Tracy Ducar gives a shout out to the fans from "sunny" California
March 22, 2001
Welcome Boston Breaker fans! Hello from sunny San Diego….okay, so maybe it hasn't exactly been perfect blue skies, but we'll take the patchy sun, fog, haze, and 60 degree weather over cold, rainy, snowy Boston any day! We haven't made it to the beach yet, but the palm trees and shorts are a nice change.
Thus far we have had 5 training sessions. Two weight room sessions and three field sessions. Our strength and conditioning coach, Walter Norton Jr., is fantastic! He is a super guy with a ton of enthusiasm and he really knows his stuff! In the weight room he has us doing a lot of free weight and body weight exercises as well as lots of core stability exercises. The stuff we do is very sport specific and will help us get stronger as well as prevent us from getting injured. He is also helping all of us with our diets…..you know the typical advice, eat lots of fried foods and drink a ton soda if you want to perform better…NOT! Mainly, most of us eat way too many carbs and really need to boost our protein intake so that our muscles recover faster. Since we are training hard twice a day we need to make sure our caloric intake is higher than usual so we don't end up losing weight or more importantly muscle weight! We need to be lean mean fighting machines if we are going to win the league title and Walter is going to make sure of that! Walter also takes care of our team warm-ups….which sometimes can be the hardest part of practice…no joke! We have since dubbed them "Walter-cise". It is a very active warm-up for about 20 minutes without the ball and little to no static stretching, which most of us were pretty accustom to before joining this team. It gets our heart rates up quickly, are feet moving fast, and the sweat pouring! Just what we need in a warm-up.
"Quotes of Note"…. at yesterday's training session Robin Confer and Kim Calkins were killing some down time in between drills by playing a little juggling game. They were trying to juggle using as many body parts as possible. Rumor has it that Kim was heard saying…"thigh, head, elbow, elbow, thigh, thigh, head, elbow, elbow"….elbow, Kim??? I think you mean SHOULDER! Well, apparently the University of Portland, (Calkin's alma mater), doesn't offer Anatomy classes or maybe she just missed that day.
Today is Thursday so it is March Madness game time again. So can Gonzaga win it all? According to our Spokane duo, Kim Calkins and Jen Tissue, who are die hard Gonzaga supporters, they are a team on a mission. However, I for one am sick of hearing about how unbelievable the Bulldogs are and hope that Michigan State takes care of business tomorrow. You see I am still very bitter about my Tarheels losing so prematurely to Penn State last weekend. I had them going all the way to the Final…ouch that hurts! Now I am stuck rooting for the Dukies, which is the equivalent of Sarah Powell, (Boston College) cheering for BU.
Back to soccer…..our roster has been cut back to 24 players since our Greensboro camp. It is always hard to see players leave, but even harder after training and getting to know them for 2 hard weeks. On the positive side of things 2 of our drafted players are finally able to join the team. Heather Aldama, from Santa Clara University, and Dagny Mellgren, from the Norwegian National Team have just reported into camp. Heather is still finishing her degree at Santa Clara and was attending classes earlier in March while Dagny was busy with her National Team competing in Portugal, so neither of them were able to attend our first training camp in North Carolina. Heather is a quick, feisty little defender who works really hard. And Dagny is incredibly technical, a great finisher, and like all of the top Norwegian players, she is a fearless and dangerous header. It only took her about 5 minutes in our first session to score a world class header. WE LOVE HER! I for one am glad she is on my team so I won't have to defend against her! I can't wait to see how good our team comes together when we have our 2 German players, Weigmann and Meinert, (who are currently back in Germany playing one last game with their club team), Mellgren and all the rest of our starters playing on the pitch at the same time. Our coach, Jay Hoffman, has yet to field our top eleven to compete together. So when we play in games the line-ups are pretty random and he gets to get a good look at all the players. I think this is important since players are still competing for spots. Practice is much more competitive when players are fighting for starting positions and roster slots. And the harder we train, the better we get.
Thus far what little down time we have had has been spent napping, eating, and completing the daily crossword puzzles. We have several crossword junkies on this team, so every day is a battle to see who completes the puzzle first…if at all! Yes, we are competitive at everything…even the crosswords! Hopefully, later in the week we will have time to check out the local beaches, malls, and maybe even the zoo or Sea World, maybe on our day off.
Finally, this is to all of you out there who have been racking your brains furiously to come up with the winning name for our team mascot…..my suggestion…throw in the towel, give up, save yourself the trouble….Angela Hucles' says her Dad has the winning answer. She said he's a shoe in. Just kidding! Actually, he did come up with a pretty creative name and we like it, but we need more ideas!!!! So keep those entries coming!
It is bed time for me now gang….so I have to sign off now….big game against Atlanta tomorrow!!!!