Hello To All,I wanted to first start off with thanking everyone for being very supportive of me and just keeping me smile. I honestly couldn't get through this without my family, the team, coaches, and our parents. As you know, we traveled up to Stanislaus and Chico this weekend. Practice last week was planned out where the first two days we focused on Chico's stuff and then Wednesday and Thursday was Stani. After practice Thursday, we watched some film and had a hour or so down time to go home take a shower and get some food. Personally, I know your dying to hear this, I got a burrito from El Rancho =).
Thursday also marked the day that Dr. Aflac came to our training room to evaluate some of the student-athletes that needed further assessment on their injuries. I have never needed to meet Dr. Aflac so I was pretty anxious to hear what he had to say about my right knee. Along with me, Aly Henington had to see him as well for her foot. She seems to have a sharp pain on the bottom of her right heel that was to believed to be plantar fasciitis (sounds more like a fungus if you ask me!). Dr. Aflac turned out to be quite the comedian. He suggested for Aly to just amputate her foot and to never play basketball again! We both kinda laughed awkwardly, not familiar with his keen sense of humor. He gave her a few options to try when taping her foot, so hopefully one of them will work so the pain is minimized cause you need your foots, I mean feet, to run! As for I, it was all good news. It turned out nothing from the previous MRI or other doctors were that much different. I have a bone contusion in my anterior medial femoral condyle, which just is a fancy word for a deep bone bruise on the outside of my lower right knee. Dr. Aflac had jokingly said he could still see the "Buick" bumper mark on the side of my knee, that made me laugh. According to him, I can run, jump, and start cutting. So I started running this weekend while we were away and it felt pretty good. I can not wait til I practice. I don't think I have wanted to be able to practice in my whole life!
Now to the games. We played Stani first at their place. I felt that everyone was pretty excited for this game. We were ready to compete and to see if our hard work in practice paid off. The whole game was close. We exchanged leads seven times in the first half, and only was down by one at the half. In the locker room, we just re-iterated that we needed to make sure we were boxing and holding for the rebounds and valuing the ball. At the end of game with like 13 seconds to go, we had two great opportunities to win the game. We had good looks but the ball didn't fall for us so we went into overtime. Welcome to the CCAA. This was our first overtime and definitely not our last. In OT, we just didn't have the momentum to separate from Stani. We ended up losing by five points, but it wasn't the losing part that was the worst part. It was the kind of game where you are like man, if we did a few things a little different maybe we would have had a different outcome maybe we would of won or still lost. It just left a bad taste in our mouth. We couldn't dwell on this lost for much longer, because we had Chico the following night. Chico is a team that has a history of being a solid team so it was important that we took what we didn't do in the Stani game and got better/learned for the Chico game. It's always harder to play the Saturday games, take from a senior. Your mind is saying YES I can do it, but your body sometimes doesn't get that memo. We started kind of flat and stagnant only hitting only five field goals in the first. I think the Chico game was a game of mental lapses. We just couldn't take control of what we wanted to do. I know its hard to hear, and believe me its hard to write about losses but someone has to do it. Our coaches deal with all the time, and that's how we get better. We have all been there, that moment when you lose a game or didn't meet your expectations. It's like you have a bad feeling in your stomach, maybe you want to cry, maybe you are pissed, or maybe you just shut down. All these responses are quite typical and actually normal. There seems to be two paths to look at these loses. How do we effectively get over these defeats? The fact that we went 0-2 this weekend means nothing if we can't take it and grow. I know I don't want to feel like that again. Sitting on the bench, watching, listening, has helped me understand this. We all want to be successful, but success isn't necessarily measured in wins. If we did everything that we said we were going to do, and did it successfully the Chico game most likely would have been close or we might have went on a run on Stani in OT but that doesn't necessarily mean we would have won. "Success is the completion of anything intended." In other words, success is finishing what you planned to do. Notice how success isn't defined in wins or how much money you make. I think this is important. If we finish what we plan to do, we wouldn't get the short end of the stick we would get the whole BRANCH perhaps!
Next weekend we have our CCAA/GNAC tournament that we are hosting here at SSU. I am excited to play some of the top teams in the nation. It will be a good experience for us. I am going to continue doing rehab and all I can to get the team prepared. I hope to see you there!
Oly the SENIOR
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