Senior Weekly Update

Posted by Lauren Anderson

This week was a difficult and busy week for the team. I can say that we made it through because of the family we are. We had our usual weekly lifting and training this week in preparation for Rocky on Sunday. We also had the NCAA come to MSUB and put on a leadership seminar for all athletes that wanted to attend.

Earlier in the year, teammate and senior captain Sam Boehm and Blair Stevenson (from the men’s team) attended an NCAA leadership academy in Portland, Oregon with all of the other Central and Western Region schools. We were fortunate enough that Don was willing to arrange for the NCAA Leadership Academy to come to MSUB. I think all of the girls thought it was a rewarding experience and learned a great deal about themselves, teammates, coaches, and how each of us are a leader in different ways. I was unfortunately unable to go because I had class, but I have heard only positive things about it. And there have been enough jokes flying around since then about who’s a ‘D’ and who’s an ‘S’ that I have a pretty good idea about what the letters stand for. I would say that if you wanted to know what that means, ask one of the girls. :-)

We also had our annual Eagle Fest, which is a fundraiser for Eagle Mount, at the Crowne Plaza Hotel on Friday night. It was a blast as usual! All of us attended and stayed for the whole three hours. Participating in this event as a team is always so rewarding. It’s so great to give back to the community as a team. All the people involved with Eagle Mount always make us feel so welcome and appreciated, and it’s easy to tell the kids always have fun!

Our week continued on into Saturday, when our team participated in community service for Dr. Gray. We met at the softball field before the softball game and all walked around with trash bags and gloves, and made our way all over campus to pick up trash. There was a Pow Wow event going on at the school, which created lots of trash. When we finished, we had gathered about 17 bags of trash. After we were finished with community service, we stayed as a team to watch the girl’s softball team play Western Oregon. The weather was great and the girls walked away with a win 3-2 after a battle.

Finally Sunday came. Game day. We played Rocky on our home field. In the locker room, Don gave us three objectives: win, get the shutout and have consistency from game to game (we won a game earlier this spring 5-0). I think we would all agree that as a team we did not come out at the start of the game with the intensity we wanted. However, we stepped it up with each new third we played. The final score was 2-0 with Jen Larsen scoring on a PK and Jaucy on a brilliantly placed through ball by Jen Brooks. Both Jordan and Danielle did a great job in goal, and our defense got the second shutout of the spring season.

Like I said earlier, it was a difficult, straining week for the team. But I believe everyone is proud of the way we all made it through together. We are going full steam ahead this week with end of spring season fitness testing, training and lifting in preparation for the upcoming weekend when we have three games in two days with our last opponent being University of Montana.