdest part is there is no break between innings. If the batter gets to the plate the umpire tosses the ball regardless of if the fielders are ready to play. There is a mad dash as soon as the third out is made.

David Batting

The umpires for each game were coaches from other teams in the tournaments when they had a break in game action. For whatever reason the girl below, from one of the softball teams, was the best tosser for our team. They scored almost 40 runs in the 20 minute game against a team that was unbeaten besides the beat down from the Atomics. 

There were all different age groups plus baseball and softball teams. The games were played at two facilities that were a 10 minute walk between each other. Each facility had multiple gyms, called sports halls here. As you can see from the pics and the video each gym had different wall features making it tough to get used to how the ball was going to come off of the walls. They only played two games in the same hall, the rest of the time was back and forth between facilities.

David making a play. 

The age group that David's team was in was supposed to be 2002 to 2004 birthdays. David is right in the middle of the age group. So explain to me the two pictures below. The kid on the left was, I am not kidding shorter than Katherine. Now, he could play ball, he was really good. I was sitting down and the camera was sitting on my leg, the kid next to him was David's height. Now take a look at the right. The kid batting was one of many "kids" on this team that were taller than me. Yes, the Atomics swept the floor with them, but they were huge.

So David's team did really well. Before this tournament this age group Atomics team had never been past the group rounds. Today they had won all of their games, easily. 30-0, 16-8, 15-4, 23-2, then they got behind 0-7 in the quarterfinal game, finally some competition. Nope, this is the game that the rest of the game, final 38-7. Semi finals they won pretty easily 16-6. It was at this point that David was as high as a kite on winning. He went so far to say this was one of the best days of his life, he was very excited. There was a long gap between the semi finals and the final game. After that they lost the magic. They got beat by the Lions, a team that looked to be of similar talent. Our team that had made plays all day was throwing high and dropping balls, our bats were popping out and not making contact like they had all day. 

David was pretty crushed after the game. I was really proud of the way he acted during the game. They got beaten down pretty good and David never gave up, even though it looked like a lot of his teammates had. He was visibly upset but he held it together. A couple of teammates threw their gloves down in disgust after it was over, David was leading the pack to shake hands and had nothing to do with the other nonsense. The coach got all up in the kitchen of those boys throwing a fit. The German words were loud and firm, I knew what he was saying without understanding the actual words if you know what I mean. Great to see the coach correcting that behavior.

At the end of the day David was still disappointed in the result but it was a great team building experience and an opportunity for him to see how his body reacts to pressure situations. I think the Atomics are better for having the experience and they can carry the success into the outdoor season.

This past Saturday David and I joined players, parents, and organization members to help get the field ready for the new season. They do not have any city workers grooming this field, they do it all. It was really awesome to see so many people show up to get this done. It was some serious work too.

I am glad that David got to experience putting in an afternoon of work to make the field ready. He has never known anything other than expensive nice city ball fields. I also enjoyed helping out. I was reminded of my days playing little league. In Allen if there is a passing rain shower they will reschedule games so the fields are not damaged. I remember in Lubbock it would come a turd floater halfway through the game. We would sit in the car and wait until it passed, get out and squeegee off the field and play ball again. Those were the days.

This is the other David on the team. His Dad is from Venezuela and I think his mom is American. They are very nice and speak English. He is a good ball player and a good kid.

We are ready for the outdoor season. I hear tales from the coach and other parents that they set up a full on biergarten instead of bleachers. 1 euro half liter German beer and fresh grilled meat while watching baseball. I can't wait.

Well, I couldn't do it. I couldn't go an entire post without posting a couple of pictures of princess Katherine. Above is some sort of fortress of pink and purple temple of stuffed animals around her bed. Below are my girls looking cute together.

Random pic from the park. Winter never really came to Bavaria this year. We have been enjoying high sixty degree temperatures most of the past two weeks. Just got past a brief cool down but it is warming up again. 

Someone has lost their first tooth. Thanks for reading, talk to everyone soon I hope.