Jan. 12, 2011
Kingma's ESPN Hoop Gurlz Blog | UW Game Notes Hey Dawg fans! It's 12 days into 2011 and I hope some of your New Year's resolutions are still sticking strong. Mine is! I am proud to say I have stayed completely healthy this year and so have my teammates... for the most part. Winter quarter just started and it is doing wonders for my beauty sleep. I only have class Tuesday and Thursday, which leaves the other three weekdays open for some serious shut-eye. I'll admit that waking up at 11:00am on a Wednesday, making myself a cup of hot chocolate with whipped cream and watching Friends is a hard way to start my day. Yeah, my life is rough. With Pac-10s now underway, I thought I'd share some insight about how my team prepares for a Pac-10 road game. Since we played on Thursday and Saturday, we packed up our bags after practice on Wednesday and hit the road. We always pack the essentials and a pillow but Sarah Morton's guitar also made the trip with us. The guitar led to solos being sung by Regina Rogers, Liz Lay and Jeneva Anderson on the back of the bus. As I have said earlier, details regarding our concert will be coming out shortly. On Thursday morning we had an early breakfast then headed to Oregon State's arena for shoot-around. After a good hour of going over scout and getting shots up, we bused back to the hotel to rest before lunch. The day flies by at this point because after our pregame meal we rest, do rehab, get taped and then it's GAME TIME! I personally have an obsession with suckers. Ever since I was a little girl I would suck on suckers to calm my nerves. Even now, I have 1-2 suckers before every game. It doesn't matter the kind or the flavor, any sucker will do. I usually start on sucker number one as I am getting taped and finish sucker number two as we arrive at the gym. This has absolutely no relevance to our team preparation for a game but I know you were all DYING to know that fun fact about me :-) When we arrive at the gym we put our shoes on and get mentally prepared for the game. This is my favorite part of game day (besides the actual game of course). I love going up to shoot before the game when the seats are empty, there is no noise and I'm the only person on the court. So many of the gyms we play in are filled with history and during this time I love being able to just soak up the atmosphere and prepare myself for game time. After warm up is GAME TIME, the best time of my day. Games are the fun part. They're competitive. They're a battle. They're hard and they're physical. Games are our reward for all the practice we have put in for this specific moment. Being on the court in a Husky jersey with people in the crowd and music going through the sound system is a feeling I have no words to describe. It's pure adrenaline and pure joy. I hope you enjoyed a "sneak peek" into our pre-game preparations. Thank you guys for all your support this season and I hope you are all able to make it out to our "Pack the House" game against Stanford! GO DAWGS! |
