Chip Shots

Hello Illini Nation!

I hope you guys had a wonderful holiday season! From hiking at Torrey Pines State Reserve in San Diego, California, to catching up with old friends from high school, this winter has been one of the most eventful school breaks I've ever had! My favorite event from over break was definitely when I went hiking at Point Loma, the highest view point overlooking the city of San Diego.

A lot of us on the team took the opportunity during winter break to travel to warmer places; Jan went home to Thailand to see her family, Dana and Grace spent a couple weeks in Florida, Stephanie took a trip to Hawaii, and I visited home in sunny San Diego!

Below is a picture of the Gattone family at a Christmas get-together as well as a picture of my dad and I at one of Point Loma's beach trails.

Traveling to warmer places gave us an opportunity to have some fun in the sun and to practice hard to prepare ourselves for the spring tournaments to come. We are ready to wow each other with our improvements as soon as the season kicks off!

Despite the fact that we spent our break at different places, we were able to stay in touch and maintain the team chemistry that we had during the fall season. Before break started, Emily proposed an awesome idea to keep us in touch through a phone messaging application called Groupme. It is called "Fun-Fact Friday" where each team member would share one "fun-fact" about themselves every Friday. This "fun-fact" can range from anything that the team did not know about you to any special event that happened during the week. We were equally as excited about this idea as Emily was so we decided to proceed with the plan. Two Fridays later, we found out that Katherine had become an aunt! She visited her brother and his wife during the week of Christmas and sent us a picture of her little nephew in a Santa onesie. How cute!

Our first tournament will be the Illinois Challenge (Venice, Florida) on February 13^th and I cannot wait to see the hard work everyone put in over break in action! Our team's goal for the spring is to put ourselves in position to earn the B1G team trophy! WE CAN DO THIS!

Here is to an exciting new season, ILL!

Pailin Ruttanasupagid