Hockey Locker Room

“Great moments are born from great opportunities”

~ Herb Brooks

Everyone has a different special place. My special place is the hockey locker room because it brings me to a different universe.
    It is in the locker room where I get locked in and ready to go. I’m ready to face the day and face the game. Before the game starts my whole hockey team gets dressed and locked in the locker room. In the locker room we blast music, laugh, tape sticks and see how people's days are going. When going into a hockey game you wanna have energy. The locker room delivers that energy every time. The locker room is one of the best parts of hockey. Whether it’s a practice or a game the locker room delivers.

JoeDots

“A friend loves at all times, and a brother is born for a difficult time” 

Proverbs 17:17

   No matter what friends have your back. I have a stronger bond with my brother Joe than I have with all my other friends combined. Getting to live with my best friend is awesome. He always picks me up when I’m down. Whether it’s doing something I love or buying me something. My best friend is always entertaining and can always put a smile on my face because he’s my best friend. On July 17 I came home very disappointed because I lost my championship baseball game after training so hard all season. When I came home I found myself slowly trotting inside and Joe knew that I was dissatisfied. So Joe being him he threw a blindfold over my eyes and strapped me into the front seat of his car. After that Joe ended up taking me to the movies and taking me out to ice cream. After what Joe did for me, I looked past what happened earlier in the day and realized how Joe is a great best friend. Friendship is an important part of my life because I’m someone who can’t entertain myself and needs someone to entertain them. Another experience why Joe is important in my life because he’s 4 years older than me and more mature than me so whenever I’m about to do something stupid he’ll stop me. Another reason why Joe is important in my life is because he never fails to make me laugh. That’s important to me because I love to have a smile on my face. My last reason why Joe is important in my life is because he can drive. That’s very important because a few years ago Joe and I weren’t able to do very much with our parents driving us everywhere. But now that Joe can drive we are living life up to the fullest. When I’m with Joe I’m living my greatest life. Anyone can be your best friend. Mine is my brother.

Family Dinners 

“Nothing is better than going home to family and eating good food and relaxing.” – Irina Shayk

~ Tommy Doherty

Family is there when you need it most. Spending dinner with my family every night is a huge part of my life. Family dinner around the holidays is the best part of the year. Especially thanksgiving we’re all my relatives and I gather together for a great big feast. Everyone in my family looks forward to the fourth Thursday in November every year because that’s Thanksgiving. We always host Thanksgiving at our house and invite all my relatives on my mom's side to have a great meal and celebrate with my family. Roasted turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, gravy, green beans, corn, rolls, cranberry sauce and pumpkin pie all sitting on the table ready to be gobbled down. My dad said he’s “never seen more hungry faces and watering mouths standing around the table” and everyone in my family looks like they don’t get fed. It didn’t matter if the food was good. It didn’t matter whose house we were at. The only thing that mattered was that we were all together. Family always has your back no matter what.

I’m reading a book called The Poet X written by Elizabeth Acevedo. The poem I’ll be analyzing is Holding a Poem in the body, the theme of this poem is Comfort. 

Tonight after my shower
Instead of staring at the parts of myself 
I want to puzzle-piece into something else
I watch my mouth memorize one of my poems

Even though I don’t ever plan on letting anyone hear it
I think about that poetry video from class

I let the words shape themselves hard on my tongue
I let my hands pretend to be punctuation marks
that slash and point and pressing on each other 
I let my body finally take up all the space it wants

I toss my head and screw up my face
And grit my teeth and smile and make a fist 
And everyone of my limbs 
Is an actor trying to take center stage

And then Mami knocks on the door
And asks me what I’m reciting 
That it better not be more rap lyrics 
and I respond, verses I’m memorizing verses
I know she thinks I mean bible ones

I hide my notebook in my towel before heading to my room
And comfort myself with the fact that I didn’t actually lie

The Poem Holding a Poem in the body relates to the theme of comfort in many ways. One way that it relates to comfort is at the end when Xiomara says “I hide my notebook in my towel before heading to my room and comfort myself with the fact that I didn’t actually lie” this quote from the poem backs up my theme comfort because she is saying that she feels comfortable.

Dear Author,

Life is going very well for me right now. I'm about 6 weeks into my school year and everything is going very well so far. Right now I’m reading a great book in English called Poet X. Hows your life going? How’s school going, have you made any new friends.

      Right now I'm reading a book in English called Poet X. This book is a poem book where every page is a different poem. The setting of the book is kind of all over the place. Sometimes the setting is school, her house or even church. The characters of this book are: Xiomara, her twin brother, Mami, Papi, Father Sean and Ms. Galiano. Those are the characters that I've been introduced to so far. So far when reading this book there have been many themes. Some of those themes are sexuality, shame and religion.

      I enjoy reading this book. The  reason why I enjoy this book is because there is a girl who is about a year older than me going through problems in the same world that I live in. I'm not having the same problems that she is having but I can think how that would be to live in a world like that. When reading book and doing my homework I’ve done a very good job reading and understanding what’s going on in the book. Something I need to be better at is finding the theme of each poem. 

      The poem I will be describing today is called People Say. If I had one word to describe the theme of this poem I would say accomplishment. A block quote to back this up is 

They say Papi used to love to dance 
but now he finally has a spine
that allows him to stand straight
they say we made it so [ page 64 ]

      A line quote that I found that backs up my theme of accomplishment is “ That if it wasn’t for us Mami would have kicked him to tomorrow”. This is showing the theme Accomplishment because Papi found a person he loved which saved him from getting kicked out. Two phase quotes that I found were, “They say Papi was broken” and “They say Twin and I saved him” this is a great example of accomplishment because people used to think that Papi was broken but when he had Xiomara and Twin they saved his life. All those quotes back up my theme Accomplishment.

      My life is going very well and I hope the same is for you. If you ever get a chance to read this book I would highly suggest it .Remember if you're ever down keep your head up and keep pushing forward. 

Sincerely,

Tommy Doherty 

Weekend with my Brothers

“You don’t get to choose your siblings, they are gods gift to you, as you are too them” - Proud Mama

As the weekend drew nearer, the tension grew. This weekend had many pros and cons.  

I woke up on Saturday morning pumped for the day ahead of me. This weekend both of my brothers who have been at boarding school for 6 weeks we’re staying over at our house.

Getting to hang out with my brothers was awesome. I’ve gone up to their school a few times and said hi but this weekend I got to enjoy some really fun memories that I made with them.

On Saturday morning we hit the road to go pick up my brothers at Phillips Exeter. The ride up there usually isn’t bad at all; it's about 50 minutes. This time was different though when we were about 20 minutes away it was reading that it was going to be 2 hours until we got there. There was a huge crash where a car lost control and steered into the woods. The man was unconscious and they had to get him on a helicopter and fly him to the nearest hospital.

When we finally got up there my parents had to go meet with my brother's advisors. After that we started to drive back to Woburn with my brothers who haven’t been home in a month and a half.

When we finally got back to our house with my brothers the first thing they wanted to do was go to Spirit Halloween and get 4 foot long swords. So that’s exactly what we did when we got back from the store. They planned an attack on my parents with their new swords.

Saturday night I had a hockey game in Everett, we lost 5-3. After that my brothers wanted a steak so we went to Texas Roadhouse and had a great meal with my family.

Sunday morning I woke up happy that my brothers were still at my house. My brother came running down the stairs to my room to wake me up to tell me that dad was cooking bacon and eggs for breakfast.

The rest of the day went by like a flash and soon enough my brothers were already back up at school until Thanksgiving break.

Thomas Doherty 

Fitz English 

Windsor Mountain Trip

9/27/20

Windsor Mountain Trip

Windsor Mountain Experience 

“Feel the fear and do it anyways”- Mindfully Claw

The second day of camp I rolled out of my bed slowly exhausted but excited for the day ahead of me. I couldn’t wait to challenge myself to jump off the dive tower and play ping pong with my friends. 

    As I climbed up the drive tower at Windsor Mountain, which was an old wooden ladder, my body started to shake with terror. I got up to the top, my stomach had butterflies, and I was in instant regret. I didn’t know what to expect since I have never jumped off a dive tower. I knew I had to do it though, because it was my goal for the day. I was at the top and there was no going back with all my classmates staring up at me. I got to the edge of the wood and looked down at the black dark pond water, not knowing what to do. I knew I had to jump, so I started to lean forward more and more until my body was falling into the dark water. I plugged my nose in and closed my eyes shut. My body hit the water like bricks falling out of a 100-story building. I was flying through the water, then came shooting back up like a cannon with the disgusting taste of pond water in my mouth. When I reached the water, I was in shock and I could hear everyone cheering me on. I was in shock because of how much fun that was and how excited I was to go again. After that I could not stop jumping off the dive tower because I was having so much fun. I kept on reflecting on how scared I was of jumping at first. I learned from this that being scared isn’t always so bad because it can make the experience more fun. If you were 15 feet up on a dive tower looking down at black pond water, what would you do?

    My body felt like it was in a sunana. Sweat slowly dripped into my eyes from my long hair. 20-19 most intense ping pong game of the whole trip on the porch. Charlie Hood and I were dialed in and more focused than ever. The bar was higher than ever. I could taste my sweat dripping down from  my hair. I could see how nervous Charlie was and could hear his heart beat pounding against his chest. I picked up my paddle and could feel the groves on the paddle. I picked up the egg-shaped ball and served. I knew it was a great serve right when I made contact with the ball. The ball went flying over the net like a flying saucer. Charlie had a very hard time returning it but he did and he put it right in my wheelhouse for a spike, and that’s exactly what I did. After the game I went over to shake Charlie’s hand he said “good game I’ll get you next time”. I said the same thing but I said good luck next time. I had a feeling of success in my stomach because he was the person to beat. After that I had an X on my back because now I was the person to beat.

  You don’t know if you don’t try

Baseball

The Joy of the Best Sport

You can observe a lot by watching-Yogi Berra
~Tommy Doherty 

When I was just little I noticed I had a desire for a specific sport that I loved with all my heart; that sport was baseball. Yes many people say it’s too slow for them and they don’t find it interesting but I think the total opposite of that. I love the game in so many different ways. Some of those ways are when I’m catching, winning, and the weather baseball is played in.

      Catching is my favorite position by a long shot. This position is very important because you can’t take a play off, unlike if you're playing somewhere in the outfield where you would be able to take a pitch off. You have to have total focus on every single pitch during the game. Catching is just like playing qb in football because the qb is the leader of the field and has control where everyone is and that’s the same for the catcher on the baseball diamond.

      Winning a baseball game makes my day. The best part about winning is that there are no long car rides home where your parents are mad that you didn’t win. Another part that makes winning so much better is that most of the time we have a party with all your friends. You can’t really ask for more if you win a baseball game on a hot summer day they go enjoy the win with your friends.

     80 degrees 7:15 July 13 playing baseball under the lights with your best friends. Tell me something better than that? If you said something you're wrong because that’s the best thing that any human being could ask for. When talking about the weather during the baseball season I'm not just  leaning towards summer ball because trust me I’ve played in 20 degrees and snowed once and that is fun! This paragraph is all about how the weather in baseball is the best weather you can play in. You can play in the scorching heat, downpour or even when it’s snowing.

Everyone has their own loving passions and mine is baseball.

The alarm noise buzzing like a goal horn

Buzzing threw my body like a fly on a dirty old windowsill

I’m not getting up

I’m not getting up

I’m not getting up

I kept on telling myself that

That changed very quickly though

My mom came storming in my unkept room like a stampede

Yelling at me to get up

I found myself flopping out of my messy bed like a fish out of water

I felt dead as a doorknob

My energy level is low

As I’m eating my breakfast in my bright yellow kitchen

That’s when I noticed something

I noticed something absolutely terrible

It’s raining cats and dogs on a Monday morning

A dark cloud formed over my head