INCUBATING w/FRIENDS! w/Sally Sunshine Shipped Eggs No problem!

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Hi all just a quick stop in. Home early today. Have the been hit by a slow moving bus feeling and a sore throat. Time to start taking olive leaf extract. Hope you are all well and not getting a cold too!
 
Hope he does well.
Thanks, I was mistaken. I thought it was a semi final, it was a preliminary heat. He qualified for the semi finals tonight.

#4, Becky Sauerbrunn on the US Women's soccer team (playing Columbia tonight) and team captain is from Ladue High School right here in St. Louis.

If anybody cares, soccer has been ingrained in the fabric of the city my whole life.
New York, Cleveland and LA are big soccer towns but not like this.
St. L. has long been one of the strongest cities in the US for pumping out soccer stars thanks to the Irish priests that started the Catholic Youth Council soccer programs way back in 1910. That and the influx of thousands of immigrants in the '30s and '40s. By 1950, they added baseball, softball, basketball, boxing, volleyball, track and table tennis to the elementary and high school programs.
Soccer was always 'king of the hill' (Dago Hill was the Italian neighborhood) and every other ethnic neighborhood which included large Irish, German, Hungarian, Czech and Slovene enclaves. In the mid '50s, CYC sponsored international soccer matches that brought world class teams from Scotland, France and England to play against St. Louis CYC all-stars. While normally outscored by several goals, it gave players and coaches the experience of playing against the best teams in the world.
By the '60s, over 25,000 athletes participated in CYC sports programs annually.
In the last century, the Archdiocese of St. Louis enrolled more children than any other diocese in the country and even though smaller now, it is still the largest school system in the state of Missouri.
I don't know how many there were at the peak, but today there are 120 Catholic elementary schools and 30 Catholic high schools in the area and almost all are heavily involved in soccer programs.
The US defeated England 1-0 in the 1950 World Cup. 5 of the 11 players on the team were from St. Louis. Most from The Hill.
Many of the current and former Major League Soccer players were born and raised here.

The Hill also produced some great baseball players. Joe Garagiola and Yogi Berra grew up together on the same block.

Needless to say, baseball is huge in St. Louis.
 
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I saw this on Ridiculousness this morning. I thought it was hilarious.


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