First Practice

     Before practice on Thursdays, we have an hour of weight lifting. We soon learned that there was not a lifting workout for us, but that we did that on our own. Meghan and I made our way through the weight room and survived our first weight lifting! We will come more prepared for the next lifting time. Then it was off to our first practice. We were interviewed for the newspaper at the beginning of practice, and they took our picture. The newspaper lady got my email address to send me a copy of the article so I will post that on here when I receive it, even though it will all be in Swedish! Practice went really well except for one thing… I hit a ball down the line, and it hit one of my teammates in the face. I felt so so bad! She was super nice about it all though, and after practice she even thanked me for hitting her saying that it made her a better player. We were doing that drill, but then all of a sudden our coach, Daniel, started counting down from 10. Meghan and I both just froze in place while everyone else started running around as fast as they can. We quickly realized that they were running to shag all the balls because if we don’t get all the balls in the carts within 10 seconds then we have to run. Good thing the gym is way smaller than Huff Hall! Another different thing we did during practice was sprinting, but the different part about it was that we had to hold a piece of paper against our chest as we ran. You couldn’t use your hands to hold it there so it definitely did help to make you run as fast as you can. I was so nervous the whole time though looking down at my chest to make sure the paper was still there. We finished practice by scrimmaging. This was normal for me except for one thing… I played back row! This was the first time I have played back row since high school. I was also playing middle back, which was also even more unusual for me. I did alright for it being my first time, but I’m not sure if I will be playing back row in a real match or just in practice. Everyone on the team is so nice and helpful and speaks great English that it makes everything much easier and more comfortable for Meghan and me.