What Up What Up What Up

OK.

Ultimate has preeeetty much been out of my life for a couple weeks now, making it difficult to churn out entries for anultimate blog. I will, however, enlighten you all with some recent thoughts I've had...

Season Wrap-UP...What we did, who we are, where we're going.
Truth: I've been captaining this team for quite a while now and I've never left a season feeling more confident in/proud of this squad. I just wrote a little history wrtie up for Catie J. on what ISU has done since my freshman year and it kinda blew me away. Winning never used to be something we did and now...LOOK AT US http://www.upa.org/scores/scores.cgi?div=34&page=3&team=7221. That team that used to get bageled every tournament...sturuggled to win games and went into almost every game already feeling defeated made it to the CHAMPIONSHIP of a tournament. I know I've already spent a post gushing about Glory Days, but I'm still riding that high and I'm probably going to until we play again next season.

What made this season better than past seasons? Why is next season going to be great?

• Rookies. Holy cow, we've got great rookies. They're athletic, excited, and catching on faster than any class I've seen (sry sophomores-seniors. haha).
• Work Ethic. We work so much harder at practice than we have in the past. Every scrimmage is played as if it's a real game and more than 5 people show up for conditioning practice (a small victory, but I'll take it). Truth: I attribute a lot of the intensity we get at practice to Adrienne Ohler and Catie Johnson. Adrienne is our faculty advisor, and a total baller. Her presence at practice takes everything up a level. Catie is a freshman, she likes bears, intensity and Ashley more than most things. She yells a lot on the field, but the good yelling. Amy would probably call it "cool aunt" yelling.
• Confidence. I'm not kidding...every single game we've played I have told the team before that game "this is a game we can win" whether we're playing a team we always beat or a nationally-ranked team. I'm also not kidding...no one ever believed me until this season, and it made all the difference.
• People are playing on their strengths. Jessica learned that she's tall, Amy learned that she's faster than most people, Ashley learned that she's a baller handler, I could go on forever.

I'm looking forward to next season. Having Michelle and Brooke back will be KEY next semester and if we can make it to sectionals without any injuries (knock on wood) we could do a lotta good stuff. yeah. good stuff.

What about you Emily? What are you dooooing?

Well...ultimate has definitely taken a backseat to school/work/adventures lately. That's ok though. After the ultimate overload that was Club Nattys 09, it's been nice to get back into the school groove. Actually that's a lie, oooobviously I'd still rather be playing ultimate, but whatevz. BTW...Nice work, CLX, way to represent for the central region. It would have been COOL if you could have won though.

I WANT TO START RUNNING AGAIN. Freshman/Sophomore year I was SO GOOD about running. Granted, ultimate practices weren't quit as intense and I had to keep in shape some way or another and I didn't work...so I had some time on my hands, but believe me, I was disciplined. I miss that. I miss that last surge after plugging away at 5 mile run, I miss the runner's high, I miss having time for just me and my thoughts (I never run with music) and I definitely miss being fast. Sigh. I also want to go into next season in shape. Come sectionals I want to be at my peak and hopefully If I can get there my team will follow suit.

Adventures.

Nashville. Jess and Amy...let's do this. I'm serious. We need to go to Nashville, party with the Backstreet Boys and pretend we're cowgirls. Maybe I'll even break out my Southern Accent (it's so good, just ask Tom Abell).

Rockford. Kate, Courtney and Rita. We are all 21. Let's do fun things in Rockford.........if we can find fun things to do.

Yeah. Kind of a lame adventure list, but you know I'll find more...

OK...enough rambling. Have a great evening.

-Emblebeeeee