Hey there! I am Amy Weaver, a sophomore soccer player here at Mount Vernon Nazarene. My goal is to give you a more "behind the scene" take on our team by blogging weekly about certain events that take place during our season. If you ever come out to a game and wish to put a face to the voice behind these blogs, just look for number 15, although I am told that my lack of height and obsessive need to wear a sweatband to every game are also some of my recognizable features. For those of you that don't know, I am new at this whole blogging thing seeing as our past blogger and dear teammate, Denee Stentz, graduated last year. Denee is now heading to Georgia to continue her education at Mercer University, where she will eventually get her Doctorate in Physical Therapy. Which means soon we will all have to refer to her as nothing other than Dr. Stentz. As you can see I have big cleats to fill, but I promise to give nothing less than my best. After all, I am a Lady Cougar.

Well, that's enough about me. Let's get down to the real reason we are here: The Lady Cougars (a.k.a- THE twenty-nine)! We are back and ready to kick things off this year (no pun intended). Our team is looking healthy and as excited as ever to come out and play the game we love yet again this season! Before I begin to share our team experiences with you, I feel it is only fair to warn you that things do get a bit crazy. I mean, with twenty-nine girls what can you expect?

This preseason started off like any other, filled with anxiousness as we all awaited the conditioning challenges that we were to face together, as a team. Experiencing these challenges is such an important part of our team bonding. As much as we all dread with a passion the first beep test we have to run or the cone assessments we do, we all know that at the end of the day it is a critical step in developing a championship team. During one of his motivational talks, Papa Coach told us that through all his experiences it is during times of suffering that teams end up building their togetherness the most. We didn't know it at the time, but we were all about to find out just how true this statement was.
I can't say Coach didn't warn us about Saturday morning, but I'm not sure any of us fully understood the pain involved with running up the hill at Alum Creek Dam about seven times. Actually, I think the soccer girls would back me up if I referred to it as the Alum Creek MOUNTAIN instead. Papa Coach just happened to capture the priceless moment of all of us right before experiencing this life-changing event, which I posted for your enjoyment. The one where we all look like undistinguishable tiny specks just happens to be my favorite (very hard to tag on Facebook by the way). Although running the dam was extremely exhausting, the feeling we got from cheering each other all the way to the top was something that made the pain totally worth it.

 The best part is that the fun didn't even stop there! After our mountain workout, Coach made it our challenge to make it to the Alum Creek Beach as a team. So, we ended up doing a walk/jog to the beach, which felt about a billion miles away. To make the trip go faster, our brilliant seniors started doing the chant from the movie "Remember the Titans". This made our arrival very memorable.

We got there only to discover that we had had our first car dilemma of the year! For those that haven't read the blogs for the past couple of years, our team is known for having random and unexpected car catastrophes. This year, the mistake happened when Coach was showing his loving nature for an injured player. This player was on crutches due to a knee injury, so Coach decided to pull forward as far as he could to spare her the strenuous walk. The only problem was that Coach's ability to judge the depth of ditches and a van's ability to cross them ended up being a bit off. The result of this judgment is shown in the picture below. Thankfully, AAA was there to save the day and we came home with yet another story to embarrass Coach with. However, we do commend him for doing his best to take care of one of our teammates - we are very blessed to have a coach who would sacrifice anything for any one of his players.

After this, we did some beach relays which must have been very entertaining to spectators considering the fact that running through water isn't the easiest of tasks. Once that was completed, it was time to relax and enjoy the rest of the day. This included pigging out on the food that Momma Coach so graciously brought us, playing sand volleyball, and taking turns water-tubing. We left the beach with plenty of memories and headed to Momma and Papa Coach's where we ate another delicious meal supplied by Momma Coach. Once refueled, we decided to end our evening with a shopping trip to Polaris. It was here that we discovered one of our teammate's incredible abilities to go down the UP escalator and the ease to which we can embarrass our freshmen in public places. I guess I should also make it a point to mention that they make changing rooms ridiculously hard to open these days. After only a few hours, we were all ready to head back to Papa Coach's and crash for the night. The weekend concluded with an amazing church service at Lifepoint on Sunday morning and a relaxing evening back at the Naz. It was definitely a weekend to remember and was the perfect kickoff to our season!