The women's soccer blog is back, and this year it's Kendall Johnson who is taking on blogging duties for the Pilots. Kendall will check in now and then with updates on the Pilots, the season and life in general. Be sure to bookmark PortlandPilots.com/KendallBlog to follow Kendall and the Pilots all season long!

ENTRY #5
Thursday, Sept. 6, 2012

Hello Comrades!
 
I hope you are all having a splendid week. As I mentioned in my prior blog, the UW tournament did not start as I had hoped due to the absence of my headphones and sandwich. However, things took a turn for the better and we came out as tourney champs with two big victories. “Snaps” for Amanda Frisbie as she received offensive player of the tournament and WCC co-player of the week! It was great to get those two wins, but now we are on to the next one.
 
With that said, I’d like to tell you all about a very important component in continuing our success; practice, but more specifically, warm-up. Practice always starts with a meaningful warm-up, and every year someone is in charge of leading it. This year’s commander in chief is the one and only Sarah Bridges. Her duty consists of lining everyone up (everyone has a designated spot) to jog across the field, and yelling out the appropriate stretch we must perform on each end of the field. Although it may appear so, Sarah’s job is not easy and she receives constant ridicule. She’s proven it is very easy to get caught up in conversation and forget to call out the appropriate time to stretch or jog. The left side of the line (obviously not my side) is notorious for complaining, “Sarah you’re going to fast!”, “Sarah let us stretch longer!”, “Sarah, talk louder!” Sarah, if you are reading this keep your head up, let the haters hate, and don’t let anyone change who you are.
               
After this stretch and jog session, everyone gets time to stretch and mentally prepare for the worst part of the day. Let me clarify. Our team loves practice and is constantly seeking ways to get better. However, there is one part of training that we all despise; strides. I just threw up in my mouth a little bit. As I tell you about strides you probably will be thinking I am overreacting, but I am not. Strides consist of 5 efforts in which you are supposed to run to the halfway line at a certain pace, then jog back, and repeat this process 5 times, at increasingly faster paces. The percentages are 60%, 70%, 80%, 85%, 75%. However, no one follows this pace, and it often results in a full out race. Again, this may not sound bad, but ask any present or past UP women’s soccer player and they will tell you otherwise. Oh, the things I would do to get out of doing strides...eat a moldy muffin drenched in mayonnaise, be attacked by a wasp’s nest, walk over burning coals, take a deep inhale of Nichole Downing’s goalie gloves... alright maybe I wouldn’t do the last one, but strides are the devil. After strides, we all get a quick drink of water, rinse the bitter tastes out of our mouth, and hit the field for another solid practice.
 
Game day is very special, not only because of the game itself, but because we get to do “game day strides”. Game day strides at Merlo are significantly better because we only have to do two accelerations, and we get to run towards the section full of body-painted, kilt-wearing, cheering students. Thinking of Friday’s game against Notre Dame gives me goose bumps.  Which reminds me, I haven’t seen The Hunchback of Notre Dame in a while. I’m going to go try to find it.
               
Life,
Kendall
 
p.s. we never took home any of those kittens that we found from our bike ride, but the other night my dream of having a pet cat at UP came true! My housemates and I were all sitting outside when a cat, which Mic deemed “Muffins”, decided he wanted to hang out with us. While we were caught in conversation, Muffins sauntered into the open door of our house. As the video displays, Muffins was very scared and Mic was very concerned, so we let him out of the house soon after. Although Muffins stay was short-lived, he really was a great pet and will always be remembered.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=apVUV-DXgag&feature=youtu.be

Previous Entries
• Entry #1 (Aug. 10, 2012)
• Entry #2 (Aug. 17, 2012)
• Entry #3 (Aug. 24, 2012)
• Entry #4 (Aug. 31, 2012)