Story Links

August 27-28
By Tess Udall

This weekend, we traveled to Philadelphia for the Temple Invitational at Temple University. Every year, we always get really excited about going on the road because we love taking bus trips together. We get to watch movies, play silly games, sleep, and sometimes even get a little homework done. This time around was no different! We watched The Blind Side (GREAT movie), took naps, and got into a heated trivia battle with Lee in order to win dessert. Sadly, he didn’t think we correctly answered his question on the Statue of Liberty, so we didn’t win the trivia game. When we got to Philly, we checked into our hotel and watched some film on our upcoming opponent, Valparaiso. We then headed to bed to rest up for our first game!

The next morning, we woke up and ate a phenomenal breakfast in the hotel (they have made to order omelettes, waffles, French toast, and pancakes). We watched some more film after breakfast and then headed to the gym for a serve and pass practice to get some touches on the ball before playing at 2:00pm. We tried out a new cheer in the locker room before the match and it seemed to work! We beat Valparaiso in four sets for our first win of the season. The best part about the match was that our women’s field hockey team, who was also at Temple for the weekend, came to support us after their practice. It was awesome to see them there and their cheers made a huge difference. After the match, we watched some of the Temple v. Delaware game to scout for the next day. We all headed to dinner at Maggiano’s afterwards.

On Saturday, we ate another great breakfast at the hotel and watched some more film on the next two teams we were going to play. We checked out, and headed to the gym to get another serve and pass practice in. We played Delaware at 1:00 and beat them in four sets. It was a tough match, and we had to work very hard to win. Everyone was pretty tired afterwards, but we had to gear up and get ready for Temple at 7:00pm. We ate lunch at Jason’s Deli and then finished mentally preparing for our final match to win the tournament. We ended up beating Temple in five-it was a long, intense game. We were fighting some fatigue from our other two matches, but struggled through it to get the win.

It feels amazing to start off the season 3-0-we definitely have a lot of work to do to get better, but we are coming together as a group and getting to know each other’s playing styles. It was awesome to finally play some serious competition and test out what we learned during preseason. I can’t wait to see where we are in a few weeks!!

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