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In case there is anyone out there that is unsure of what fantasy football is I thought I would help explain it.

I had heard about it for some time, but I was not 100% sure how it worked, so I looked it up on Wikipedia and found some very interesting facts.

To Quote Wikipedia:
“Fantasy football is an interactive, virtual competition in which people manage professional football players versus one another. Fantasy football allows people to act as general managers of a pseudo-football team. The players that an individual is able to manage are professional American Football players in the National Football League. The different actions people are able to make are: drafting, trading, adding/dropping players, and changing rosters. Due to the growth of Internet, fantasy football has become far more popular in America today than ever before.”

How it all began:

In 1962 Wilfred Winkenbach, Bil Tunnell and Scotty Starling came up with the rules that became fantasy football. The inaugural league was called the Greater Oakland Professional Pigskin Prognosticators League (GOPPPL). The league was made up of eight members, the members were wither pro football journalists, administrative affiliates or anyone that had purchased or sold 10 tickets to the Raiders 1663 season.

In the GOPPPL each roster had the following: two fullbacks, two quarterback, two kick/punt returners, two field goal kickers, two defensive backs/linebacker, two defensive linemen , four offensive ends and four halfbacks.

The first ever number one fantasy football selection was George Blanda.

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I just returned from a cheer convention in Maryland, it was a lot of fun. Conventions are a great place to meet potential customers and to network with other people in your business. There are several different conventions that take place every weekend.  If you are a business owner I find conventions to be an affordable avenue to advertise your business. Conventions can vary in size from hundreds to thousands of attendees.  The cost to rent a booth is usually dependent on the size of the event. The bigger the event the more costly the booth.  The size of the booth you rent also determines the cost.
Conventions allow you to meet potential customers, introduce yourself and have them put a face to your name. As salespeople we usually sell ourselves before even the product.  I find conventions to be a great way to sell yourself.

Conventions usually range from 1-3 days, with set hours per day.  What I have found helpful is to check and see if the convention you want to attend offers “concentrated hours”.  Those are hours that there are no classes or seminars going on and most attendees will be available to go to the vendor booths.  I attended a convention last year, where the organization gave free drink tickets, and the bar was located right in the middle of the vendors.  I thought that was a great idea.  Most conventions will do scavenger hunts, which consists of a list of questions that each attendee must get answered by each vendor.  If they get each question answered they are put in a drawing for a free gift.

Here comes the fun part, what items do you want to give away at your booth.  Giveaways serve two purposes, one they are great advertisement ( your name, number and email address will be listed on all of them) and two they attract people to your booth.  In selecting what giveaway you want, you should think of a few things:

1. What type of budget do you have?
2. What type of event are you going to?
3. What do you think will attract people to your booth?

For example I was just at a cheerleading convention, and I gave away mini sewing kits, they seemed to be a big hit. I polled several cheerleading organization prior to the convention and asked them what type of giveaway they would like. I think a little preparation goes a long way in choosing your giveaways.

There are times throughout the convention where there are very few people coming to your booth, I would use this tie to visit and introduce yourself to the other vendors.  I met several vendors that I could potentially work with in the future.  All in all conventions are a great way to network and can be very cost effective for smaller businesses to advertise.

For anyone out there who loves Halloween or has a child who loves Halloween, I have found some low cost ideas to turn your house into a haunted house.

There are three important elements involved in turning an ordinary house into a haunted house: lighting, sound and decor.

Tip # 1 – Switch out your regular light bulbs for black light bulbs. These are pretty inexpensive and can be found at most home improvement stores.

Tip #2 – Play a CD with Halloween themed organ music.  You can also set up a play-list of Halloween themed music on your iPod.

Tip #3 – Place vases around the room with dried or dead flowers.  You can also tie a black or orange ribbon around the vase.

Tip #4 – Light a candelabra with long tapered candles on a table. Low lighting will create a creepy feeling.

Tip #5 – Place dry ice around the room to create a fog like appearance.

Tip #6 – Hang black curtains over the door to create a spooky at appearance and it will also prevent guests from entering certain rooms.

Tip #7 – Hang plastic bats from the ceiling and fake spider webs in all of the corners.

Have a public haunted house? We can tailor make accident and/or liability policies for a variety of “haunted events”.

As an insurer of youth amateur sports organizations for accident medical and general liability insurance, I’m aware of assigning “risk” by age brackets and then calculating the appropriate premium.  No one in my industry asks for the weight of any one player, nor is that taken into consideration when an organization fills in our application for underwriting review.  Insurance companies accept there are going to be variables to the norm for height and weight in every age category.

However, for the purposes of this blog, I’m going to comment on something I see as a mother and grandmother regularly involved in my children’s sports tryouts.  The weigh-in!  There’s nothing that brings more tension in my family than the pre-season weigh-in.  Funny, as a mother, I went along with the flow – naive to the implications because I had an average size son, falling well within the acceptable height and weight categories for every sport he was involved.  The tide has turned though, and I’m now watching my grandson step into his sports shoes, with one obvious difference.  He’s at the top of the weight chart although not so much so regarding height.

The initial weigh-in for 9 yr. old youth football was held and my grandson was .09 lbs. over the 100 lb. weight limit for his age bracket. The ultimatum was to lose the .09 lbs. or move up to the next older age category.  The second weigh-in will be in one week, after three stressful weeks of monitoring his calorie intake.  Observing him on the field during this time, there is no noticeable difference between him and his teammates; in fact, quite the opposite.  Since he’s short, he’s not as fast or aggressive.  The taller boys seems to move with more agility and speed, and with that speed pick up velocity, which can produce some pretty bell-ringing hits, regardless of your weight.  His size doesn’t seem to be a detriment to his teammates, as his lack of agility keeps his feet somewhat planted on the ground, much to his dismay.  Compound that with little knowledge of the game, no significant skill to speak of, and a healthy dose of 9-year-old fear of hitting and being hit, I think he’s right where he belongs.

If he doesn’t lose the .09 lbs, he’ll automatically be sent up an age bracket in the league with older, more mature athletes.  He may be in their weight class, albeit at the low end, but according to the scale, that’s where he belongs.  What the scale doesn’t take into consideration is the edge these “big-leaguers” have in knowledge, skill, maturity and again, for some, agility and speed.  The likelihood of him getting hurt has accelerated greatly in my mature eyes.  Far greater than his ability to hurt someone because of his teeter-tottering weight.

Add to that the humiliation of being told you have a “weight problem” at 9 yrs of age, not being able to join in the occasional ice cream treat, a hot dog at the ball game and enduring daily weigh-in’s “just to see where you are,” I doubt this has been an enjoyable three weeks for junior.  While there are exceptions to everything, I think we need to let kids be kids, cope with the advantages and disadvantages of playing against the next guy regardless of size or height, and let the chips fall where they may.  Until someone can scientifically or medically support injury statistics that show there aren’t just as many injuries moving up a class according to weight versus age, I’m not likely to be on the side of using weight as a predictor of risk to injury.

By the way, what do they do with the underweight or significantly shorter child?  Do they move them down a class?  Seems the same argument could apply in reverse in their behalf.  Any comments sports fans?

There has been much controversy since a Connecticut judge ruled that cheerleading was not a sport. I insure several cheerleading organizations and almost everyone I have spoken to disagrees with the ruling.

A sport by definition is “a physical activity that is governed by a set of rules or customs and often engaged in competitively”. That would hold true for competitive cheerleading, but the majority of cheerleading squads do not participate in any competitions.  Their sole purpose is to motivate the team they are cheering for and also to entertain the fans.

The Women’s Sports Foundation has 4 specific criteria that need to be met in order to consider the activity a sport.

1. A physical activity which involves propelling a mass through space or overcoming the resistance of a mass
2. A contest or competition against or with an opponent
3. Is governed by rules which explicitly define the time, space and purpose of the contest and the conditions under which a winner is determined.
4. The acknowledged primary purpose of the competition is a comparison of the relative skills of the participants.

Although there are many cheerleading squads that are competitive and that would fall under the guidelines of a sport, there are still more cheerleading squads that do not compete and that would not fall under the sports category.  Many people have speculated that until competitive cheer out numbers non-competitive cheer, cheerleading will not be considered a sport.

There is no debate that cheerleaders are outstanding athletes.  Just like any other athlete cheerleaders must condition, train and practice.  The activities that cheerleaders perform require strength, poise and flexibility.

Maybe they should define cheerleading into two categories: Competitive cheerleading (which would fall under a sport) and then just cheerleading.

What are your thoughts?

Millions of children participate in youth sports every year. Youth sports are a great way for children to exercise, build self confidence and learn team work. Although there are many benefits associated with youth sports, there is also some risk.

As parents, our main concern is the safety of our children. Although we want our children to play youth sports we also want them to be safe.

I found many articles online regarding tips to keep your children safe while participating in youth sports. Northwestern Health Science had many informative articles on this subject.

I found 4 tips that were mentioned in all of the articles that I read:

Tip 1 – Warm-up and cool down before and after all practices or games.

This is extremely important and often overlooked due to time. Warm up and cool down stretches prevent many muscle strains. They also help promote good body mechanics.

Tip 2 – Wear Protective gear. This is a very important tip, and it encompasses several areas.

1.    Make sure that the gear fits you properly

2.    Only use protective gear specific to each sport.

3.    Make sure that any gear that is shared by others is wiped down and cleaned properly prior to wearing it.

Tip 3 – Kids should play by the rules.

When kids do not follow the rules, they are more likely to get penalties or fouls, which increases the risk of someone getting hurt.

Tip 4 – Never play through pain

I found this to be a very important tip, and since I have seen it happen first hand I realize how important it is. When you child gets injured, they need to stop playing. The worst thing you can do is tell you child to “tough it out”. Even if you do not think the injury is serious, it is better to be safe the sorry. Even a minor injury needs time to heal, and as parents and coaches we need to respect the healing process and realize we can cause more damage if we let the child play to soon after an injury.

I hope you find these tips helpful, please feel free to comment on any tips you know of.

I read an article by Nancy Clark, an author for Moms Team, which is a website with tons of sports information.  Nancy is a board certified specialist in sports dietetics.

At first I thought this is too good to be true. Chocolate and sports diet do not seem to go together.  As I read on I learned that chocolate, especially dark chocolate is a great source of phytonutrients.  Phytonutrients are certain organic components of plants, and these components are thought to promote better health.  Dark chocolate is a better choice than milk chocolate because it contains more phytonutrients.

Since chocolate comes from cocoa, it is a rich source of health protective phytochemicals.  The same phytochemicals that you would get from vegetables, fruits and grains.  Two tablespoons of natural cocoa powder has the same antioxidant power as ¾ cup of blueberries.  That was amazing to me.

Some other interesting facts about cocoa:

Now for the bad news…….An average Hershey’s bar consists of 230 calories, 24 grams of sugar and 13 g total fat.  If you need to rationalize eating that Hershey Bar, keep in mind that the fat in chocolate does not raise bad cholesterol ( that is great news).

Moderation is the key to benefiting from chocolate.  The author suggests enjoying dark chocolate as part of the 100-150 “discretionary”  calories that can be part of a daily sports diet.

I just read an interesting article in MayoClinic.com, that I wanted to share with you.   We all know that there is some risk when we let our children play youth sports. What most of us think of is a broken arm or sprained leg, but what we really need to concern ourselves with is dehydration.  Dehydration is very serious and can cause several health problems such as heat exhaustion, heat cramps, heat stroke and even death.

Any child who practices or plays in the heat is at risk of dehydration.  The risk is greater in younger children who play such sports as soccer, football, cross country and any other sports that starts in the late summer months.  Football players are at greater risk when they are practicing or playing with full protective gear on.  Children may be at greater risk if they are overweight, have been sick recently, or are not use to exercising.

Unfortunately children do not adapt as well as adults due to playing or practicing in the heat.  There are several reasons for this, children sweat less than adults, they produce more heat than adults and are less likely to drink as much water as an adult would.

What parents and coaches can do to help prevent dehydration:

1. Dehydration usually occurs within the first few days of practice. – coaches should start out slow and parents should tell their children to let them know if they start to feel weak or tired.
2. Have your child drink plenty of water before and during practice, even if they are not thirsty.
3. Reduce the intensity of any activity that lasts more than 15 minutes.
4. Try to dress your child in light colored, light weight clothing.