OKEEFFE BLOG

Straight Outta Cobham Chelsea FC Academy: The Golden Generation Every soccer player dreams of playing under the lights during the UEFA Champions League, the famous anthem playing while 70,000 fans cheer them on. The Champions League is the most prestigious club competition in the world and is played between what the name implies – the champions of the last year’s top European leagues. It’s considered an honor just to play in the competition and its final is the most anticipated game of the year, played between the best in the world. From 13 year olds playing the anthem on their phones before their own games to 35 year old professional players hoping next year will be their year, the Champions League is the most attractive and exciting platform to play the universal game of soccer.  The UEFA Youth League is an annual competition organized for under-21 players, a smaller version of the Champions League for the top European clubs to prepare their academy players. Between 2015 and 2019...

Synopsis All the Young Men by Ruth Coker Burks is a first-person memoir from a young single mother who found herself as one of the only allies to the men afflicted by the AIDS Crisis in 1980s Arkansas.  In 1986, Ruth was helping care for her friend in the hospital who was suffering from tongue cancer and heard distant cries of pain. She followed them to our door marked "biohazard" but entered anyway. There she found a young man who was on the brink of death, alone and suffering. She offered him the compassion and humanity that the rest of society had been denying him. After he passed away, the Hot Springs, Arkansas community began to identify her as the only person willing to help those afflicted by AIDS. She began to help care for them -- finding them housing, work, food, healthcare, and eventually places to be buried. Throughout the book, Ruth develops unbreakable friendships with the men she meets.  All the Young Men  is a story about the compassion that can be found i...

Never Lose To Your Eight Year Old Cousin Again Connect Four: Simple Strategies for a Simple Game You’re at your grandma’s house for Thanksgiving. A juicy, full-bodied turkey bakes in the oven. The sounds of a football game drift in from the other room. The happy, unburdened voices of your loved ones waft around the room. It’s a good day. Your eight year old cousin asks you if you’re up for a game of Connect Four - a quick game with simple, universal rules. Why not? You half-mindedly play through the match when your much younger opponent abruptly leaps into the air in exclamation. “I won!” You look at the board again. You hadn’t even noticed your cousin’s four red pieces lining up diagonally to end the game.  You tell yourself it’s really not a game of skill anyway. Who cares if you lost? How much strategy could there really be in such a simple game? But as your cousin parades around the room, boasting about his success, you can’t help but feel some shame. Little kids are sore loser...

All The Young Men by Ruth Coker Burks The Reason this Memoir Caught my Eye I selected to read from the first-person memoirs All the Young Men by Ruth Coker Burks and Kevin Carr O’Leary. All the Young Men recounts Ruth Coker Burks years spent looking after Aids patients in Little Rock, Arkansas in the 1980s. I thought from The Guardian’s list of the “Best biographies and memoirs of 2021” it seemed more interesting than the rest. First, because the article’s description of the book made it very clear what it was about and what you would get out of it. And second, because I think it differs from other options in that it’s not only about someone who had an extraordinary life but it happened in the wake of extraordinary circumstances and events. This allows the reader to not only gain further understanding of the person who the memoir is about but gives understanding of a historically important time and place. I think this will make it an easier and more enjoyable read because the time and...