We are all so excited to get this 2012 Italy tour on the road! The team and I have been getting ready to head overseas and tour Italy for the last year, and in the past five days it’s been crunch time trying to get all the last details ready for our trip. It’s been a fun filled past few days; we have all spent lots of time together between practices and having pretty much three meals together as a team religiously. It all started on Thursday, a couple of us had some finals to get out the way and finish the school year strong. After that was taken care of, we headed up to Charger Gymnasium to start our first Pre-Italy practice. Practice started with a plyometrics section where we jumped, leaped and hopped our way through obstacles to get ready for some Italian competition. After this, we headed to the court and started practice, it was a very good practice filled with great energy even though we have to play with a men’s basketball. We had six practices all in all, before each practice we would either have weights or plyometrics. Our strength and conditioning coach, Faugy, is Italian, and made our weight packets in Italian to get us ready to speak the language. Most of us had no idea what the packet said and had to ask him about ten times what each exercise was in English. All in all, our practices were very productive and we are all looking forward to competition against some Italian teams.
Off the court, our team has spent lots of time bonding. For some reason our bonding always revolves around food. Our first meal was at coach’s house, where we had some mouth watering chicken, pasta, salad and bread. The girls on the team who had the best grades last semester got a little something extra; a lobster dinner! Needless to say, Coach Smith can cook. After we all ate, the team decided to have a dance party. It was all laughs when Q decided to bust out her moves, I highly recommend watching the video. The next day we had lunch at Capettas, which was very good. The team dinner at Bria’s house was nothing short of flavorful. Her mom and sister made Jamaican food, from jerk chicken to rice and beans! After we ate the team had a little bonfire and we made s’mores and sang Anh-Dao Happy Birthday!!!! She is 20!!! The next day we had Reno’s for lunch and dinner was at Amber’s house where we had scrumptious Spanish rice, lemon chicken and pasta.
Coach Smith asked us to research cities that we will be visiting in Italy and make a presentation to our teammates to let them know some fun and interesting facts about each one. We gave our presentations which were judged by coach and Amber’s parents. This was tons of fun and Q gave the best presentation of them all.
On Monday we practiced and then back to our dorms to pack for our trip. We are all so excited and can’t even believe that we are going to Italy. We are forever grateful to all the people who donated toward this once in a lifetime trip. We will keep everyone updated on our blog while we are there with our daily tours and activities. Special thanks to Capetta’s, Reno’s & Roly Poly for the meals during our practice. Thank you all so much again. Ciao!
Ana Obella
#12
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