August 14, Split, Croatia

Ken hasn't been feeling too well so he sat out the scrimmage with South Africa.

Paul expressed his disappointment as to the how the South Africans were playing. The South Africans had a couple of really bigger, older guys but didn't have the passing skills that the Santa Barbara boys have.

A couple of things to clear any confusion about the blog and photos. As I've mentioned in the past, general photos are dumped into photobucket.com; there is a link on the blog site. The username is sbhseurope2008, the password is waterpolo. Also, if you want to see past posts, just click on the archived posts to the right on the blog site.

The photos which I am putting up on the actual blogsite are thumbnail photos. If you direct your mouse on those photos and click, you can enlarge the photos to your heart's desire. I have had requests to take photos of different boys so that the parents can seem them more clearly. I'm trying to be as discrete as possible about taking photos of the boys. Adolescent boys are somewhat self conscious and my camera is one of those snap and shoots so I don't want them to think that I'm always in their face.

Parker saw the doctor (who has had much experience with broken noses)at the Hotel Jadran yesterday. Dave and Parker can probably give you more details as to what Parker can or cannot do. I do know that he shouldn't be immersing his head in chlorinated water but the Adriatic sea will be good for him. So while the South Africans were scrimmaging with Santa Barbara, Parker was egg-beatering, doing lunges aroung the pool, doing crunches, trying different variations of push ups and working out in the gym before the scrimmage even began. I think this injury is actually going to make Parker a stronger water polo and, hopefully, he'll inspire the other players to become stronger themselves, a silver lining to a dark cloud.