National Ball Hockey Tournament

This coming summer, Kitchener-Waterloo is hosting the Canadian National Ball Hockey Championship. The tryouts were held over the last few weeks, and the team has mostly been selected. I was chosen as one of the two goalies on the team. Our team will be underestimated, and we may even not be a good team, but this is a once in a lifetime sort of experience that not many get. We will be playing teams from BC, Alberta, Other parts of Ontario, Manitoba, and I think one or two teams from the East Coast of Canada.

To me, playing in this tournament means a lot. I am the youngest player on the team by atleast one year, and in the tournament there probably won't be a whole whack of 93's playing. The best players from the tournament are selected to play for Team Canada in the following year. This year the tournament is being held in Austria, which tells you that this isn't just road hockey, it's taken seriously.

I never thought I would ever be able to play in the National tournament, let alone it being in my home town. I was extremely excited when I was told about the try outs for the team. I've played for team KW before, but that was is Provincials. This is a whole new level, this is against the best of the best from Canada. It is at the end of July. The week before the tournament I will be extremely jittery, and I will not get much sleep. It takes place over several days, and will be at several different arenas. I hope that our team will be solid and we will dominate teams from all over the country.

Here is the link to the website click here.

Come support us if you can! :D

Poetry

I have found that poetry has widened my view on the different things in life. I don't just look at certain things and judge them from what they look like, now I actually think about what is inside of them. Initially I thought it was going to be very boring and it would be, but then once we got into it, I found it was more fun then I thought it would be. I thought it all had to be rhyming but I learned that it can basically be what ever you want it to be.
The first poem I am sharing is Deathrow which is about an inmate on deathrow questioning why he is there.
The second poem is called Final Day which is what I would want to do on my final day.
And the final poem is called Chasing Circles which is a poem that circles around itself.
All in all I have liked this unit so far and I hope it stays interesting to me.

Screenplay Writing

When we did the screenplay unit, I really enjoyed it. I thought it was going to be hard and boring, but I was surprised and I think it is the best part we have done so far. It has shown me that all movies start as what we did. I think because of that unit, I want to pursue a career in screenplay writing or something to do with writing movies.

The screenplay I wrote is about a group of people who are sent back in time and continue to keep dying and get sent further back in time. It is titled Stuck in the Past.

Easter is Upon Us!

(Mckinley Ceaser smiles after he found one of the six golden eggs.)

Easter is this weekend and you could tell how excited the leadership class is about it.

They held three different games in the Caf today at lunch. These games included a spoon race, an egg swinging competition and a dangling marshmallow competition. The winner of the spoon race won a one pound chocolate bunny, but the loser got an egg smashed on their head. The eggs that were smashed over the loser’s heads were completely random, some were hard boiled, but some were raw. There seemed to be more raw eggs than hard boiled. The second game was the egg swinging competition. The competitors had to tie an egg that was attached to a string around their belt loops and had to swing an egg into a cup. The winner won a chocolate bunny. The last game was the dangling bunny competition, where competitors had a marshmallow bunny dangled infront of their face and they had to jump around trying to eat it. The first person to eat three bunnies won a bag of mini eggs or a chocolate bunny.

They also hid Easter eggs alls around the school before lunch, including six golden eggs that were packed to the top with candy.

The leadership class came up with these ideas in one of their brainstorming sessions. They decided to do different competitions the way they did because, “We wanted the competitors to have something to go for. They wanted to make it more of a challenge and wanted it to be a lot of luck with the spoon race,” leadership teacher Mr. Conlon says.

The games in the Caf were all in good fun and provided good entertainment.

Have a great Easter everyone!

NHL 10 Hits Hard!

From Marc Andre Fleury to Martin Broduer, NHL 10 has them rated perfectly. From the best in the NHL to the worst, NHL 10 has them all.

The graphics in NHL 10 are almost realistic on the Xbox 360. When you play, you feel like you are watching a real hockey game, but you are controlling the players. Everything in the game is realistic like the goal celebrations. The celebrations range between a fist pump to jumping up against the boards. They all depend on the goal that was scored; if it is a blow out, a small celebration happens, but if it's in overtime in the playoffs, the celebrations are much more elaborate. The announcers are also very realistic. They vary depending on where you are playing. Sometimes they are biased and sometimes they sound the same for both teams.

And the players. What can I say? All that comes to mind is perfect. The best, play the best in games, and the worst well they just suck in some games. The attributes that the players have, really show unlike previous NHL games. Also when you are a player, the "Skill Stick" portion of the game has been enhanced to be much more realistic. Sidney Crosby can dangle through any player in his path, but a player such as Alexander Steen who is not an NHL super star, will get stopped dead in his tracks. And lastly the goalies. The goalies are much more realistic as well. They make the saves that most people would say they should make, but sometimes they slip up like in real life and let a softy in. And if they let a few quickies in at the beginning of the game, they could end up not playing very well in the game which is an old feature that has been made more realistic.

There are several game types including Be a GM mode, where you are the general manager of a team and you have to make the appropriate decisions to better your team. This game mode was called Dynasty mode up until this year.

Another great game mode is Be a Pro. In Be a Pro, you make a player up and you start his career. You start by playing the Prospects game and then you get drafted. Once you are drafted, you are usually assigned to the teams farm team, where you work your way up to the NHL. You can play as a goalie, defence, or forward. All three are extremely fun and realistic. The one downside to it is if you don't play in all the games, you don't get as much playing time.

All in all I would rate this game 9.9 out of 10. It is the best sports game out right now in my opinion. EA Sports has revolutionized the NHL gaming world forever with this smash hit.

A Trip to the Amazon

Writing natural comes to me. I can write very long stories and essays in a short period of time with ease. It's not the fact that I can type fast, it's the fact I enjoy making up and telling different stories. I took this course so my stories can be improved quite a bit. I have only ever made a few different stories, but this is by far my best one.

When I first made this story, it took me a long time to figure out what a wanted to do at the end. I surprised myself with my choices at the end of the short story. There are a few common things that happen in the story, but different things that aren't so common happen because of them. The story incorporates a different style of ending than most other stories. A Personal Sacrifice is the title of the story. The title is a good title in my eyes. It suits the story very well.

This story is a different type of story than I've ever written before. It is more mature and it is much more interesting than previous adventure stories. Hope you enjoy!

How I Stay Connected...

There are several ways that I stay connected, some stranger than others. I use FaceBook like most of the students that have access to a computer in our school. FaceBook is good because if you need to say something to someone and they are not online, you can leave them a message on their "Wall" which they then see when they sign in. That is one of the many types of communication i have via the internet. Another way is through Msn. Msn is good to talk to people if you are arranging something. But it is only good if that person is at their computer or on their iPod/iPhone. You can also send e-mails from Msn but I have to admit, it is kind of annoying getting e-mails when people can just wait until you are on. My personal favourite is Xbox Live. When you are on Xbox Live, you can talk to your friends with microphones, if you have your msn connected to your Live account you can talk on Msn. Also, a new addition Xbox has made is FaceBook through your Xbox 360 Dashboard(start up menu). These three things make Xbox way better than PS3 and Wii. A down side to this is it is painful to have to type on Xbox because unless you buy the $20 keyboard you have to move the joystick over every letter. I also talk to people in person and over the phone. And the one I use the most is texting.