Blair Walsh: A cold-blooded yogi

Between food poisoning blow-outs yesterday I checked AJC.com and read the story on Blair Walsh replacing Brandon Coutu. I found a common bond between myself and the freshman kicker Walsh, but first a little back story...

The last semester of my senior year in college, I had completed all my required business classes and needed only credit hours to qualify for my diploma. So I signed up for the following classes.

-Drama Survey
-Snow Skiing
(why this was taught in LaGrange, GA I'll never understand but I did get an "A")
-Tennis
-Internship
(where I counted the number of electric outlets in my dorm room)

and

-Yoga

This photo has not been altered in ANY way.


Needless to say that was one of the finest collegiate schedules ever established by yours truly, but of all the classes yoga was the most difficult.

#1. The teacher thought me and a couple of fraternity brothers were doing it as a joke.
#2. She wanted to make sure we knew it was a "serious" class.
#3. She might have known we knew she hooked up with an alumni of our fraternity...maybe.

Anyway, where this story is going is that AJC.com is reporting that...

Walsh picked up yoga during his sophomore year of high school. He said he has grown to love it and has found it helps his game mentally and physically.

"You just have to get in that mindset of putting yourself in game situations where it's tough, and that's what relaxes you and helps you focus on what's at hand, and not what else is going on in the game," he said. "It lets you be your own person."

He uses yoga stretches, like the praying mantis, during his pregame warm-up to stay loose.

"I know people still look and go, how is he that flexible?" he said. "But besides that, no real weird looks [from teammates], honestly."

So here is what this means to me, Blair Walsh is going to be getting the most tail EVER by any kicker in the history of kickers (yes even more than you Morton Anderson!) by going to yoga classes. Also, it means this year when we are down by 2 in Death Valley, on the 35 yard line, with 0:04 left on the clock; Walsh is going to run out onto that field take a few deep breaths, bust out a downward dawg and split the uprights like he's been doing it all his life. Blair was the #1 rated kicker by Rivals.com for his mad skills, I believe the common bond we share will allow him to pick up right where Coutu left off.

Long story short; Red Cross, don't expect this kid to give blood anytime soon because the stuff comes out in cubes, see below.

This was drawn from Blair's arm 20 seconds prior to the picture being taken...they just didn't have any smaller boxes.