Thursday, August 27, 2009
Today was another long, eventful day for the team, as we traveled to Auburn, Alabama. Our trip began on a bus ride to the airport right in the middle of the afternoon where it was so hot, we were pretty much melting...great.

Once we arrived at the airport, we all began to check in and of course, Colleen (Williams) had another "Colleen moment." Standing in line, she began to panic. Coll thought that she had forgotten her wallet and ID back at school only to end up finding it at the very bottom of her bag with the help an extremely attractive airport worker. Oh, and this was after we were reminded about twenty times to not forget our drivers' licenses. However, it doesn't end here. She then picked up her bag and started to walk away completely flustered leaving her boarding pass on the ground. The same worker who had just helped her then had to yell after her to come back and get it. We all just stared and laughed, because this is typical Colleen. Finally, she got her things together, and we were off to our gate.

For the most part, our flight was pretty smooth until the whole plane felt like it was flying through a hurricane. Just as we were finally about to reach our decent, we were told that we had to wait because of a major storm in Atlanta. So basically, we flew around in turbulent circles for twenty minutes with our stomachs dropping every twenty seconds--just what we wanted to do.

Nervous "flyers" were getting anxious and when we finally touched the ground we were all relieved to almost be done with traveling.

From Atlanta, the team piled into three vans and we drove down the home stretch to Auburn. An hour and a half drive wasn't too bad, it gave us all time to get in an extra nap and relax from our bumpy plane ride.

Before we knew it, we were all starving and had an amazing dinner at Provino's. It was complete greatness! With full stomachs, we made it to our hotel just in time to get some rest for the next day's big game!

  Friday, August 28, 2009
Just as yesterday was packed full of traveling and seemed like it would never end, today was even more exhausting. We all woke up early to get a healthy team breakfast before a light morning training session.

In order to get our legs moving and to prepare for our big game, later that evening, the whole team piled into the vans and we made our way to Auburn University. Seeing the campus was extremely interesting--their facilities were beautiful and we were immediately pumped to play them once we saw the field.

However, the weather was not so satisfying...we were all suffocating in the humid, still air, sweating like crazy and we noticed Alysha (Mallon) had her full warm-up on. This looked extremely odd and out of place considering how hot is was outside. And to our surprise, well not really, Alysha had forgotten all of her practice gear. Therefore she had absolutely nothing on besides her warm-up pants and jacket. Scrambling for something to wear before practice, she managed to find a white Dayton shirt and someone else's shorts...and no socks. Running around practice looking like a mess, none of us could take her seriously because of how funny she looked and just because it is the fact that it is Alysha.

Besides this form of entertainment for the day, we had a good training session in preparation for the huge game that was only mere hours away. After our light training, we had a team lunch at Panera Bread, which was delicious, and then we headed back to the hotel to get some rest before our game.

As it was again time to leave for the fields, Colleen realized that she had forgotten her cleats AND shin guards at school. Big surprise right?! So, of course, she was trying to ask everyone on the team for extras. Luckily, Colleen was able to use a pair of Kelly's (Blumenschein) shoes and actually loved them.

Once the team was ready, we had a solid warm up and played an intense 110 minutes of straight soccer. Yes, a full game plus double overtime. Our team came to battle with the Tigers of Auburn and did just that. Although we did not win, we came out with a tie as we were able to come back from a one goal deficit.

Sore, sweaty, and extremely drained the team made our way to the showers before our two hour bus ride back to Atlanta. We were all so dead and did not arrive at the hotel until 1:30 a.m. As if this is not enough, we have a flight tomorrow at 8:30 a.m. to fly back to Dayton. Just great!

Today was one of the longest days we have had so far, but at least we were able to get through it with good attitudes and the satisfaction of not losing.