First Week

The first week of Zoodisc's Spring 2009 season is officially at an end. I think that this has been a most encouraging week of practice, and I can honestly say that I have never been as excited about playing for this team as I do right now. Hopefully we can make this excitement last through the entire season.

Two days ago school was canceled because of a fairly mild snowstorm. The amount of snow that accumulated wasn't terribly impressive, but there was some freezing rain so I guess that was the school's motivation for closing. The snow did prevent us from doing the plyometric and agility workout that we had planned, so we played snow football instead. We got a pretty big game going (10 on 10 or so, with the addition of Joe, Brent, and a couple B teamers) and had a ball. The players who decided not to show totally missed out on a great time. We ended up exhausted, soaked, and happy.

On that subject, I am dissappointed that some members of our team didn't show up. Some had pretty good excuses - Henry's knee was sore and he didn't want to risk it playing football, Allan doesn't own a pair of boots, etc. - but others didn't really have any reason not to be there. Now, I know that this wasn't the most important practice that we're going to have this season. Frankly, if somebody is going to blow off one practice, I hope that they choose to blow off the practice where we just play snow football. But participating in practice means more than just getting in shape and bettering yourself as an individual player. It means that you are demonstrating to your teammates that you are going to be there every day, no matter what, busting your ass off. Making a committment to be at practice every day helps your teammates to learn to trust you. It makes them understand that you are going to back them up when the shit's in the fan. It tells them that you are somebody they can depend on. Our team needs more of this trust. We need to get to know one another like best friends. We need to Be best friends, so that we can come together and work towards a consistant goal when we are all fucking exhausted and unity is the only thing that we can possibly have left. I understand skipping a practice that doesn't seem as important, but every practice is important in some way or another. We need to have everybody together so that we can grow together.

While I would have preferred to do something else, yesterday we met in Lederle to run stairs. The ground outside was too slushy and icy to really run a sprint workout, and I haven't yet figured out the schedule for the Curry Hicks Cage track (I should try to do this today or Monday). I put together a pretty good stair workout, I think, and I'm pretty happy with how the practice went. I put an emphasis on doing short sets of stairs quickly, hoping that we can build explosive power and footspeed through this workout. The workout went as follows:

Throwing outside.
Warmup of a slow ascent to the top of the building (floor 16)
2 floors of 2 stairs up 1 stair down.
2 floors of 3 stairs up 2 stairs down.
2 floors of 2 up 1 down.
2 floors of 3 up 2 down.
3 floors of singles.
4 floors of doubles.
5 floors of singles.
6 floors of doubles.
3 sets of 10 squat jumps.
5 floors of singles.
4 floors of doubles.
3 floors of singles.
2 floors of 3 up 2 down.
2 floors of 2 up 1 down.
Stretch.
4 sets of 15 pushups, holding leglifts or planks during the recovery.
My ab workout.
3 sets of 20 seconds sitting on the floor pumping our arms like we were running.

This was a pretty tough workout, but it was by no means impossible. Everybody got through it in pretty good spirits, and I think that we're looking pretty good for this point in the season. Afterwards, some people went to Greenfeild to play indoor pickup, and a few of us went to the gym to lift upper body. I'm pretty tired right now; my legs felt like jelly when I woke up this morning. However, I am excited to be going to the gym with a Keenan, Josh, Ryan, and maybe a couple other people at 5. This will be the first day in a week that I'll be able to lift legs (the gym was closed on Monday and Wednesday) and I'm curious whether I'll be able to put up more or less weight than I was able to last week, when I'd been pushing my legs pretty hard.