After the afternoon session we crashed at our house and then rested a little bit before the last night session. The three hours at night was pretty brutal today, Gabby and I were blocking for the demo and then ended up blocking for another thirty minutes. Now usually I don’t mind blocking, but when we were doing it today we were literally blocking for the hitters doing the hitting drill so it was jump after jump. Needless to say we were winded. After that brutal hour or so we were supposed to compete in the camp staff v. camp staff match. We are all about to pass out, but played hard anyway. My team ended up winning in two after some embarassing plays and sweet kills by Svenja it was over and I crashed at home. SEE YOU LATER

Today we have the highly anticipated and highly competitive camp staff vs. camp staff game that the campers get to observe. The one game usually turns into a series of different games since when all the campers leave, Greg takes over and it turns into a full on practice. Whoever loses has to clean the bathroom or kitchen in one of the two houses that we are living in.

This week is particularly tiring because we have been waking up at 7 and working out before camp starts. Last night I worked the camp store until 11 and wasn’t in  bed until around 12:30. This has caused some serious fatigue! This morning we demonstrated how we play defense at Pacific which is called middle middle defense. It’s like a normal perimeter defense except instead the middle back really deep, we place them in the middle of the court to read the seam. So far, I really like the way it’s set up since it seems as if a majority of the hits goes to the middle of the court, right where we placed a defender. After demonstrating the different defense positions, we went over sprawling which is REALLY FUN to demonstrate. Not necessarily since none of us had knee pads on so we got a little scraped up. All in good fun of course. The highlight of today so far was definitely the warm up. Gabby and Bekah decided it would be fun to start the day off with a relay race. I was fine with that since I would be a spectator, but our head coach Greg thought it would be fun if some of the staff participated in the races. Of course he picked me to volunteer first and I reluctantly yet with enthusiasm! headed over to my team. Natalie ended up joining me, but Siga was forced to join another team. Natalie and I take winning seriously and therefore ended up winning every relay race no matter what it took. That usually meant cutting corners here and there, but it doesn’t matter we won!

Now I just have to survive the staff vs. staff game and another session and I’ll be done for the day!

After much deliberation, our team decided on a name called the Flying Skittles. This decision was reached after much arguing and after I had to throw out options such as “Team Jacob”, “IDK”, and “the Gummy Bears”.  Finally after talking about which ice cream flavor was the best, who was hotter Edward or Jacob, and finding three people who liked Harry Potter more than Twilight (thank God) it was time to send everyone back to the dorms.

It was as this time that Siga was driving in Coach Greg’s car and we discovered he had a fondness for Lady Gaga and techno which resulted in an enjoyable trip to S-mart for some Camp Store goodies to sell to the campers. After that we headed home and are going to bed somewhat early in order to get up early to work out in the morning before camp. See you tomorrow!

After dinner and showering we all took of for the Stockton Ports baseball game and enjoyed some pretty good seats provided by a Ports player. After a while it got a little chilly and we took off. It was a pretty nice and relaxing day after a tough week of camp where we were literally kept busy for all of our waking hours. Now its time to live it up! Until next time!

Since I was not technically “coaching” due to my transfer status I did not have a team of my own and was a floater coach. Meaning I ran a bunch of errands and was constantly switching teams. First I was with Ray’s team, then Siga’s team, then finally Andrea’s team. Don’t worry though, when Siga’s team started handing out cupcakes I made sure I got one, and I can still taste the frosting, yum. During the skills stations it was my pleasure to be paired up with Greg on the setting court. He ran the first two sessions and then he kindly allowed me to lead the last one. After repeating many recycled jokes, but still getting a few laughs here and there I slumped to the ground in exhaustion and tried to help coach Siga’s team. We did not have open gym that night since our coaches vs. coaches game counted for our practice that day. The coaches vs. coaches game was pretty fun, all of the campers sat in the stands and watched their coaches who had been yelling and berating them for the past three days play one game of volleyball. By the way, the one game turned into two games and another match, so we were all pretty dead and hungry by the time we were finished with our games. Some campers stayed for a few games but most of them were out of there after the first. I guess they weren’t too impressed or their stomachs were the first priority.

Today was the last day of camp and Gabby, Natalie, Siga and I all thought it would be a neat way to spice up the camp tournament today by going to Delta thrift store and purchasing a few quality items. These quality items included overalls and straw hats. To put it simply, we dressed up as hillbillies for the last three hour session of camp which was only tournament play and no demos. We got up EXTRA early this morning, (7:40 instead of 7:45) and put on eyeliner freckles, overalls, and straw hats and headed over to the caf. At the UC we got food as well as plastic straws that we strategically placed in our mouths at an add angle to accentuate our true hillbilly-ness. Right after breakfast we had about 20 minutes of free time where we would normally play pictionary on a conveniently placed whiteboard, but on this day we decided it was prime time for choreographing a dance. A few straggling campers noticed our odd attire and weird body wriggling movements that was our form of dancing and they burst into laughter and ran away. At that point we knew our spicing up plan would be a success.

We entered the gym and everyone stared and whispered to each other “What’s with the outfits”. Whenever someone asked me a question like that I would answer what outfit? I just went to my closet. By then the campers knew me as the sarcastic insane one and just laughed. Since Andrea has class in the mornings I took over her team for the last day and abandoned my beloved team with Siga. Poor girls, Siga’s a weirdo. Siga if you are reading this that’s code for “you rock!”. Anyway, the moral of the story is, the team I took over ended up in last place out of the entire tournament in a crucial game against Gabby’s formidable team where the score was 29-27. Whatever you think you saw or heard, me and Gabby were not having dance offs in the middle of the game we were sternly instructing our girls and coaching with a strong purpose. Okay maybe with a dance off here or there. Anyway the important part is the closing ceremonies where we got to express ourselves in the art of the hillbilly dance in front of 65 naive and bewildered youngsters. It may or may not have been one of the most successful things I have been a part of.

After that camp we went home where I finished up some homework and the other girls went to class. After my class I headed over to Spanos to get a little setting in before open gym. Then we had an intense but short open gym and then the night was ours!

UNTIL NEXT TIME~!

After a nice 20 minutes of procrastination I emerged still not quite awake and crammed a powerbar in my mouth and put on my last clean workout clothes. Then trudged on over to athletics to condition with teammates Sam Misa and Andrea Turpstra. After some cushioned falls and stifled laughter I walked home dripping with sweat in the 90 degree 9:00 am morning of Stockton. I tried to stay awake for a while and then immediatly fell asleep for a good two hours. I woke up when housemates Natalie, Gabby, and Siga took off for class.

My laundry was still not dry so I got to wear some huge baggy shorts and a tie dye shirt to class and then to lifting right after which looked slightly funky. Power jump shrugs with knitted baggy shorts is kind of awkward although not as awkward as hip flexion roll overs with a medicine ball. I swear, I was worried more about my pants falling down then the actual excercise. Lesson learned, Sunday get laundry taken care of. The team finished the lift before I did since I arrived late from my class and me and Tony got some quality one on one time which thoroughly kicked my butt.

After the lift and unable to raise up my arms we met in the team room and then headed over to open gym. Then later on we hung out as a team and watched some quality TV with shows like Housewives of New Jersey, The Bachelorette, and my personal favorite, Huge. I’ve got a 7:00 alarm just yearning to go off, so until tomorrow!

Next I had another trip to the health center since my TB test needed to be verified. After a satisfied nod and a swipe of my credit card I was out of the Wellness Center and on my way back home to prepare for class.

After class I raced home ate a banana and was on my way to Saint Mary’s High School to assist some of my fellow teammates Beckah Torres and Svenja Engelhardt in running a local camp. Since I’m new to the area I rely heavily on my GPS to get around and find exact locations. Unfortunately I spent a good half hour frantically searching for a high school in a residential area where several grandmas sitting on a porched eyed me suspiciously.

Once the high school was found, I sprinted inside greeted my teammmates, and immediatly was thrust into a drill where I was quite bewildered and frankly not that good. After getting semi whooped, I then proceeded over to a court where Beckah and I ran a drill that I did not really understand. That was followed by some confusion and some quick thinking and soon enough the drill was running smoothly with little happy campers smacking around at some volleyballs.

Once the camp was done, we ran back to our cars to grab a quick bite before open gym. Soon enough, I was full of left over fajitas courtesy of Gabby Cowden and Natalie Robinson from Monday night.

Open gym was full of drills tonight. We started out with the usual warm up of pass set hit to get our bodies used to moving. After Tony’s workout yesterday we definately needed to get the blood flowing in our sore muscles.

Next we serve recieved and then came the fun stuff. We started working on hitter setter connections especially with the middles and towards the end the outsides got involved as well. After a few whiffs and some grunts of frustration, contact was made and Gabby and the other middle Andrea Terpstra started pounding some sweet kills.

Soon the hour was up and open gym ended. The University of the Pacific volleyball team took their leave and departed with sweaty foreheads and tired smiles.

Until tomorrow!