Katy Dickinson

Athletics and Disabilities

Today starts my son's 2nd week participating in track and field as a Freshman in High School. Since Paul has a rich variety of learning disabilities (social/cognitive, dyslexia, dysgraphia, etc.), sports is one of his hardest school subjects. Paul's disabilities aren't visible - he is a tall, hefty, and smart - which causes problems when he does not respond as expected. He went out for track and field because one of the coaches is also his Math teacher. They get along well and Math is Paul's best subject. We hope that having a coach who already understands Paul will help him stay with running.

Paul was on the wrestling team in 8th grade last year. His team mates wrestled to win but Paul wrestled to learn how to be on a regular sports team. He set himself goals for his matches like: 1) don't quit, 2) don't bleed. Paul's approach has much in common with the Athlete Oath for the Special Olympics:

Let me win. But if I cannot win,
let me be brave in the attempt.

It has been raining hard all afternoon but the coach told Paul last week that "Neither rain, nor sleet, nor snow, nor hail..."* will stop training runs. I just talked to Paul on the phone and he said he was "wet, wet, wet, wet, wet," after running for hours in the rain. But he stuck it out!

* motto used by the U.S. postal service, adapted from Herodotus

Posted at 05:40PM Feb 12, 2007 by katysblog in Home & Family  |  Comments[1]

SEED Matching Status

The SEED Engineering mentoring program here at Sun is currently matching two very senior terms: SEED-2 (for alumni SEED participants who wanted a subsequent mentoring partnership), and the Distinguished Engineer (DE) term. The DE term is for a group of newly promoted DEs to work with more experienced DEs.

Both are pilots: experimental terms. I have matched five pairs out of the two terms so far: 3 mentor DEs with 3 mentee DEs, and two Vice Presidents with SEED-2 participants. I hope to get all 21 participants matched before I go to Bangalore, India at the end of this month to run the SEED 4-Site Term (for Bangalore, Beijing, Prague, and St. Petersburg).

Posted at 01:21PM Feb 12, 2007 by katysblog in Mentoring & Other Business  | 

Wrestling and Gender

Since my daughter Jessica won the match in her last duel meet, she went on to wrestle in the Varsity League Finals tournament last Saturday. She lost her matches there so regretfully she will not be going on to the next level of competition (CCS Championships).

Jessica was one of three girls wrestling at Saturday's tournament (all from different schools). One of the three (weighing 103 pounds) is going to CCS. The girls all wrestled boys in the regular matches but Jessica and Rihanna (both in the 125 pound class) wrestled each other at the end just for fun. They had been in tournaments together several times but never matched with each other. Rihanna won but it was a good match for both.

Wrestling is perhaps the only sport that sorts contenders only by weight, not by gender. All of the tournament's schools offer mixed gender wrestling teams except one, a parochial school that only allows boys on the team. One of the girls was told last week by coaches from the parochial school that it was immoral for boys to wrestle girls unless they were engaged to be married. Nonetheless, that same parochial school sent one of their boys up against Rihanna on Saturday and he is going to CCS because he won the match. The girls were disgusted with the sanctimonious and duplicitous behaviour of the school's coaches.

Part of the fun in being a spectator at a wrestling tournament is watching the variety of contenders. The weight classes go from around 100 pounds to well over 200 pounds. On Saturday, we saw every color skin, from cherry petal pink to milk chocolate brown. We also heard names originating from all over the world announced for matches. Some of the names on our daughter's team and at Saturday's tournament: Goodman, Lao, Schwartz, Mui, Hoffman, Olila, Davis, Spitters, Rao, Campbell, Peterson, Wang, Nguyen, Taylor, Singh, Ramirez, Lozano, Kahn, Gold, Reed, Lee, Kwan, Park, and Kowano.

Also fun are the t-shirt designs and slogans worn at tournaments. Most teams have new wrestling shirts each year but wearing old shirts is encouraged. Our former priest (Rev. Kathy McAdams) passed on her wrestling t-shirts to Jessica just to keep them in current use. Some of the slogans we saw at Saturday's tournament:

• There is no easy way
• Catch me if you can
• Competition is the process, domination is the goal
• Wrestler Nation
• Never Give Up
• We Don't Take Bull (for the Matadors team)
• Cats (for the Los Gatos team)
• Wresters Score in Every Position
• DWD - Desperate Wrestling Dad (also Wife of DWD)
• Combat Training
• Pain is Temporary, Pride is Forever

Jessica looked at this list and said her all time favorite wrestling t-shirt said:

Yeah, I'm a Girl
Yeah, I Wrestle.
Yeah, You Lost.
Deal with it.

Posted at 12:22PM Feb 12, 2007 by katysblog in Home & Family  |  Comments[1]