Two days, not too much to say.

I'm sorry that I didn't get around to posting about yesterday's practice. I had a lot to do when I got home and just kept procrastinating. But that really shouldn't happen that often, and I'll make up for it when I do.

Yesterday's practice was a lot of fun. Like Tuesday, we managed to keep the majority of good players from each team on a single line, minimizing the amount that the bad players could hurt our offensive or defensive efforts. We mostly had the bad players playing D points, and the better players played O points, which really showed us how easy offense could be with competent players at every position. It was also rather pleasant to have such a calm and humid day; with almost no wind, we all felt like absolute snipers. It was a good day.

It is at this time that I think I should say that I'm going to stay away from writing about personal problems that I have with other members of this team. Last weekend, I got into a spat with a certain one of my teammates, and I almost wrote the details of this incident into this blog. I thought, "Hey, it was a team interaction, it affects the team, it belongs here," but it really doesn't. I'm not looking to create rifts by writing about things that could much better be dealt with or buried. Personal matters will only rear their heads on this blog if they significantly affect the team dynamic or represent a team event.

I decided that today would be the day that I would start lifting before practice. I've been meaning to do this since school started but honestly haven't been able to find the energy. I'm glad that I hadn't started lifting until today, but now that I've started I am feeling so excited about the amount of effort I am going to expend towards our team's success this year. Every drop of sweat is an investment towards winning, and I just love saving up. I mostly did chest, back, and shoulders with an ab workout to finish it (I do abs every day - nothing is more important) and then ran to practice. Working out beforehand makes running a little more difficult, but I think that it's worthwhile in the long run to be ready to deal with that fatigue. I also think that it's a good thing to build up a strong foundation now, even if the muscles I built today won't be the same muscles that get D's at regionals in 7 months. The stronger I am now, the harder I can work tomorrow and the harder I can work the day after that. Every day counts, and that's never been clearer than it is right now. I'm in my final year and I'm not going to waste it.

Today's practice was night and day different from yesterday. Rather than thick, humid air sitting dead with nary a breeze, we had wind whipping around us the entire time. The direction was pretty consistent, though, so it wasn't That hard to deal with even though it gusted up at some points. It was a real pain, however, to run in the wind. I hate running in the wind. I am slow enough when it's calm. The wind knocks me off balance and rushes the oxygen away from my mouth. I always feel like I'm moving in slow motion and sucking air the entire time that I'm running on a particularly windy day. That sucks, but today was still pretty fun.

Willworth managed to score 8 or so goals during our scrimmage today, which is a travesty. This kid is a total liability to every offensive effort. He stands in the endzone, preventing any of his teammates from making deep cuts. He turns the disc over when you throw it to him on an in cut, either dropping it or throwing it away stupidly. His defense... well, he might as well not even pretend to cover his defender, cause what he's doing isn't working. But he scores a lot of goals. This, largely, has to do with how ineffective the rest of his game is. His defender doesn't pay him too much mind, looking to poach off and help out with another offender, and a lot of times he is being covered by one of the chumps from the other team. But it mostly has to do with the fact that players like Robin find it funny that Willwerth scores so many goals and start to make an effort to give him a lot of chances in the endzone. Which is really annoying, because Robin sometimes refuses to move the disc in a quick and strategic way, hanging on to it excessively long instead and hoping for something deep to open up to Willwerth. The most obnoxious part of it is that this strategy works surprisingly often - not because Willwerth is making good cuts but because Robin is an excellent thrower who can put it on his hands over and over and over. And since it works, it's hard to tell Robin to stop and try to take practice a little more seriously. I've said it before and I'll say it again: I look forward to cuts so that these things don't happen as often.

And cuts are happening soon. Returning A teamers are meeting on Sunday to discuss who should make the A team and who should be relegated to the depths of the B team. An official decision should be shortcoming. I can hardly wait.