DePaul University

Hey all!

Last week felt like it took forever until preseason officially began on Friday!  On Friday, we all got settled into our rooms in the morning.  Most of the girls on the team are living in University Hall for preseason, which is where I lived last year.  Right now I am rooming with Lauren (Blasi) in University Hall (UHall), and I will move out in a few weeks to move into my new room in Centennial.  Not that I don’t love being in UHall again, but I am really excited to move into the apartment like dorms in Centennial!

It is so awesome that the Olympics are going on right now!!  I watched a little of the opening ceremony Friday night, but to be honest it didn’t really keep my attention for that long...I just wanted to see the actual events!  So over the weekend I have been watching them every time I am around a television.  They get addicting because they are so fun to watch!!

Our preseason schedule has us practicing two times a day, once in the morning and once in the late afternoon.  We get a little break between each session which is really nice.  We did our running and vertical testing on Saturday morning.  Everyone on the team, who had to beat a running test time did, and we were all so excited!!! We worked so hard this summer, and that really helped us with our sprinting. In the afternoon session we worked on the basics and the technique of our volleyball skills. We particularly worked on passing and arm swing.  It is a lot of fun to be in the gym again doing an organized practice.  We also got to work with our new coaches (Coach Jennings and Stahovich)  for the first time which was fun!

Sunday morning's session included more focus on skills and technique. Coach (Hardison) is making sure that everyone is on the same page with their method of passing, blocking, etc.  The afternoon session included more application of these skills into drills and playing.  We also worked on defense a lot in the afternoon session.  After practice we went all went to Coach’s for dinner!! It was so good!  We had a little barbeque, relaxed and enjoyed the nice night on her rooftop deck!  Before leaving we watched the Olympics for a little while and then headed back to DePaul so we could get to bed because we had pictures early in the morning.

Hopefully Monday morning's pictures turned out really well!  We went to the Planetarium so we could take a team picture with the incredible Chicago skyline in the background.  They will look really good!  After the pictures we went to our morning session practice and lifted afterwards.  Our afternoon session was fun because we got to warm up with our favorite game!  Then we went to Chipotle for dinner, and it was so good!  We have today off from practice. We are letting our muscles recover a little bit from the first few days of preseason.  Then we will continue again with the same schedule on Wednesday and keep practicing so we are ready to play on the 29th!  Yay I cannot wait for our first match!
 
I hope everyone has a great week!  GO BLUE!!!!

Christy