Thursday Cardinal Couple -- 53 days

THURSDAY CARDINAL COUPLE

(JEFF MCADAMS takes the Cardinal Couple site out for a spin today extolling the virtues of summer and the promise of great things to come in less than two months. It's already been one incredible 2013....and the Cards look to make a little more noise before the year ends. So, grab the sunglasses, put on the shorts and strap in...Jeff takes you cruisin' Cardinal style!)

There's a lot I like about summer:

Taking the top down on the Jeep and driving with the wind in my hair, and if its going to be especially warm and dry for a while, taking the doors off.

Dining al fresco.

Visiting with friends on porches, patios, and decks.

There's one thing that I rather don't like about summer, though, and that's sports, or rather the lack of sports that I find interesting.  Sorry folks, but in general, I'm not much of a fan of baseball or golf.  I'm glad that the NBA will be done after tonight.  And you know, when I think of sports in summer, I think Ice Hockey...oh wait, no, no I don't.  We do have the WNBA, though with only the handful of games that are televised, and no local franchise, its hard to get too terribly excited.


UofL Baseball's elimination from the College World Series signals the end of the 2012-2013 athletic competition calendar for the University of Louisville.  No, don't worry, this isn't yet another recap of "The Year of The Cardinals", we all know the litany of accomplishments from the 2012-2013 academic year for UofL, both on and off the court.  Yes, I'm still celebrating them as well, but there's nothing new to discuss here on a Louisville Sports Fan blog.

Of course, there is still activity around Floyd street and other UofL Athletic venues.  We heard from Jeff Walz, for example, that the NCAA is allowing limited time for teams to work with players over the summer.  Fall sports, such as Soccer, Field Hockey and Volleyball also have many of their athletes on campus doing individual workouts and preparing for the coming season.  There are the summer camps for a variety of UofL sports.  And of course student athletes can always be working on their skills, strength, and conditioning on their own, regardless of the time of year.  Joe Filomeno of the baseball team tweeted yesterday morning, "First lift of the 2014 season complete.. #OperationOmaha2014 is underway"  Of course, they just got home from Omaha the day before and are merely a few days past the official end of their last season.  We've also remarked on the amount of comments we've heard from various women's basketball athletes about being in the gym, "putting up shots", and "doing work", since just after the NCAA Final Four.  That activity is largely in the background, mostly out-of-sight, though.  We catch snippets of it from athletes' tweets, a few go to see the activity at the camps, and we get to follow the summer achievements of athletes such as Montrezl Harrell on the US National U19 team, and Shoni Schimmel going off to play for the US at the World University Games - The WUGS - in Russia.

Otherwise, we wait.

For 53 days, we wait.

August 11th is the first scheduled event of the 2013-2014 athletic calendar - the Women's Soccer Team plays an exhibition game at Vanderbilt.  This could change, though, as Volleyball hasn't yet announced their schedule for the fall.  They have, for the past couple of years, held an exhibition event honoring (and if there are enough willing to partcipate - playing) the alumnae of the volleyball team.  I don't believe this event will occur before August 11th, but it may still be the first "home" event of the season.

We here at The Cardinal Couple are committed to posting blog entries daily.  We'll keep on doing the weekly radio show as well.  We'll find things to talk about, don't worry about that.  Hopefully we'll be entertaining and informative in the process.

53 days.

I can hardly wait.

-Jeff McAdams

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