Volleyball 2003 Preseason Journal Part 13: Abbi Blackburn

Part 13 of a 13-part first-hand account of 2003 volleyball fall practice

Tuesday, August 19, 2003

Abbi Blackburn

August 19, 2003

Pre-season is over. That's right, we had our last two-a-day practice and school starts tomorrow. Today we started things off with some weight lifting at the lovely hour of 8am. It wouldn't have been so bad if it hadn't been raining so heavily. Yeah, I lifted in some pretty wet shorts and I had an umbrella. After about an hour of lifting, the rain had cleared up and we were ready to start the morning practice.

The theme of our morning practice was defense, defense, defense. We worked on some partner digging to get our feet moving and our bodies warm and then we moved on to blocking. We worked on blocking all kinds of attacks by position and then we put it all together with some team defense. The morning practice ran pretty smoothly except for the half-way-through shirt change due to the lack of air conditioning.

Later on Erin Price and I came in for some setting training and the gym felt much nicer (the air was back, hooray!). We had worked for about an hour when the rest of the team joined us. Then the fun began. We got to warm up by going into the gymnastics room and having some fun. Sarah and Heff showed us their skills on the floor (both can do back flips), while Mandy, our trainer, strutted her stuff on the beam. The funniest thing was definitely when Matt Parker, our strength coach, jumped off a trampoline into a pit of foam cubes.

After the fun in the gymnastics room, we settled down and got serious. We started with some butterfly passing and then moved on to do some hitting to get our legs jumping. Then we played the "36 minute scramble" where you play each rotation for 3 minutes and try to get as many points as possible. The catch is that all balls are started with an out of system ball. So many times you really are scrambling, hence the name. After 4 rotations of the "scramble" we ended practice early to finish our pre-season.

The fun wasn't over yet, however. That night at 8:30 the team met at Applebee's for some food and karaoke. Kory, Heff, Julie and Cusimano started us off with the Love Shack. Let me tell you, Julie rocked the mic!! Then us "new comers" and Bibber got together to sing Bootylicious. We couldn't start until Crystal announced that she was Beyonce, of course. We finished the evening with our team's rendition of Lean On Me (how appropriate).

All in all, pre-season wasn't that bad and it was a lot of fun getting to know all the girls better. Now I'm just looking forward to a fun and successful season and school year. As always...

Roll Tide!!!

Abbi Blackburn

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Volleyball 2003 Preseason Journal Part 13: Abbi Blackburn

Part 13 of a 13-part first-hand account of 2003 volleyball fall practice

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