Sept. 27, 2007
Get behind the scenes of Illinois Gymnastics with Illini Ink - the weekly women's gymnastics journal. In this year's first edition, freshman Allison Buckley talks about moving in, bonding with her teammates and putting on her Illini gear for the first time.
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Wow! I can't believe we are heading into the sixth week of school already. I feel like it was just yesterday that my parents were dropping me off to unpack my bags and embark on an unforgettable four-year journey.
I was extremely excited to arrive on campus. Although I was a little nervous about moving in and leaving my family, everything went really smoothly. I always thought that moving in would be crazy; however, the university was really organized and made the process go by quickly. As soon as you pulled into the parking lots at the dorms there were volunteer students there to help you unpack the cars and carry everything to your rooms. With all the clothes and shoes I brought, my dad was definitely happy about that! Unpacking the car was the easy part, it was putting my room together that made it crazy. After a couple hours of unpacking I finally had it done. Despite the fact that this wasn't a fun process, it was nice to know that everyone else had to do it too. After we finished my room, I had meetings with the other freshmen. It was definitely exciting to meet my new teammates.
Right from the start, the freshman class mixed well. We are all from different states, and all have very different personalities, but we work well together. Being new to campus we've all had to help each other adjust to a new life. The rest of the team has helped us with the adjustment as well. We have the best teammates you can find at Illinois! They've helped us find classes, given us rides to places, gone to eat with us, and just hung out with us. We've done a lot of fun things together, like going to watch volleyball games, soccer games, and football games; as well as, going bowling, going to dinner, and even just watching movies! There's never a dull moment with this team. Our team chemistry is great and it will definitely help us achieve great things this season.
The team has been working really hard in and out of the gym in order to reach our goals. Although we haven't really started routines yet, everyone is working on their skills and getting them consistent. It's been really exciting to watch everyone progress in the first few weeks. It's great to see that almost anyone could make the line-up on each event. It's made everyone work extra hard to get their skills ready! Outside the gym we've been working hard as well. We've been working on our endurance and strength to make sure that we can be ready to start our routines.
Just the other day we took our team pictures! It was a busy but exciting day. It was cool to see everyone all dolled up and cute. Everyone looked great. We had a lot of pictures to take and a lot of different outfits to take them in. It was so awesome to put on the Illinois clothes for the first time! It definitely made us all excited for season to come. We started taking pictures in the gym. Everyone had individual shots, then class shots, and then team shots. Once we were done in the gym, we went to the Arboretum. It was so pretty. There were tons of gorgeous flowers and plants that we took pictures by. Even though it was a really busy day, it was definitely a good time.
I know we are all looking forward to the start of season, and we hope you all are as well. I hope everyone has a great week. Thanks for reading. GO ILLINI!!!
Allison
