Shell Rewards Just Got Better

Cutter's Log – Stardate 3102.72.20

I hate it when gas prices go up. As publisher of a sports website which involves plenty of travel, I know all about the burden that high gas prices can do to a hobby or a business. We're always trying to find a way to curb the amount we spend at the pump.

Shell and Johnson Oil Expresslanes are starting a new program as a part of Shell's “Fuel Rewards Network.”

Spend $25 inside the store and save $0.05/gallon at the pump!

How does it work?

When you visit Johnson Oil Shell Expresslanes, ask the clerk for a Fuel Rewards Card (if he or she hasn't mentioned it to you already). You will need to register the card online at fuelrewards.com to redeem these rewards.

Accrue $25 worth of goods (sales tax not included) purchased in the store using this saver card - and you can do so over a period of time. Once you have reached the $25 threshold, you can use that saver's card to save $0.05/gallon of fuel. The maximum amount of gallons per transaction is 20, so your rewards will terminate after the twentieth gallon and you'll pay the full price for subsequent gallons.

This “$25-$0.05” deal is stackable. Meaning, if you accrue $50, you can save $0.10/gallon on your next fuel purchase; or if you have accrued $350, you can save $0.70/gallon. Remember that once you redeem your rewards, your balance starts over at $0.00.

What can get you to $25?

*25 $1 newspapers
*20 cups of coffee
*18 cups of cappuccino
*17 20-ounce Pepsi products
*21 20-ounce 7up products
*21 small candy bars
*71 small packs of chewing gum
*14 16-ounce Monster drinks
*6 large bags of potato chips
*50 50-cent Little Debbie snacks
*4 6-packs of beer

Are there exceptions to what you can purchase for rewards? Yes; fuel itself, cigarettes (packs and cartons), lottery, gift cards, money orders, and fax services are not eligible purchases for rewards. (Also, all Johnson Oil BP locations are not included in this program, as this is a Shell promotion.)

That's right. Beer IS included in the rewards program. Two big cases can already get you the $0.05/gallon rewards.

Your little things can, and do, add up. Do you buy milk every two days? At $3.50/gallon, two weeks worth of milk can get you the $0.05/gallon fuel savings. Do this for a month, and you can save $0.10/gallon – and that's not including whatever else you buy.

Are the savings worth it? My car's gas tank holds 13 gallons. If you're like me, and fill up when your stick reads “E”, a nickel savings adds up to $0.65. While that may seem like pocket change in regard to a fill-up, ask yourself this: Where else could I have received ANY savings this way?

With your eligible rewards, you don't have to pay full price for gas. If the Shell sign reads “$3.79” and others along that stretch of road read the same, think to yourself “$3.74” if and when you accrue $25 in in-store goods. Or “$3.64” if and when you have a $0.10/gallon savings. And so on.

Do my rewards expire? Yes. On the moment you reach the $25 threshold, you have until the end of that current month PLUS one additional calendar month to use your rewards. For example: If you get the $0.05/gallon savings on May 4, you have until June 30 to use that savings. If you keep building up the savings and reach the $0.10/gallon savings on June 15, you have until June 30 to use the $0.10/gallon savings and until July 31 to use the $0.05/gallon savings.

I have reached the point where I can save $0.20/gallon on my card. Can I use $0.10 now and $0.10 later? No. When you use the card, you redeem all you have at that time in that one transaction.

Is is possible to get a tank of gas for free? Not entirely, but whatever is left will be a minimal payment (no more than $0.10). Say your gas station has its regular gas for $3.50, and you have reached the point where you have $3.50/gallon savings (meaning $1,750 worth of in-store purchases tallied on your FRN card, with it all yet to expire), all you pay is that minimal payment of no more than $0.10.

Can I use the FRN rewards card in addition to my Kroger/Hilander card or Hy-Vee card? No. Only one saver card can be used per transaction.

However, there are other ways to stack savings on top of your FRN savings. Shell offers two credit cards that provide additional savings. The Shell “Drive for 5” credit card can save you $0.05/gallon on your final bill. The Citi Shell Platnium MasterCard can save you $0.10/gallon on your final bill. Shell also offers a Saver Card for debit card users – when linked up with a debit card, you can save an additional $0.02/gallon, which would be reflected on your bank statement.

Are there other ways I can build rewards on the FRN rewards card? Absolutely. You can link your FRN rewards card with a credit or debit card online, and you can rack up additional rewards by shopping at FRN's “Online Mall,” dining at participating reward-eligible restaurants, grocery shopping at reward-eligible grocery stores, and through MyCokeRewards.

For dining, if you use your credit or debit card – if linked to your FRN rewardds card – at Manny's Too in Fulton, Fried Green Tomatoes in Galena, Gene's Place in Rockford, and Happy Joes in Geneseo (the only northwest Illinois diners that are in the program), you can earn $0.10/gallon savings when you spend $50 or more. In addition to northern Illinois, several restaurants in the Iowa Quad Cities area are also included: Sneaky Pete's in LeClaire; The Clubhouse in Bettendorf; Rudy's Tacos and Winner's Pizza in Eldridge; and
11th Street Precinct, Cafe Indigo, Jersey Grille, Rookie's Sports Bar, and both Rudy's Tacos locations in Davenport.

Grocery shopping at participating reward-eligible grocers (Jewel-Osco in northern Illinois) can result in a saving of $0.05/gallon for every $50 spent using your Jewel-Osco card - which needs to be linked with your FRN rewards card before redemption. Shopping through FRN's “Online Mall” can result in a savings of $0.05/gallon for ever $50 spent.

Savings can also be done by cashing in on MyCokeRewards points. For every 40 MCR points, you can save $0.10/gallon. See the MyCokeRewards webpage for more. As far as points go: plastic bottles are worth 3 points, a 12-pack is 10 points, a 20-pack is 18 points, and a 24-pack is 20 points. So two 24-packs alone can get you $0.10/gallon off savings.

***

Shell Expresslane locations are scattered throughout all of northern Illinois and parts of eastern Iowa. You can also use your FRN rewards card at other participating Shell stations as well for additional savings.

Are you a regular customer at any of the Shell Expresslanes? You can discover the full fuel savings per year by doing the math with what you buy every day. Saving money on fuel has never been better!

Stop by and talk to me at the gas station, or message me, if you have any additional questions about how much you can save by using the FRN rewards card.

Remember, you MUST activate your FRN rewards card online in order to redeem any rewards on fuel purchases.

-Cody

The 4 Chambers of My Heart

Dedicated to 4 very special girls ...


Four sweethearts that I know
My love for them is this vow
I've been so afraid to show
That is, until now

You have so much love inside
I can see it within your kindness
Opened a path for me to confide
Escaping from my mental blindness

The ringing of my name when you cry
Blinding me with your smile
That and your eyes lift me so high
As you wave your hand for a while

After I had moved
She brought me back to my feet
My darkness was removed
Then my heart began to beat

Even after twenty years
We still know each other
But now it brings me tears
I'll never meet another

Just out of luck
I somehow meant something to her
A wonderful friendship was struck
Together I thought we were

Right out of the corner of my eye
Was a really bright light
The harmony of “hi”
Oh, what a wonderful sight

These times I'll never forget
I had never been treated so nice
This truly wonderful quartet
Whom I struggled to break the ice

I was raised with love all around
These girls share the same kind
Could it be the love I have found?
Will our two hearts align?

You have taught me so much
You have brought joy to my life
Which had seemed to lost its touch
In many school battles of strife

I am thankful for your presence
To which I want no one else nearby
I could never quite get this pleasance
So I could tell you eye-to-eye

Friends were few and far between
I'd look forward to our meetings
Because you are whom I could lean
After all your wonderful greetings

For you I always wanted to be there
Sometimes going out of my way
That's how much I care
Even on that double-header in May

I thought I could ignite a match
Destroying the barriers in my mind
It was a tough plan to hatch
The path to romance was hard to find

Some told me harsh things about you
They would make me so sad
Because I know they're not true
I know in my heart you're not bad

Your were the only thing in my world
You meant so much to me
But my words couldn't be unfurled
If only you four could see

So very hard I tried
Sadly I was unable to connect
Didn't know how my efforts had dried
And were left to deflect

In time, one of them was exhaust
Another found gold
The next I had lost
The last because I grew old

Knowing I will never see the day
My search will have to conclude
It's time for me to walk away
For I don't mean to intrude

But that doesn't mean the end
You four are my inspiration
As I try to make my heart mend
Trying to find that love coronation

I can't thank you four enough
You know I will be there
Even when your times are tough
I'll always deliver a prayer

But my love for you just won't quit
The thought I can't seem to sever
So I'll just go ahead and say it
You are the four loveliest angels ever  

And I will always love you
Forever  

-Cody

Coach Scheidegger Letter

This was the letter that Coach sent me before the 2001-02 season. This eventually led to many great things ...

Coach Scheidegger

I was deeply saddened to hear the news about my former girls basketball coach at Sterling High School.

Bruce Scheidegger is a man who I had been forever in debt to, for giving me the opportunity that launched a love of mine - high school sports.

Coach Scheidegger, after leaving Sterling, took the athletics director position at Carl Sandburg H.S. in Orland Park. After seeing his Lady Eagles compete at the IHSA State Bowling Meet in Rockford on Saturday, and seeing Eagle senior Nicole Powell finish in the top 10 individually, Coach would never make it back to his captain's chair at Sandburg.

Back home in Carroll County, where he was born and raised, Coach's car went off the road.

He was 54 years old.

My thoughts are with Deb, Samantha, Kristin and Molly at this time.

***

I will never forget his kindness, his dedication, passion for the game of basketball and high school sports, as well as his sense of humor.

During health class one day, I got a message from the school's messaging service (kind of like mail). The piece of paper was folded in half and stapled at the bottom. It was a request from Coach to meet with me to see if I would be a part of his varsity girls baskeball team.

After 11 years, I still have the letter. I was looking at it a couple of days ago, as it is shuffled in a lock box with a bunch of notes and papers in it. This note would find its way stuffed at the bottom of my school locker that year. Then I found it at the end of the year. I kept it. Why? This was an experience I'll never forget.

It is a little "different" for a girls sports team to have a male manager. At one of the first practices, coach had a drill planned for me too. That drill was that, if I needed to go into the girls locker room, I had to knock on the metal sign outside the door and yell "coming in ..." All four of the male coaches had to do this as well. But of course, special emphasis was on me because I was so young.

One day at the Dixon Tournament I accidentally forgot to knock on the door. He let me know about it.

Coach cared about his managers. I was one of two, and the other wasn't able to do much work that year. He cared so much that he eventually put me on the district's payroll. Yep. I was paid to tape games and take stats on occasion.

When we won the New-Mor-Roc-Ster that year, I was quite shocked when Coach called me down to the gym floor to recieve a medal. Before our final game against RF, he told me to tape the medal presentation after the game (I guess he was confident we'd win). So my mind's on taping this - I had never taped something like that before - and I hear a pause in the announcing of names before "and manager, Cody Cutter."

During the applause, I kind of raised my hand before Coach raised his hands and waved them toward me, telling me to come on down and get a medal. That was a cool moment.

In one of the first pages of our season scrapbook, coach cut out a picture of me recieving my medal and shaking hands with Scott and Pat (our assistant coaches). He typed the words "The Three Wise Men" on the picture.

Sometimes I was in charge of carrying the trophies on the bus rides. I carried the plaque that we won after defeating Mother MacAuley at the Amboy Shootout. I also carried a really large third-place trophy back from Dixon. It was taller than I thought, and accidentally bumped the top of it on the bus ceiling. Coach tried to hound me about it, jokingly reminding me that it could be our season right there.

He knew I was a bit on the shy side, while somehow finding a way to gain respect from the upperclassmen at SHS. On some of the funnier moments on the bus rides, he would throw me into the discussion sometimes. I was a bit embarassed at first, but grew to like these moments.

One of our weirdest bus rides - and only the coaches and I know this - was our trip to Guilford. It was a slow drive and we feared being late. I made a suggestion to coach and the bus driver to take a shortcut because the road we were about to drive on was a mess with construction. To my surprise, Coach acted on my suggestion and proceeded to put any blame on me and me only if something were to go wrong. We ended up making it in time, and I recall some of the sophomore girls being in awe at the height of Guilford's 7-foot-1 Woody Julian outside the school entrance.

Because of coach's efforts to make his manager a true part of the team, I was sometimes able to make it to after-game pizza parties, such as Kim's. The graciousness was something I appreciated so much that, come Valentine's Day, I donated a lot of money into the Prom fundraiser by buying roses for them. One thing led to another, and they've become people I'll never forget.

Thank you, Bruce.

And apparently he liked what I was taping at the games. (I personally thought I was sub-par and feared the girls wouldn't learn anything from my "poor" taping skills). Those tapes were sent to Prep Sports Online for inclusion on a season DVD.

That was the start of a sports media career that I still have to this day.

Thank you, Bruce.

Even though my roles at SHS became more fluid in the coming years, he still had trust in me to either operate the scoreboard or serve as PA announcer at freshman games.

Thank you, Bruce.

He had been in the area sports spotlight since a terrific high school career at Chadwick, which led to being picked by the Los Angeles Dodgers in the 1976 MLB Draft as a pitcher.

Coach started his career at Tonica before moving to Prophetstown, where he led the 1982 Prophets to a regional title. After that, he briefly coach boys at Dixon before a long stint as girl's coach there and at Sterling. He became athletic director at SHS later on, and did such a fine job that the door would open for him at Carl Sandburg.

Coach and I have only talked once since he moved, and that was when our 2001-02 team was inducted into the SHS Athletic Hall of Fame. He jokingly asked if I was going to tape the ceremony.

I have, however, seen Coach at times when Carl Sandburg is competing. He was at the Dvorak wrestling tournament cheering on his wrestlers at the prestigous meet at Harlem. The last time I saw him was when Sandburg won the Class 3A Team Wrestling title in Bloomington almost a year ago.

I am told that many, many kids at Sandburg loved him and were thankful for his support. We take that for granted in northwest Illinois, and for him to have such an impact on these kids as well is another thing that I'll remember him by.

If I would have taken that path out East professionally, my destination would have been somewhere near Orland Park.

Bruce was one of the best in the high school sports world. And I will miss him greatly.

Thank you, Bruce, for having such a great impact on my life. I know my basketball friends and many others share the same feeling.

Cody Cutter (SHS '05)
Girls Basketball Student Manager - 2001-2004

Love Through The Written Word

Cutter's Log - Stardate 3102.31.20
Current Song - If You Leave Me Now (Chicago)

As many of you know, I am one of the shyest people this world has ever seen.

When it comes to love, expressing my feelings through the spoken word has been very difficult.

Why? When I was in grade school, my favorite cartoon was 'Doug'. That cartoon featured the title character thinking about things, and in almost every important moment think of a worst-case scenario. I was always thinking of that worst-case scenario when the time came to tell the girl I loved my true feelings.

Because of this extreme nervousness, I have never had a girlfriend. Telling Amber I loved her was a rare moment of breaking out of my shell. Giving those roses to Carly in 7th grade was a rare moment of breaking out of my shell. Mailing a birthday card to Emily was another one. A few years later, I felt just a little more confident when I gave my softball friends some flowers and a letter of appreciation during their Senior Night game. (Come to think of that, I also wrote messages for them when I traveled to Chicago for a summer league game).

When I was unable to say anything, I wrote it down.

About 13 years ago, I took in an SHS junior varsity football game and got bored. Someone was on my mind quite a bit (S.B.) and I laid down underneath the stadium on a bunch of football pads. As I stared at the concrete bleachers above, some words began to flow in my mind.

Those words were "beautiful," "lovely," "pretty," and "wonderful." Then I tried to find rhymes. After that, I had just written my first original non-school-assignment poem: called "From Me To You" --

This is to a girl
Who I love so much
A girl so pretty
I love her a bunch

A really great girl
Who I really adore
To her I write
This poem for

You're so beautiful and you're so lovely
Totally conquering my mind
So pretty so wonderful
There's not another girl of your kind  

I love you

I decided to share this poem to everyone, and the platforms were my old Geocities personal webpage and ICQ. While I didn't reveal the subject of this poem, I had recieved many positive notes about it. Especially from girls.

That was, for a while, the only poem I wrote.

Then, during my sophomore year of high school, another girl took over my mind. It was to the point where I started writing poems again.

At that point, I bought one of those hardcover journal books at Borders. I started writing.

The first poem was called "A Purple World" --

Purple is a lovely color
Especially as a uniform
Purple is my favorite color
A color like no other

Chicago said Colour My World
Might I suggest purple?
A dedication to my girl
Who makes my heart whirl

And whirl that purple
Into my arms
Where I want you
Fufilling my charms

Purple is the sky above
In purple, we love

Two more poems - very terrible poems at that (as I look back in my book) - were written about this same girl.

Then came the phase where I was feeling very angry and depressed. A long poem called "The River" described my feelings about Sterling and Rock Falls friends. A rough draft version was found by my parents. It contained the line "Queen Lorraine the Fat," which described our mean landlord when living at Rock Falls, before moving to Sterling in '97. I think this copy is somewhere in their memories box.

After that, I just started writing senselessly into this book to try to fill up space. The haiku "Lack of Love" was the climax of this phase:

I am so distraught
Not one girl will love me much
Today I shall die

(So much for that last line, thankfully)

Looking back at that book, there are two additional poems that I wrote which I feel comfortable enough to share. I had grown up just a little more at the time, and the words began to make more sense. The first is called "Not Available" and the second is called "So Nervous."

"Not Available"

I loved you, I loved you, I loved you so much
Your beautiful loving I'll never forget
Been many years, but wanting in the clutch
Hoping you'll be mine, not just for rent

But you made a change I did not like
You chose to stay with him, together
What you changed into was a telling sign
That you'll be with him forever

The change tells significantly
The true meaning of what you are now
Now many more want, and you don't care to see
Further making me go out after I bow

He's on the defense, the offense in a clutch
Smiling as you cheer and shout
Your lover has now thrown the pitch
That made the mighty Cody strike out


"So Nervous"

You've known me for a long time
But no time is crucial than this
But all you think I am is pantomime
Because when I talk I'm so nervous

Baby, I really love you
I'm just so nervous to hell
Sometimes I feel very blue
These moments I don't feel well

Even though you know me, you don't
You only know that I exist
I am merely a footnote
But you are one I can't resist

Please will you realize where I'm coming from
You don't know but you inspire me
Don't look at me like a bum
I love you, can't you see?

The subject of the second poem was also the subject of the only poem with a girl's name as the title. I wrote these in college. She was the only crush I ever had in college, but it just didn't work out as Sauk is a very big place with many students and different time schedules - whereas in high school I saw them in the hallways daily. I won't display the poem on here because her name is in the poem itself also.

After each poem, I wrote down the year I penned it in the book. The last poem shows "2007," which is right around the time my crushes had started to burn out.

Five years later, and 12 years after writing my first poem, another girl came into my life. Hence the poem called "Love Is Blue." I wrote a rough draft and shelved it for a year before finding it one day not too long ago. After modifying it, I printed it out and framed it. The poem sits on a shelf in my living room.

My eyes have been booked
My heart forever booked
Never seen how beauty looked
For forever this has took

My heart says yes and mind says no
I don't know you but I can't let go
The prettiest girl if you may
In the world today

We looked and our eyes stood still
Moving only deeper to drill
The tears that drop are what I feel
Wanting all of this to be real

I'll never forget your smile
And the angelic voice you speak
Or when I made you giggle a while
You make me so weak

As I slowly let go of your hand
And kiss you above
I absolutely understand
Good-bye forever my love

What came to be in that hour
My true weakness unfurled
I wish I had the power
To give you the world

As of right now, I have a new poem in the works. I'll be releasing it on Valentine's Day. Except this time, I will be verbally reading it on video. This one's one of the longest poems I've written, but comes at a time when I am learning so much about growing up and adulthood.

I call it the best poem I've written since my first, way back in 2000.

So I've got two more poems to write into the book.

1st and 10

Cutter's Log - Stardate 3102.30.20
Current Song - Feels So Good (Chuck Mangione)

Downtown Rock Falls was only a few blocks away from where I lived (corner of 3rd Avenue and 5th Street) during the bulk of my grade school days.

There weren't really any stores worth visiting. The first one that came to mind was a sports card store called Gold Glove. It was located next to Cardwell's on 1st Avenue. However, it was "across the highway" and that meant hoping no one I knew would notice. The only cards I remember buying there were old Dennis Rodman ones from his Piston days - he was popular at that time and the cards didn't have his dyed hair. I thought it was unusual and bought them.

The store that would eventually run Gold Glove out of downtown Rock Falls was called 1st and 10. It was run by sisters who were huge Viking fans: Connie and Cynthia.

1st and 10 was located right next to the RF Post Office on 2nd Avenue. The store was a small barber shop before that. It had been there for a while before I peeked inside one day and they were selling sports cards.

The first card I bought there was a Cal Ripken (1992 Donruss Triple Play) that sold for $1. The card is still $1 today.

When I was young, I collected baseball cards. When I began to be interested in football and basketball, I started collecting cards of those too. I had a lot of them, to which I kept a numberic inventory of them.

I noticed that 1st and 10 had something called a "dime box." Single cards for just a dime. This was my chance to stock up and show them off. So I'd save my dimes and make constant trips to the store to see what was in the box of neatly sorted cards. That, and it was also where the latest Beckett card pricing guides were sold.

It became my after-school trip. I'd walk the block home from school, drop my bookbag on the back porch and tell my aunt (who babysat Chris and Dan) that I was going to the card shop. I'd walk from my backyard onto the alley and cut across the yard of this big apartment house (actually walk on the top of a stone wall that divided the apartment lot and Pinkston's house) and onto 2nd Avenue.

You'd walk in the front door and have to walk to the right, through another door, to get in the store. The front counter was right there and was sort of U-shaped. Shelves of wax packs were along the wall behind the counter, and if you wanted one you'd have to tell them and they'd give you the box to pick your pack. Off to the right on the glass counters, next to the store's front window, were the baseball, basketball and NASCAR cards along with the dime box. Off on the left side of the front counter were the football cards.

On the other side of the football cards was an area filled with football stuff: clothes, footballs, coozies, hats, and things like that. Finally, right next to the front door was a door to another room where more stuff was located.

I never had the money to buy anything other than cards, and packs of cards.

I became such a regular customer there that they start letting me help out with the store. One day, they recieved a whole bunch of cards and they needed help sifting through them to see what was worthy of the dime box. I was the dime box expert, so I helped out. They didn't want to sell any "commons". For my couple of hours' worth of work, I was paid a pack of cards from the 1996 Collector's Choice Update set.

The pack of 10 cards was worth 99 cents. This was the first set that I truly wanted to build a complete set of. The rookies that year? Eric Moulds, Marvin Harrison, Lawrence Phillips, Simeon Rice, Ricky Dudley, Mike Alstott, Tim Biakabutuka, Eddie George, Terry Glenn, Keyshawn Johnson, Karim Abdul-Jabbar, and Terrell Owens. I think only 5 of them had noteable careers.

Back to those "commons." We put something together called the "grab bag" where we put 20-25 cards in a brown bag and wrapped them up and sold them for 50 cents.

The 1996-97 football playoffs were special because the two expansion teams (Panthers and Jaguars) were in the conference title games along with the Packers and Patriots. I had to find all of the store's Panther, Jaguar, Packer and Patriot cards and seperate them from the rest. We sold those cards for a quarter at the time. That was also the first Super Bowl that I chipped into a scoring spreadsheet. They had to explain to me how it worked, and at first thought I was too young to be doing this.

I also remember taking a caculator and doing an entire inventory of the whole store - something Autistic that I can't seem to explain.

I was just one of the regulars. A guy named Duane (a Cowboy fan) and his son (whose name I forget) were also regulars. The son may have stolen cards. One story I remember was when these SP-X football cards were made (die-cut in the shape of an X) and he "just found them" on top of of the stamp machine at the Post Office.

The best pull from a pack that I found was a Topps Chrome rookie of Eric Moulds. That set of rookie cards for some reason became real expensive, and I wound up selling it to Home Plate sportscards in Sterling for $20.

I would go there rain or snow. One day I was determined to go there when it was real cold and snowy. I walked in and nearly fainted when I met the warm air. On these days, either Connie or Cynthia would drive me home after closing time.

On one winter day, a huge fight broke out at the Corner Tap that spread outside. It all unfolded just outside our window.

The fun ended when I moved to Sterling in May of '97. Connie and Cynthia liked me so much that they were saddened when I told them I was moving, and wasn't allowed to cross the bridge. The last month of living in Rock Falls was like the building end to a TV series finale.

1st and 10 eventually moved next to Arthur's in Rock Falls for a while before relocating to downtown Sterling, where they were at in 2004. When I worked for the newspaper, I wrote a column about baseball cards that got their attention. They still remember me to this day.

When I was in school, the following of professional sports was huge on the second floor of Merrill. Locker after locker was filled with colored sports logos that Mr. Stralow had copies of. As much as I was around sports logos at 1st and 10, I didn't have one on mine. I hated coloring because I could never get within the lines. (One of those "Doug" moments where I thought people would laugh at me).

Teachers like Mrs. Vanderlaan, Mr. Stralow and Mr. G at Merrill helped build what would become Rock Falls's sports culture. Just a couple of years after I moved, Brian Vance made "the shot." The summer I moved, 12 young girls (many of whom are great friends of mine) won a little league state softball title and strung together many more.

I'd say 1st and 10 was instrumental in keeping a professional sports presence alive in Rock Falls, which helped influence all of this.