Tuesday, June 24, 2008

New pics




sorry ive been absent...

I have been somewhat busy and whatever time I have had I have used to get my other blog up and going. Check it out. I posted the link in the post below.

Not much going on in the Haines family these days. We are getting ready for Marlee's 2nd birthday party which will be at Jumpin G's Saturday July 5th. It should be lots of fun and we are all excited. Marlee has grown up so fast and I have alot of new pictures that I will put up soon.

Hope all is well with everyone and God Bless!

Friday, June 13, 2008

Another Blog!

I have started another blog with a friend of mine, Dustin Dollar, that is sports related and we give opinions, advice and critiques on sports related issues. Please check it out at http://2sportsgurus.blogspot.com/

Friday, June 6, 2008

Thank you Tommy Raffo!


I wanted to take this chance to say "Thank You" to Coach Tommy Raffo for his 14 years of devoted service to MSU baseball. I had the chance to meet Raffo in 2003 while serving as a coach for an all star team comprised of some of the top players in Mississippi high schools. We took those teams to Oklahoma to compete in the Junior Sunbelt Classic against 8 other states and a team from Canada. I went out there for 5 years and had a great experience every time. Coach Raffo was very instrumental in putting those teams together. He gave us a list of the top prospects in the state that he was recruiting for MSU and also traveled to the tourney to scout the players. I also had the chance to talk with Raffo while he was recruiting one of my former players at NH. He was such a great guy and a class act if their ever was one. I spoke to him every year while at the MSU games and while in Oklahoma and have some very good memories with him. He was my hero at State growing up and the reason I wore #22. He could have very easily snubbed his nose at a little ol assisstant high school coach like myself but he never did and I will always respect him for that. Coach Raffo I want to wish you the best and I hope you go to another program and continue to mold young lives and teach baseball to the kids the way you do. Good Luck!

Monday, June 2, 2008

Below are the videos of the story I posted about earlier.

It is a 2 part piece done by Outside the Lines of ESPN.

OTL: Charleston, SC Firefighter Basketball Coach (Pt. 1)

OTL: Charleston, SC Firefighter Basketball Coach (Pt. 2)

Inspiring Story of a Coach


Please read this article... I saw a profile on ESPN this morning of this man and it brought tears to my eyes. They didnt get the storybook state championship ending they wanted and deserved but it is a great story of a man who put his life on the line in his work and his boys gave everything they had for him.

In the state title game the Summerville team lead by 2 with 1.7 seconds left and they were at the foul line and had a chance to put the game away. One of their players had a 1 and 1 and he missed the first shot. The defending team got the rebound and shot a 3/4 shot and it hung in the air for what seemed like hours. And then..... it went in.... The dream was shattered and their hopes of winning a state title that Louis Mulkey (their coach who had promised a state title by 2008) had promised them was gone.

But wait.... The refs had to review the shot to see if it beat the buzzer. While the Summerville players shed tears of sadness and the other team was still celebrating a miracle shot. How could this be? This is supposed to be a storybook ending. A coach who loved his boys so much and gave them so much of himself. A coach who promised a state title 5 years earlier and was killed in a fire the year before their senior season? After all this team had been through, How could it end like that? Well......IT DIDN'T. The refs reviewed the shot and it didnt count. The player did not get the shot off in time and Summerville were the State Champs. The promise their coach made had come true. And he wasn't there to see it but I like to think he was there the whole time and so do the boys at Summerville High. The got their medals and celebrated with the coach's wife Lauren at center court but there was one thing left to do. On the bus ride home they went by the cemetary and gave Coach Louis Mulkey his state championship medal and placed it on his tombstone. What a story!

I have pasted a couple of links of the story written on ESPN.com. The first was written before the title game and the second was written afterwards... If you would like to know more about the death Google Louis Mulkey and it will have links to how he died and more....
I just had to share this...


http://sports.espn.go.com/ncaa/highschool/columns/story?id=3269083