Softball: NDCS v Leonard Cheshire

Result NDCS ( 28 ) v Leonard Cheshire ( 26 )

Yep, very tense affair and a close game!!

Probably best described by showing the score first!!

1st innings Leonard Cheshire 2, NDCS 1
2nd innings Leonard Cheshire 24 (!!!) NDCS 6

So at half time LC 26, NDCS 7 – not good

3rd innings LC 0 – NDCS 13
4th innings LC 0 – NDCS 8

I usually spend my time describing how well the team have played, luckily this week, one of the team summed up the performance… (Ta Ramzan!!)

Pippa – Must be our lucky mascot
Jenny – Awesome Catch on Backstop
Adrian – Awesome Catch on 3rd Base
Rob – Awesome pep talk about RUN JUST RUN + awesome throw to Adrian
Alan – Awesome pep talk to FIELD out wider + awesome Batting
Chris – Awesome Catch
George – Awesome Batting
Anna – Awesome on first base I think she got them all out in round 1
Ross – Awesome captain + having to endure a heart attack a minute

I think you get the picture!! (talking of pictures the top pic was kindly taken by Ramzan too)

The opposition

In the pub after they were a good bunch and a good chat about the game ensued. They were as shocked as I was with the result!!

A big thank you

The NDCS Challenges Team would like to say a big Thank You to all of you who recently took part in one of our challenges: The London Marathon, North Pole Expedition and Trek Vietnam in April; Cycle Peru, Trek the Inca Trail and the London 10k in May; and the 24 Peaks and 3 Peaks Challenges in June.

London to Paris

These events have so far raised an amazing total of £294,843, and more money is coming in! This is a fantastic amount and will go a long way to make a difference to the lives of deaf children and their families all over the UK. Thank you to all of you for taking on the challenge, and to all your supporters who helped you reach your fundraising target!

“I’m proud and exhilarated at completing this fantastic challenge. Peru is such a beautiful country and even though there are the inevitable ups (Machu Picchu, Abra la Raya pass, Lake Titicaca) and downs (Ayaviri blockade and the challenge having to end), pushing your mind and body to the limit earns the sponsorship received from all the good folks who donated. As a parent of two deaf children I cannot underestimate the value of NDCS challenges. Thanks NDCS.”
Andrew Biddiscombe, Cycle Peru participant

Tags and categories…

Just looking at my blog, noticed I categorise and not tag, what are people’s thoughts?

Our Mission onto MySpace

As part of the Digital Avenger work we have been doing we decided to look at trying to attract people to one of our UK Challenge Events, Three Peaks .

We set up a page which can be seen at http://www.MySpace.com/deafchildren

The aim was to attract friends who had an interest in walking, hiking or outdoor events.

Ultimately we would then send them to a landing page where they can then enquire about the event.

As we have been using members of staff for the project I thought it better to have them tell it how it was from their perspective, with a few prompting questions from me. Thanks to Kathy for her Co-operation…

——

Ross: Have you used MySpace before?

Kathy: No, only Facebook and Bebo

Ross: How easy was it to set up?

Kathy: With help at the beginning it was pretty easy to set up. The basic page was a bit dull so it took a bit of time to add the extras like the video and images.

Ross: So you learnt some new skills then?

Kathy: To make the pages more interesting it was useful to have some basic html, which with Madhava and Kevin’s help and some digging online I was able to do.

Ross: How many Friends do you have?

Kathy: At last count 411

Ross: That’s good! Isn’t it?

Kathy: Oh no, its now 410 (as she looks at the MySpace page!)

Ross: Will have to look into that and see how good 411 oh 410 is. How did you get those friends?

Kathy: We used a program to collect friends. It is called Stealth Friend Bomber .

Ross: What did you do?

Kathy: We would search on Google and MySpace Groups to look for people interested in walking, hiking and outdoor pursuits. Then send them a request to check out our profile and sign on as a friend.

Ross: Were there any problems?

Kathy: Yes, I would manually have to go through my ‘Friends’ and find the UK profiles before sending out event invitations, as a number of them were American or European.

Ross: What would you like to do moving forward?

Kathy: It would be great to get a few of the people who did the event this year to either join the group or perhaps give us a quote that we can use. Also I would like to have more contact with the marketing team and get information to send out to our 410 people signed up.

Ross: Thanks

—–

Success/Learning

NDCS staff have learnt to create, manage and populate an MySpace organisational profile

In less than two weeks of promotion, over 300 MySpace users have accepted friend requests from NDCS, self selecting their interest in our Challenge events.

Some interesting questions that came out of this…

Is 410 good? Please let us know…

What should we be doing to a) keep these people interested and b) look at new avenues to collect more friends from MySpace?

Softball: NDCS v IFAW

Result NDCS ( 18 ) v IFAW ( 6 )

Again as we left the building on Wednesday we had a small ( 8 ) group of merry men and women ready to step up to the plate… Luckily we were able to get Charles and Chris to give us the right number of people…

The first two innings were a fraught affair with some niggles and it took us some time to really get to grips with the game! I have to say I thought we were quite lucky in fact, the opposition were VERY understandable and I’m sure other teams would not have been so lenient. It did not help that we were all trying to tell each other how to play and not concentrating on our own game. (you know who you are ) The only point worth noting was George’s home run, the only one we scored all day…

Third innings we seemed to wake up a bit both with our batting and fielding… Big thanks to Jenny for volunteering to be back stop, sterling work, you were great at shouting when to run! Anna G took up first base and played a steady game.

Allan was as ever batting and fielding like a trooper and certainly not scared to get in there when there was any niggles in those first two innings.

We had an interesting competition with the IT team, all scoring in innings two, three and four. Thank to George, Chris and Charles.

This week’s newby was Lilli Reisner, whose working with Kevin to help with some Fundraising work over the summer. She certainly knows how to hit the ball and got a bruise on her leg for her trouble at third base.

Anna P was great at second base, ensuring we stumped a few of their runners, she also managed to deal with some wild throws aimed at head height.

My final mention has to go to Gary. During the game he produced some gem comments and probably one of the funniest moments this season with the bat. After three innings his shock to hear we were winning was priceless, “We’re Winning!” and the final ball he played, which hit his bat / hand and fell forward. He just froze and stood there while the rest of us were shouting!

The opposition

I seem to say that the opposition were good each week, this week is no different, they were deffo kind in the first few innings and I think they thought they might win this pretty comfortably after our disastrous first two innings… Some lucky pitching from me seemed to affect their better batsmen and we certainly picked up with the fielding in the last two innings. (Feel free to respond IFAW!!) We chose their MVP because it was the first time she’d ever caught anything, I think that made Gary feel a bit better, knowing his shot had made her day!

I would add the scores but they are in a bag still to be returned!!