As my thirteenth birthday approached, my dad and I thought it would be cool idea if I started a website to write about my passions: sports, music, and pop culture. Fresh off my newfound love for soccer and its vocabulary during the 2014 World Cup, we came up with the idea that it could be called Hat Trick for the three subject matters I wanted to write about. I crafted up some logos, made an Instagram and Twitter for it as one does (old iPad screenshots inserted above), and Hat Trick was born. Unfortunately that is where the story ends, as it never made it past its birth on July 5, 2014. (RIP http://hattrick821.blogspot.com). What did you expect? I was just a 12 year old who moves from one thing to the next and never completes any of his ideas. Four years later, nothing has changed. But, fear not! If I put this on myself as an actual life responsibility, then maybe I can actually follow through with something for once. My passions remain the same all this time later, and if I can get into an R rated movie now, I should be able to write a column. Hopefully. 

My goal is to make Hat Trick 2.0 a mixture of both personal experience, analysis, and opinion. One of the skills I pride myself on is the ability to ramble on and on about the things I love, and this column should be nothing less than that. I want readers to view this and be able to visualize this as a conversation. With that being said, here are some VERY important things I need to establish about myself.

1. To start things off, I am going to shamelessly plug my two most important social profiles, Twitter (@vikehawkcharlie) and Spotify (@vikehawkcharlie). “Where does vikehawcharlie come from?” I’m sure you are all dying to know. My grandma came up with it because of my fandom for the Minnesota Vikings and Iowa Hawkeyes when I was visiting her house and created a profile for an online NFL Sims World style computer game. I made that my email in first grade and have gone down a rabbit hole of signing up for every website with it. So now I am locked into vikehawkcharlie for life.

2. My sports takes are hot and full of spice. One that I have an abounding amount of passion for is that Lebron James is a better basketball player than Michael Jordan. King James can shoot, pass, dunk better, and essentially do every function of the game of basketball to a higher degree than Michael Jordan.

3. I have seen Ke$ha live in concert.

4. During the fall of my fifth grade year, my dad and grandpa ran the Marine Corps Marathon in Washington D.C., and my entire family flew to D.C. to support them. My dad and grandpa ran the marathon, we all had a grand time touring the National Mall, and everything seemed to go as planned. But, nature had other plans. Hurricane Sandy had hit the east coast, and we became trapped in D.C. for a few extra days. We walked to a CVS on a daily basis to feed ourselves on the top floor of our hotel. There was not much to do in the hotel, so I sat around on my iPod touch and created a sports photo editing account on Instagram called @sportsgraffix. Somehow I built it up to 4,000+ followers as an eleven year old. It has been abandoned now for around five years, but it did have a good amount of  respect for an account that was secretly run by an eleven year old. Colin Kaepernick liked a post of mine right before he led the 49ers to the Super Bowl, Jeremy Hill made his edit his profile picture and was retweeted by Wale when he still had the edit there. Side note–Giannis Antetokounmpo followed me on Twitter before he became a good NBA player.

That is where I am going to leave things for now, and I hope all six of you that made it this far enjoyed yourselves. As stated earlier, I am writing this column to talk about my passions. I am not sure what Hat Trick will shape out to be or look like, but I hope that you come back to read again.