March 23, 2011
Welcome Illini fans to the second edition of our weekly team blog!! I'm sure most of you are already aware of my sterling reputation as a blogger for fightingillini.com, but in case you've been living on the moon for the past few years, I will give you a little info about myself.
My name is Annie McCarthy and I am a senior from Chicago, Ill., majoring in psychology. Recently, everyone has been asking me what I plan to do when I graduate (which is in two months...scary). Unfortunately, I really have no good answer for you. I was never the person who knew from age four what I wanted to do with my life. Actually, at age four, I would tell people I wanted to be a fire truck, which as you probably know, is not humanly possibly. Since then, I've realized I will never achieve this dream, so I have started mastering other skills such as Rock Band, Scrabble, eating salami, rapping, stenciling the "I" on our tennis racquets, and going to bed at eight. I figure one of these skills will get me somewhere in life, right?
Anyways, on to the much more important topic of this week's blog: SPRING BREAK!!! That's right Illini, starting last Friday, my teammates and I have been screaming "SPRING BREAK --WOOOO" at least once every hour. It all started on Friday night with a long four-and-a-half hour home match against Western Michigan. With a singles debut from yours truly, we came out with an exciting 5-2 win over the Broncos!
Upon our arrival in San Diego, we were welcomed by so many lovely things. The first being our amazing house the coaches so nicely rented for us, right on one of the most popular beaches in San Diego. With a beautiful view of the ocean, we went out to explore and that is where we met the coolest dog ever. His name was Angus, and yes, he knew how to skateboard. After spending about an hour taking videos and laughing until we cried (Amy), Angus had to give the skateboard back to its owner and we were all very sad.
The following day we got the ball rolling with a nice practice in the morning, followed by an even nicer practice in the afternoon. Although the weather was a little cold and windy, we were just happy that it didn't rain. That night, Misia and I decided to have a little fun of our own. When Leigh got in the shower, we stole her stuffed animal Frank and took pictures of him in really funny places. When Leigh got out of the shower, she went on Facebook to find pictures of her bunny Frank with captions like "Microwavable Frank" and "Frank on the John". The next day we did the same to Amy's teddy bear named "Bear Bear." However, she did not find it as funny as Leigh did.
On Monday, we woke up to a rainy day, so instead of practicing, we were fortunate enough to still get a workout in as our coaches had planned ahead and brought a workout disc called "Insanity." Even more fortunately, we couldn't all fit in the living room to do the workout, so when one group was doing Insanity; the other group got to do an ab circuit consisting of 520 reps.
Tuesday brought the best weather so far, with a very successful morning practice, and a visit from Georgia's very good-looking, British brother (and his girlfriend...). Misia's ultimate goal in life is to marry into the Rose family, so she was hoping for a love at first site moment. Seeing as he just left with his girlfriend, I think she might need to start finding a new life goal.
Speaking of life goals, the coaches have become recently obsessed with a game called "careers." It is literally all they talk about. Chelcie and Allison are the only two teammates who have gotten to play, so no one really has any idea what they are talking about when they discuss the game. They say things like "Ric went to the moon" and " Georgia went to the hospital" and "Big Al made the dean's list." I don't know the rules at all, but it kinda sounds like they are just making things up and trying to convince us that it's part of the game.
Next up, we have some big matches this week against University of San Diego, Fresno State and Ohio State, and we are ready to keep our winning streak going! Check back in next week to hear more great stories from Big Al about the matches and the rest of spring break! Well, that's all for now, you stay classy, San Diego. And thanks for stopping by! But mainly, stay classy.
