Category: Uncategorized

I have a lot of random stuff in my work office.

Most recently, I stumbled across a ticket stub from a Phillies vs Braves game in went to nine years ago when I lived in Georgia. It wasn’t just any Phillies vs Braves game, either: Cole Hamels and three other pitchers combined to no-hit the Braves that afternoon. Hamels was effectively wild, posting seven strikeouts and five walks, while the bullpen didn’t allow a baserunner.

That was actually the second no-hitter I witnessed as a fan.

The first was back in 2003 when Kevin Millwood blanked Barry Bonds and the San Francisco Giants at Veterans Stadium. Millwood went the full nine innings and Ricky Ledee provided the only offense with a solo home run in the first inning. That had to be one of the most boring – but exciting – 1-0 in games in the history of baseball.

Fast forward 11 years and teleport from one bygone stadium to another that has since been repurposed (Turner Field) and that’s where you’d find me sitting in Section 124L, Row 3, Seat 101.

September 2, 2014 was also Bobby Cox Bobblehead Day.

Why is that important?

Well, months later, I started dating a woman and saw that same bobblehead sitting on her TV cabinet. As it turns out, we were both at the same game and didn’t know it. Of course we wouldn’t know it because we didn’t know each other, but that made for a great anecdote. (We’d later go to several games together: CONCACAF Gold Cup, TCU vs Ole Miss, Atlanta Hawks.)

I’m a nerd for numbers (and social media).

They get better when you add a zero at the end.

1 turns into 10, which turns into 100, which begets 1,000.

Tack on two more zeroes and that now becomes 100,000.

Seeing 100k on July 1 meant a lot to me – and it’s not salary-driven.

July 1 was the date that USTFCCCA social media accounts eclipsed 100k combined followers, namely Instagram and Twitter. That was 67,403 on Twitter and 32,765 on Instagram for 100,168 between the two giants.

As the resident social media manager, hitting that milestone meant a lot.

I have poured more than eight years into building the USTFCCCA brand and expanding the Association’s digital footprint, first as the Communications Assistant and now as the Communications Manager. We wouldn’t have pulled in more than five million hits on the website in each of the past two years without having as big of a reach as we do on social media.

This didn’t happen overnight. It never does.

• July 1, 2019: 40.1k followers
• July 1, 2020: 50.3k followers
• July 1, 2021: 65.2k followers
• July 1, 2022: 87.6k followers
• July 1, 2023: 100.1k followers

And that’s just what happened from 2019 to 2023.

Perhaps the two most important catalysts for this growth – 25.3% of it between 2019 and 2020, 29.7% of it between 2020 and 2021, and 34.2% of it between 2021 and 2022, and 14.2% between 2022 and 2023 – have been keeping a steady voice and providing captivating content. I already wrote about the first part (which you can see by the hyperlink) and the second part really ignited with the yearlong digital/social media campaign that we did from 2020 to 2021 about celebrating 100 years of the NCAA Track & Field Championships.

I could write for hours about this subject, but that’s where I’ll leave it.

Do I know what the future will bring? No.

Do I know what I need to keep doing? Yes.

William Lawrence Camp shaped my life more than I knew.

Growing up, I went to William Lawrence Camp – an all-boys sleepaway camp in Center Tuftonboro, New Hampshire – for nine consecutive years. I spent five years as a camper and then four years as a staff member (You receive special recognition for 10 years at WLC, so I am a bit bummed that I never got to become a Bill Larry Man. I will forever be a Bill Larry Boy).

Ever since my first summer, I fell in love with the General Store Run.

It was a four-mile race in which every camper and staff member would participate on the last Friday morning of four-week increment. Juniors and their counselors would start first, followed by middlers and their counselors, bookended by seniors and their counselors.

Every other camper and staff member would complain about having to do it, but not I. That, along with the annual trip to the New Hampshire Fisher Cats or the Portland Sea Dogs, was the highlight of the summer to me and I could not wait to toe that start line drawn in the dirt.

The more I look back at it now, the more I realize how much the General Store Run at William Lawrence Camp fostered my love of running. You could give it as much – or as little – effort as you wanted and I always gave it my all, because there was just something about it!

I always remembered the run to be challenging, though. It was downhill on the way out and uphill on the way back. They did not call the final hill next to camp “Heartbreak Hill” for nothing (You can see how this was a very New England camp, naming it after the Boston Marathon).

The other day I plugged the route into some mapping software to see just how tough it was, based on an elevation profile. As it turns out, it was pretty difficult, dropping from a highest point of 1081 feet to 712 feet over two miles and climbing the reverse back.

No wonder why all of us would be exhausted after we finished!