Dang it chrissy, I thought I was being original
So I was thinking “Yeah I’m gonna be a good little collegiate athlete and write a blog post after the Smith meet this weekend. It’ll look even better since no one’s posted in a while.” Then I come on and Chriss JUST posted.
Anyways yesterday was my “first” collegiate meet. Granted it wasn’t an official meet for us so I wasn’t competing for UMass, so when all’s said and done, it wasn’t any difference between this and every other meet that I did indoor in high school. I guess one difference would be that instead of having Doug or Ingrid or someone to coach me, I just had to rely on my teammates (luckily we had quite the pole vault crew!). I decided that for fun, instead of competing just unattached I would give Patriot some representation out in western Mass since everyone else was in Boston. The meet itself went pretty well. I won it, but I only had two competitors (my teammate Alyssa and som girl from Smith). What was more exciting than winning was realizing that this was the first meet I had competed in completely uninjured in a long time. I only went 9’6, but considering I’d been hitting a solid 9′ for a while, it was good to get back over that mental block. One thing I definitely need to work on is having more patience, but the funniest moment was probably being told to be more patient up top and then proceeding to have my most rushed jump immediately afterwards…oops!
Enough about the Smith meet. You guys are probably wondering how this young padawan is doing in the big scary world of D1 collegiate track, eh? Well, sometimes I feel like my major is too sciency, and other times (especially the beginning of the semester) I feel like my life is devoted to track. All in all it’s going good so far. I mean there’s that little bit of fear that I won’t make roster since the roster hasnt been finalized yet. Preseason training went pretty well, of course I wished I had trained more over the summer to avoid some of the soreness that came with the first few weeks. One big thing that I was glad I had on my side though was the fact that I could actually do most of the drills right off the bat, never have I ever been so happy for the countless hours I spent at indoor Patriot practices. One interesting thing was that at the beginning of the season Coach Jackson told me that he was going to be telling me lots of things that would probably be different than what I was taught at Patriot, on the contrary though, everything that he has stressed to me this fall were mentioned to me within the past year while I was at a Patriot practice. Essentially, I have gotten to pick up where I left off. The worst part has been having to get used to Spirit poles since coming into UMass, the last time I had used one was relays junior year when I went up, stalled out, and crashed back down one the runway scraping up my side. Needless to say, that was a bit of a mental block.
Well, I ought to get back to homework since as Chrissy said finals are quickly approaching. I’m hoping that with this kind of start to the season I can maybe, just maybe PR for the first time since leagues sophomore year.
Oh! Doug, coach Bell from Pioneer Valley Pole Vault says hi.
Merry Christmas! Happy Hanukkah! Happy Kwanzaa! Happy winter solstice! Happy other winter holidays that I can’t remember since I don’t feel like running down to the lobby!
