Spring is almost over, and we need to figure out how much we improved during the season in order to make sure we will come back even better for the fall. “Beep. Beep. Beep.” I bet this is the sound that was beating in most of our minds during that Monday afternoon. We started our week with our Beep Test, where we have to run, (beep,) touch a line about 20 yards away (beep,) and back, before a third beep. So, what we hear from the radio is a beep telling us to go, a second one telling us that we should be about half way, and a third one that indicates that we should hit the starting line in order to still be counted “in.” See, the beeps get progressively faster and faster, so making it back to the line on time for that third beep gets more and more difficult.

It is also our standard to beat our PRs (our Personal Records.) So, besides the test’s natural level of difficulty, we also need to work hard enough to compete with our own record. I guess that’s one of the hardest parts of our job, because when you work seriously, you try to be as strong or as fast as you think you can. Therefore, the idea that we have to be better than we were the last time we took the test, when we thought we gave everything we could, may be a little scary or stressful.

We started our warm up, and all we basically talked about was how hard the test would be…You know, that little chat we always have before start practice that just reemphasizes how life would be a lot easier if we could practice just mentally while we sit and have pink lemonade with friends. Just to relax a little.

After doing some sprints we finally had to run the test. I am so glad because we all did a good job in beating our PRs. We are growing as a team, and it makes me feel inspired to keep improving. The week has just started.

Friday, April 24

The week has been tough. We played indoor soccer on Tuesday, and we had agility, pushups and sit up tests on Thursday. Today is Friday, and we are almost done with the “fun” tests. We call Shuttles the test that we have to sprint 25 yards, up and back, 12 times without stopping. We do it twice, with a five-minute break in between sets. Cara, one of our teammates, likes to say, “it is less than a commercial, guys!” I like when she says that because, besides her positive energy that certainly helps the whole team, it makes me laugh, since for me the commercials here last for hours. It does help me to hear her saying that because when I laugh I am releasing the tension before I start.

After taking the test we played 4v4 plus 1 with 4 outside players that supported the attack for both teams. It was so hard to play because we had just run Shuttles, but all the teams kept competitive, and as the time went by, we felt our legs a little bit fresher, so I believe we played better by the end of practice. Tiff was called up to play with us, since Amanda had to leave early. Tim was in goal, proving his competence to become a national team goal keeper. And Siri was outside this time, proving her success as a babysitter or as a saving-lives official. Tiff shot the ball that ended up going right in Laylla’s direction when Siri, coming out of nowhere, jumped to the ball and sent it far away from the happy baby hanging out somewhere around our field on that sunny day.  If babies had any idea about everything that goes on near them…

“One, two three, VCU!!” End of practice.

We walked up the hill to the Bryan Park field and proceeded to ask Ryan what the day had in store for us. Rather than telling us straight up what were going to do, he just told us it would bring a smile to our faces. None of us believed him. We started the practice out with a good dynamic warm-up like always. Then Ryan told us to get on the line to do five, 18-yard sprints. Ryan then walked over to his bag while we awaited this cheerful surprise. We were all shocked and thrilled when Ryan pulled out a football.

YESSSSSS! 

I think everyone on the team was grinning from ear to ear, just like he promised. The team was divided into two teams and away we went. The first game we played was a combination of ultimate Frisbee and handball. It was a lot of fun, except for the fact that my team completely dominated with a score of about 8 to 1.

The next game we played was classic two-hand touch football. As you can imagine, this was extremely intense due to everyone’s extremely competitive nature. I was quarterback for my team and Ryan was quarterback for the other. Yes, I was quarterback. As my teammates say, my arm is “a cannon,” good for both throwing footballs and snowballs…

The game was fairly tightly matched the entire time. Paige always found the end of my throws as well as Heather and Myriam. On the other team, Ryan’s perfect throws always landed into the arms of June, Molly, and Amanda. Azania also perfected receiving the handoffs from Ryan.

Overall, it was a very intense game and everyone had a blast. In the end my team lost but both teams played awesome. Surprising days like this one make me realize that Tuesday’s don’t always have to be so terrible.

I absolutely love practicing at Scor, even moreso since the alternative was playing outside. The pace is so fast and the games are so intense because the area is smaller than an outdoor field. Today we started out with a Coervers warm-up, which I am proud to state that I think I am improving, not by much, but hey I’m taking baby steps.

We then divided into two teams and played six games each six minutes long. Each one of these games was played with different limitations such as two touch and “shotgun” goals. Each game was such a good workout; you never really notice how much throw-ins can slow a game down. With the walls on the field we all were working on our fitness as well as our soccer skills. Practices like this make me wish it would rain more often!

Tonight we had a game against University of Richmond. It was our first home game this Spring and the second time we’ve played Richmond in only a few weeks. Last time, we won 3-0, so we knew they would be out to prove themselves this time around. Pregame started with the hilarious news that Tim was seriously seeking advice from Siri after practices about his transition to world’s greatest keeper. Like Tim said, at least he’s always trying to get better.

After our pregame meeting at the VCU Sports Medicine building, we went to Sportsbacker’s, our field. We had a pretty good warm-up, but we knew we couldn’t give Richmond any advantage, especially in the Big 5 Moments. Big 5 Moments are those times in a game that are most critical: the first five minutes, the last five minutes before the half, the first five after the half, the last five before the game is over, and the five minutes after a goal is scored. Those are the times when we have to stay focused and really press the other team (well we do that all game, but those times are especially important because lots of goals are scored in those times.)

Jazzy got us up 1-0 in the first half, but we knew we would have to play even better in the second if we wanted to secure the win. Chenae came up with some big saves on free kicks in the second half to help us keep the shutout and get the win.
I am so proud of our team this Spring.  So far, we have seven goals for and zero against in three games.  Besides the fact that Siri owes us LOTS of doughnuts for all the shutouts, our team has really shown we believe in the importance of defending and working hard to keep the ball out of our net. It’s not good enough to just score more goals than the other team; this team wants to keep the other team from scoring at all.

April 1, 2009

Today was interesting.  For some reason, Tiff got really mad at us and made us run fitness all practice long. We have a game tomorrow, but she and Tim don’t care. Then they both yelled at us and told us we don’t even deserve to play for VCU. It was intense…

April Fools!

Tiff and Tim would never be unreasonable like that. If we needed to run fitness, we’d run, but they would never use fitness as punishment. Fitness is a way to help us get an edge over the other team and be able to work harder than them.
We actually had pregame practice today, so we started with 6 vs. 3 plus one neutral player, which is more like 8 vs. 3 plus one. We always try to get 20 passes, and today we got up to 49 one round! Next, we played offense vs. defense, which really helped us work on our runs, timing, movement and passing. We finished practice with “Team Trains the Keeper,” and in this case, “Team Trains Siri and Tim.” All there is to say about Team Trains is that Tim was clearly meant to be a keeper. Hopefully we can take the work we did today into the game tomorrow versus University of Richmond.

March 31, 2009

Today Tiff and Siri showed us up. We worked on long balls and passing with different surfaces for a while, then played a game with long balls. The object was to try to knock a ball on a cone over by controlling the ball out of the air with your first touch, from your partner’s long ball.  Everyone was getting so close, but no one could seem to knock the ball over. Chenae’s ball rolled up and touched the ball on the cone, but that ball did not move. Finally, Chenae knocked the ball off and her team won, but the rest of us were still trying. After the drill, Tiff and Siri decided to give it one try. What happened?  Of course, the former national team members got it on the FIRST TRY. We’re working on it.

After our coaches humbled us, we played a possession game with gates. Passing through the gates got your team a point, so we were all going nuts trying to win. Our team has become very competitive this spring, much more than in my previous years on the team. Everyone wants to win, but everyone also refuses to lose. It seems like as soon as the ball goes out someone is screaming ‘OUT!’ so the other team doesn’t get a point. Sometimes this competitive fire (as Tiff calls it) can cause us to want to play the drill and not focus on the soccer, but our coaches always recognize when we are just running around and help us refocus.

On most days, we can get competition points for our team winning. Tresy, our graduate assistant, keeps track of all the competition points for each player and at the end of the year the person with the most points wins. We always want games to be for a competition point because everyone wants to have the most. I love that this team has that spirit and desire to be the best. It has caused us all to be a little crazy some days and think we’re mad at each other, but after we leave the field we realize we’re just making each other and the team better.

We had another uncommon start for this week, but a bunch of snow coming out of nowhere was not the reason this time. We were in our first pregame practice of the spring! At Bryan Park, our coaches had our “pregame rundown” ready, as usual. They knew we would have to work a little harder than we usually do before games because of our long and pleasant spring break that preceded the week of our game.

So, we played nine vs. three, plus a neutral player, where a player who made a mistake had to run around one of the goals and come back quickly to continue to play. In addition to including more fitness in the activity, Tiff said that the time we would spend running around the goal and would help us process our mistake better, improving our performance when we got to play again.

After that we played attackers vs. defenders, which was good to visualize our team in the two different sectors at the same time. Our defenders were fighting to get the ball out of their field, and we attackers were seeking to put the ball on the net! After asking questions and getting instructions from our coaches during the activity in order to really meet the game’s purpose, we finally got to the last section of the first part of the day: a game called Near, Far, Slot that we always play last at every pregame practice. We have 21 opportunities to score balls that are crossed from a couple outside players to the middle of the box. We have to score more than 6 times to win the game, otherwise the goalkeepers are the winners. Today…Well…Today we didn’t win it, and as a result, everyone had to line up inside of the goal while the winner, who in this exceptional case was Tim, had a few chances to hit us with the ball shooting from just outside the 18-yard box. They call this “Butts Up.”

Anyhow, I am sure next time we will do better, that’s why we practice so hard. Once we were done on the field, we all went to the weight room, where Ryan told us what to do to get our muscles prepared for the game. The day ended with our hearts’ and minds anxious for the following night.

March 17
Bounce

Tuesday! Doesn’t it sound terrible somehow?! (Usually we run fitness every Tuesday…therefore we call them Terrible Tuesdays.) Well, not this time. It still means a lot of running, hard work, and having our “shutout mentality,” but the week’s excitement was just in the beginning on that Tuesday afternoon.

We had our pregame meeting, when Tiff and Tim tell us precious keys of how to achieve the best performance in each particular game. (They have this power of putting us in our jerseys, like we’re in the middle of the game, even hours before it starts actually happening).

This was a special day for us because we are practically playing with a whole new team that, at this point, had never gotten to play together before. We couldn’t wait to feel how different it would be to play with that formation. The first thing I thought when we got at the Richmond City Stadium was that, a couple months ago, the US Women’s National team won the game against Korea right there at the same field we were about to play at! How great opportunity to take the US team’s victory as an example that night! We did our dynamic warm up, as always, and the whistle finally put the curtains up giving both teams 50/50 chance of being successful. What I can say is that commitment with the group, self-confidence, and hard work cannot end up differently. We won by a score of VCU 3, University of Richmond 0, with goals by June, Jasmine and then June AGAIN. This girl is just on fire!

We were so happy to see that everyone on and off the field wanted to win that game. As Amanda likes to say, we were the greater result of our individual parts’ summation. Together we “did work” beautifully! It was also pleasing to share our happiness with some of our senior players that went to the game to play with us in case we needed them. They are clearly part of our success, since they were our example in the last season. “It was fun to watch” in Tiff’s words. That night was amazing, and the best part of it is that we are just starting. The hard work continues; progress is just a consequence.

March 20
Siri’s turn!

Our first game is over, next match is our goal now. Tiff and Tim can’t be at practice. What is gonna happen?!! It sounds like someone’s first opportunity to show what a practice is made of. Siri!! Our goalkeeper’s trainer is the one who will command practice on this Friday, folks. As Siri knew that her first impression was important since it would last until the rare next time coaches won’t be able to show up, here is her first surprise: she told us all the games we would play, and, when our smiles were almost demonstrating too much delight for that day she goes…”And we will do some fitness in the end!”

It is not difficult to guess that, at that point, she was the only one showing a big, and shiny smile. It was kind of a surprise because we usually have fitness at the beginning, also because she wouldn’t tell us what we would have for fitness. After warming up, we played five vs. two, which I personally love. Then we played four vs. four with four outside players and six vs. six plus one to finish with the “fun” part.

Now, we are all asking ourselves “what did you prepare for us, Siri?”… Ricky Martin’s cousin! All I know about this name is that after that Friday, the less I hear it at practice, the happier I will be. But…Putting the jokes apart, in this exercise we have to run, run, and run around six poles set up in three different distances. She divided us in two groups. The first group starts running from the middle of the field to the farthest pole in that half, then to the farthest one in the other half, and back to middle. As soon as they get in the middle is the second group’s turn. We do it twice more around the middle poles, and then around the short ones.

All this is ONE round. We had to do THREE. It is always good to keep fresh in our minds that fitness is an extremely important element in high level teams’ routine. It helps to get up everyday, and feel glad for having the opportunity to be part of this team. In any case, I am positive that Siri gave us a spectacular first impression!

Since there was so much snow all of VCU was closed. Along with no classes, we had no soccer practice. With nothing to do all day, none of us had any idea what to do with ourselves. After some celebration we all quickly got dressed for the weather and headed out into the snow to play.

The freshmen forged our way through the snow to June’s house, where we planned on having a huge snowball fight with out other teammates. While the snowball fight was short lived, the playing in the snow was not. We found it most fun tackling each other and shoving snow in each other’s faces.

After everyone’s faces were on the verge of frostbite, we began an even bigger dodge (snow)ball game. Everybody was really getting into it as we ducked and dove around flying snow. Eventually, playing in the snow got tiring so we headed into the house where we played N64 and drank hot chocolate.

It’s times like this when I realize how lucky I am to be part of this team. We all are so close and have such good chemistry on and off the field. I have to remind myself what a rare occurrence this is and to never take it for granted. Despite the frozen hands and snow-filled boots, this was one of the best days all year and I’ll never forget it.

Cara’s first day with the RAMVAN…

Today was a splendid day with a wind chill of 20 degrees. We finally got to go to Bryan Park (our usual grass practice fields) instead of the turf on campus and play soccer on real grass. This was exciting, but the real fun started when the rising seniors realized last week that we, actually Cara, were the ones in charge of driving the fifteen-passenger vans to practice. Cara, my beloved roommate of three years, got in the RAMVAN and started backing out of the UU lot. The UU lot reminds me of one of those funhouses at carnivals where there are mirrors on the walls and it seems like you’re always running into things, so needless to say we knew it was going to be an adventure. Cara did a great job driving to practice, but an even better job parking! Everyone got out of the RAMVAN with smiles on their faces and ready for an exciting day at practice.

Then we felt the wind. It was so windy the balls were rolling away off the field, but we are Rams and, of course, did not let it phase us. Our practice began with coerver work (fancy footwork drills) and trying to master the double touch, and then we did a series of one vs. one games to compete and push each other. Luckily, Tiff was pleased with our one vs. one mentality and let us out early.

Our delight quickly ended when we realized we were leaving practice early to go squat in the weight room. Ryan, our amazing strength and conditioning coach, then gave us the wonderful news that we were maxing out on squats. Our team is, so to say, a work in progress in the weight room. We get pushed harder everyday and it amazes me how much we are actually capable of doing. The highlight of maxing out was watching a track guy lift about five times my body weight plus chains…yes I am serious. We didn’t finish today with the usual routine of abs for an entire song (usually to “My Humps” by Black Eyed Peas), but there’s always hope for Thursday.

February 24, 2009

Terrible Tuesdays

Usually during the fall season Tuesdays are the days we run fitness and do one vs. one work, so naturally they have been given the name “Terrible Tuesdays.” Even though we call them Terrible Tuesdays, the work we put in on Tuesdays is actually what makes us one of the fittest and hardest working teams in the country, so despite the complaining, we never regret a Tuesday. Although it is the spring season, Tiff and Tim have created their own version of Terrible Tuesdays by having futsal (indoor soccer) at 7 a.m. in the Siegel Center plus practice at 2:30 later that day.

Futsal this morning was one of the most competitive mornings yet. We drafted teams at the beginning of the spring, and no surprise to me (I drafted my team), my yellow team is still undefeated. This makes the other two teams want to beat us even more every Tuesday, but Meg and Kaja’s keeper skills (especially Meg’s throws out of the back almost into the other goal), Azania’s Brazilian indoor tricks, Molly’s tackling, Steph’s amazingness at soccer in general, and our secret (not so secret anymore) weapon of Jazzy cannot and will not be stopped. Tim likes to cheer for the other teams (constantly), but we use that as fuel to keep winning.

Practice at 2:30 is always good because we work on agility and technique with Ryan, our strength and conditioning coach. I was bummed we didn’t get to push any tires today, but the workout was great and is making all of us look more athletic, especially trying to do lateral A-skips…just Google that and try it.

At the end of the day, just like at the end of Tuesdays in the fall, we regret complaining for having to wake up so early and feel great about all the hard work we put in. I can’t wait until next Tuesday for the yellow team to dominate again.

February 26, 2009

Myriam figures it out…

Practice today was so fun. We did the Real Madrid technical warm up, Tim’s specialty, and then played a four vs. four vs. four game in a really small grid. I always love the games with three teams because the defense is constantly changing and our team, being incredibly competitive, always fights over who’s in the middle. We played multiple rounds, but each one seemed to be a different length. This might have been because Layla, Tiff and Tim’s 10-month-old baby, refused to give up the stopwatch.

We finished with a six vs. six game to big goals and then headed off to the weight room. We surprisingly found the men’s soccer team in the weight room when we got there (some more surprised than others), so we lifted together. At the end of our lift, the men joined us for team abs. Ryan put on our song (“My Humps”) and started calling out our exercises. Ryan always said if anyone could figure out who climbed Mount Everest first we can forever get out of mountain climbers during team abs, and Myriam came ready today. Thank goodness, because the plank at the end is getting longer and longer (we’re at a three minute plank now).

Next week should be interesting; a three and a half minute plank after team abs must be a record.