VOLLEYBALL CAMP DIARY: Lauren Martin, Sophomore Setter
8/15/2008 12:00:00 AM | Volleyball
Aug. 15, 2008
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With preseason camp underway for the 2008 Alabama Volleyball Season, different members of the team will take turns keeping everyone informed of the journey to the start of school and the first match of the season. Sophomore Lauren Martin gets everyone caught up on the first week of training.
"It all started one early morning on August 8th at 9am, in a cold, vast cave. Yes, we, the Crimson Tide's Womens Volleyball team had officially begun our 2-a-day practices. As we enter our "CAVE" (Coliseum Annex Volleyball Extension), we are all full of anticipation and excitement as we start our warm ups for the first time as a true team. As move through our warm ups and beginning doing fundamental drills, we all start to realize that coach Judy Green and coach Ben Boldt's plans included limiting our ability to feel our legs in the days to come... A few hundred digging reps later and a few rounds of one of our favorite drill cleverly dubbed, "20 ball-drill," we're all feeling the results rather quickly. Luckily we had already grown close as a team in our double day sessions which last from 9-12 and 3:30- 6:30 everyday, so we were able to comfort and humor each other in our time of ridiculous soreness and muscle tightness. And by the evening sessions we get the luxury treatment with a whirlpool bath... an ice bath that is.
And while the sessions are hard and taxing, it's nice leaving the gym knowing that we all got a little bit better, and we get chocolate milk, which is regarded by our team as the best drink on earth after 3 hours of throwing ourselves on the floor.
Now we have completed almost a week and half of our twice a day practices and we have all grown very close as a team and have been really keeping up the intensity in the gym. Our team is seasoned in dealing with adversity and we have learned to cope well when certain situations are thrown our way. For example, one of our teammates had to have surgery recently so we've had adjust and learn to work around things such as that. As far as getting to know each other off the court, we have a team retreat that we are going to tomorrow and will be a great experience to learn a lot about each other and have a good time doing it. Our team is really light hearted and we love to have a good time so I'm sure there will be a lot of really good stories that come out of the trip that we'll be able to laugh about for a while.
So while the last two weeks have caused us to make best friends with ice baths and comfy beds, we've gained a lot of great time on the court together and were looking at a really successful preseason if our 2-a-days are anything to go off of.
Good Job Girls!!!
