University Hills Optimist (UHO) Little Miss Kickball

The University Hills Youth Club (UHYC) will have its first formal meeting tonight at 6:30 PM in the UHO Clubhouse.

UHYC is a newly-formed organization for boys and girls, from ages 13 to 18. The organization promotes youth involvement in the community through a variety of programs and opportunities.

As the organization is just getting off the ground, you will have the chance to influence the direction of the group going forward. So make plans to attend.

As we get more information about the UHYC, we will publish it here.

The name of the game is kickball. Therefore, you must kick the ball! It's that simple, right?

Well, it is that simple, but how is it that some do it better than others? What's the secret to kicking the ball with maximum power for maximum speed and distance? Leg strength does play a role, but a strong leg cannot overcome poor technique.

The good thing is that you can achieve great technique. At its simplest, it's as easy as 1-2-3-4. Of course, the hard part is doing 1-2-3-4 consistently versus a variety of pitching. Even so, see if your current kicking technique can't benefit from the following steps to more effective kicking.

On May 17th, there will be a mandatory meeting for Teenagers All-Star applicants and their parents.

If you are a Teenagers division player applying for All-Stars tryouts or are the parent / guardian of a player applying for the UHO Teenagers All-Stars team, you must attend this meeting. This meeting will be held prior to the 8:40 PM games. This meeting will be held in the UHO Clubhouse at 7:45 PM.

This meeting is crucial for you to receive information concerning the All-Stars tryouts and expectations that will govern the tryouts and on-going participation with the team we'll field to go to Brownsville.

Again, if you are a player and want to tryout, provided that you have applied with an All-Stars application, you must attend this meeting. There will be a sign-up sheet and those who sign in and are present will be allowed to attend tryouts.

They will be going the distance, fighting to the end.

They are the teams of the UHO Kickball Teenagers division.

This past Friday (5/14), the UHO Board reaffirmed an earlier decision to extend the number of Teenagers league games from 9 to 12 per team. This resulted in an additional six games added to the league schedule.

The games are as follows:

• (Game 204) May 24,7:20 PM on UHO3, Eclipse (TN2) vs. Blue Thunder (TN1)
• (Game 205) May 24,8:40 PM on UHO3, The Beastettes (TN3) vs. Cherry Dimez (TN4)
• (Game 206) May 25,8:40 PM on UHO2, Blue Thunder (TN1) vs. The Beastettes (TN3)
• (Game 207) May 25,8:40 PM on UHO3, Cherry Dimez (TN4) vs. Eclipse (TN2)
• (Game 208) May 26,8:40 PM on UHO2, Cherry Dimez (TN4) vs. Blue Thunder (TN1)
• (Game 209) May 26, 8:40 PM on UHO3, Eclipse (TN2) vs. The Beastettes (TN3)

The master schedule contains these game listings.

There will be a CLOSED DOOR UHO Kickball board meeting on May 14th, 2010, starting at 7 PM. This meeting is for board members ONLY.

We will discuss All-Stars and make preparations for the Pee-Wee/Rookie Spirit Day, as well as discuss other league matters as we near the end of another successful season.

This weekend, two of our teams, Fusion and the Cherry Dimez, make their way to Corpus Christi for the Southside LMK Mother's Day Tournament. For those of us traveling to the tournament, this should give us a good opportunity to see not only how UHO does, but also to get familiar with the quality level of competition we'll see in the upcoming State tournament in Riverside. We'll obviously see more Brownsville and Corpus teams in this tournament.

UHO is the only Austin-based league heading into the tournament.

We will be using Twitter to broadcast UHO's results in the tournament in near real-time. If you'd like to have these results delivered to your phone, subscribe to our Twitter feed. Again, Twitter is a free service for messaging. If you don't want to subscribe, you can always view the messages on our Twitter page.

Get updates via SMS by texting follow uhokickball to 40404 in the United States.

Here are the tournament brackets for the Seniors and Teenagers divisions.

Good luck to both teams.

Attention, all UHO Kickball board members. We will have a board meeting on May 6th, 2010, at 7 PM, in the UHO Clubhouse.

Unfortunately, we know that some board members/coaches will not be able to make the meeting, as their teams will be playing at that time. We will be sure to get any information discussed at the meeting to those board members/coaches that cannot attend.

We need to discuss a few things as we head into the second half of the season, including Rookie Spirit Day (May 15), All-Star finances/fundraisers, and year-end stuff. Please let us know if you plan to attend and/or if have any item that you would like to add to the agenda.

For more information, please contact Kelli Saldaña.

By Dennis, Your Neighborhood UHO Webmaster

I've been on the record as saying that among the divisions in UHO Kickball, the Juniors division is the best. It's not that our Juniors teams have killer athletes, though many have the potential to become just that. In my eyes, all of the teams have a couple of players who stand out from the others. Overall, it is the competitiveness of the division that makes it the best.

If you missed the D4 Mid-Season tournament, you would have seen evidence of our Juniors' potential when it comes to the State tournament. Our teams finished 2nd, 3rd, and 4th. Given a different play here or there, the results would've been even better, and the order in which the teams finished could have been totally different.

At times, watching Juniors games can be a bit painful. By painful, I mean that the games are unpredictable and gameplay can be inconsistent. A team can play well one week, scoring over 10 runs in a game, only to get blanked the following week (as an example, this actually happened to the Lady Hurricanes). Obviously, this unpredictability can happen in the higher divisions as well.

The Juniors are tweeners. They are no longer Rookies, getting by with on-field assistance from coaches. Yet, they don't have the typical polish of Seniors, who play the game at a greater speed with better knowledge. All in all, the Juniors know and can do more, but are still trying to find their way in the game.

It's fun to roam around the sidelines and take pictures. You never know what you are going to see. Some moments escape so quickly that you'll be lucky to catch them on camera. However, there are some moments that just seem to linger, just begging you to capture them. We don't know exactly what was being said here, but the look on the girl's face seemed to suggest she had something pressing on her mind. Due to a special filter on our camera, we were able to pick up on the coach's thoughts at the time.