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Aug. 19, 2008

ORANGE BEACH and AUBURN, Ala. -

by Rebecca Howell, Jr. Forward

Thursday, August 14
Good news, because of our good performance during the Olympics the coaches decided to push Thursday's morning practice back a little so we could sleep in. (This was decided before we pushed Coach Hoppa in the pool). So at 9:00 a.m we headed for the field instead of at 7:30. This was great except that by 10:00 with the humidity and intense sun it felt like a hundred degrees. The coaches split us into teams - Team Kara and Team Jenn - where we competed in a series of small-sided games to be the team at the end of practice with the most overall points. Adding a little competition and a small incentive (less running for the winner) is a brilliant way to get an extremely intense and productive practice out of us. The coaches were thrilled, we were dead tired, and after cold tub we headed back to hotel to escape the heat for some much needed food and rest. The rest of the afternoon we just relaxed, some people napped and a few people died.

By the way, this week at Orange Beach we have been playing a Serial Killer Mystery card game. Coach Hoppa hands everyone including the staff one card from the deck, the person who gets the ACE of Spades (the one with the knife through the heart) is the "killer" and the person who get the King of Spades is the DA or the head detective of the case. The killer's job is to show nine people the card, with out anyone catching on. The killer has to follow some kind of pattern, and it is the DA and the rest of the team who is still alive job at the trial to find out who the killer is. The nine dead people cross over to the dark side to be accomplices of the killer after they are killed. The jury is made up of the rest of the team that is still alive, and they along with the DA are allowed to ask the dead people yes or no questions, like if they were killed in their condo or if they were killed while they were at treatment. But they can't ask questions about the killer. We played the game twice this past week and held two trials. Frankly the dead people and the killer just weren't sneaky enough because the jury guessed right on their first try both times. The first killer was Allison Whitworth and the second was Aimee Golightly. I thought Aimee had a chance of fooling everyone. Her pattern was simple, odd numbered jerseys but Julie King over heard her talking about it and her key eye witness testimony ruined it for Aimee! The best part by far of the game was helping Allison kill Stephanie Fransoso. Stephanie really did not want to die and was trying to be very cautious so naturally we had to kill her.

Thursday night we had our last practice in Orange Beach. Thankfully it was much cooler than the morning practice. We had our first positional meetings with our coaches and then we opened the field up to a slightly smaller version of 11 vs. 11. After practice we enjoyed cold tub again, and headed back to the condos for dinner and to watch Michael Phelps and the gymnastic individuals. \

Friday, August 15
Friday morning started bright and early for us. We had to clean up and be out of the condo and down to the bus by 8 a.m. so we could head back to Auburn. Somehow Caitlin King talked Coach Hoppa into watching Titanic. Carolyn Cohen was ecstatic but I am sure Rich and KD did not feel the same way. We stopped in Montgomery for lunch before getting into Auburn, where as soon as we stepped off the bus we had to go to the study hall building for our meeting with our academic counselor and savior Cathie Hembold. Cathie is amazing so we got out of there pretty quick and was able to go home for a few hours before having to leave for practice at 7:00. It was good to be back on our own field and in our own training room instead of in our makeshift training room at the beach. We had practice Friday night and then a light practice Saturday morning, were we worked on offensive and defensive restarts. (Corner kicks, free kicks, etc. Very important stuff!) The team is really starting to look great. Our last practice of preseason was set for Sunday night where the coaches had scheduled an inter-squad scrimmage Blue vs. Grey. Dan and some of our media staff came out too, to have a practice run of using the score board and playing the video, and announcing. I think it got everyone pretty excited, and it was good for the freshman to kind of get a little bit of an idea what it would be like when we play our first game this Friday under the lights.

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