Hello, sandy Cardinal fans! Welcome to Week 2 of the Beach Blog – I hope you didn't miss me too much! Surprisingly, this past weekend was our first home tournament in two years at Stanford in which it did not rain once, as we had clear, sunny skies all of Friday and Saturday.
Although the team finished with a 1-2 record on the weekend, it gave us an opportunity to examine our own weaknesses, which other teams exposed at each flight. We took practice off on Monday to watch film from our matches and break down the things we all need to improve on. The results last weekend may not be exactly what we wanted, but an important concept that Coach Andrew and our sports psychiatrist Kelli are working on with us this season is "imprinting" our positive plays into our minds, so we know how to repeat them in the future.
We will definitely be focusing on that in order to be more consistent after coming up short against Cal – I hope to see you at the rematch on April 11! With dead week and finals week approaching, we have a little break from competition and indoor offseason training. After that, we head to Southern California for our first road trip of the season before Spring Break.
Heading into dead week, I am amazed by how quickly another quarter at Stanford has passed and by all of the unique opportunities I have had here so far. Last week, the team attended espnW Campus Conversations, a panel discussion with former Stanford female athletes including volleyball great Oganna Nnmami.
After the panel, we attended small group breakout sessions that taught us about networking, maintaining our athletic identity in a professional setting, and creating female role models and allies. This past Sunday, our very own Tami Alade helped organize an event as a part of the Stanford Student-Athlete Cardinal Council (SAAC), called "A, B, Trees!" where Stanford student athletes read books and played with local children to promote literacy in the Bay Area. It was a fun way to give back to our community, and a nice study break for all of us with finals, projects and papers coming up.
Since I told you about myself last week, I will tell you about one of our freshmen in each blog from now on.
The first freshman that I will introduce is #1 on the indoor court (and in our hearts) but #14 on the sand, Jenna Gray. Jenna is a 6'1 setter from Shawnee, Kansas, or as she refers to it, the "breadbasket of our nation." That description of her home state makes sense because her favorite food is chicken strips and she refuses to eat anything green except for broccoli.
An interesting fact about Jenna is that she is the Kansas state high school record holder in the javelin. Jenna's hobbies include petting other people's dogs, scaring everyone on the team with her eagle mask and finding memes and animal videos on the Internet. Her favorite sports team is the Kansas City Royals, and she had the opportunity to throw out the first pitch at one of their games last summer.
Given everything that you now know about her, it probably won't surprise you that her dream date would be playing with kittens and puppies at Chick-Fil-A with Jensen Ackles from the TV show Supernatural.
Lastly, thank you to everyone who came to our games this past Friday and Saturday! I hope you were able to get a nice tan, and enjoyed our head cheerleader Tami's antics (as well as her Instagram story takeover on @StanfordBeachVB)! Our next matches will be in Los Angeles on March 25 and 26 against CSU Northridge, Irvine Valley College and Hawaii – if you're in the area, we hope to see you there!
See you all next week,
Pay10