Hello Sandy Cardinal Fans!
With finals week and winter quarter winding down, the rain and wind unfortunately started to pick up again which meant that we had to deal with the elements at practice. Because we did not have any games this past weekend, we had shorter practices with smaller groups to focus on partner relationships and specific skills.
Luckily, I did not have any finals to take during finals week since the majority my classes this quarter had final essays or projects, so I had a relatively relaxed week and an early beginning to spring break.
Last night, our indoor team, along with the men's soccer team, attended the NCAA Sweet 16 games in San Jose to celebrate the end of finals week – it was also one more chance to celebrate our National Championships.
Although Tami and I really wanted Arizona to win and Back the Pac, Xavier pulled off a great upset. Both games were very exciting and we were brought onto the floor and introduced to the crowd at halftime.
Speaking of championships, I would like to extend huge congratulations to women's swimming & diving for bringing another Natty back to The Farm! In addition, good luck to men's swimming & diving, who are competing in their NCAA meet this week.
Now I will introduce a couple of our beach-only freshmen: Kat Anderson from Seattle, Washington, and Shannon Richardson from Los Gatos, California. They come from unique geographic backgrounds for our sport, (who thought that people played beach volleyball in rainy Seattle!) but the two of them are in fact very similar.
They both celebrated their birthdays this past Sunday and you might mistake them for each other because of their curly hair, their shared love of J-Cole, and the fact that they are both most likely to be studying some type of science when not on the sand courts. I sat down with Kat and Shannon and asked them a few questions to learn more.
PC: What would your dream date be and who would it be with?
SR: Shoji Sushi in Downtown Palo Alto where I feed my teammate Chelsea Red-Horse Mohl a Stanford roll. This would be the perfect date because she doesn't look like Brad Pitt. ;)
KA: Horseback riding on the beach with a romantic picnic afterwards.
PC: If you did not play volleyball and could pick any sport to play, what would it be?
SR: If I didn't play volleyball, I wish I could be a gymnast because it looks like so much fun to be able to do all these cool flips, spins, etc. I can barely balance on one foot, nonetheless on a tiny bar.
KA: I am a huge Serena Williams fan so if I wasn't playing beach volleyball I would want to play tennis.
PC: What's the most embarrassing thing that has ever happened to you on the volleyball court?
SR: One of the most fun moments we had at practice this year was on Halloween when we all wore food costumes to practice. Chelsea was bunch of grapes, I wore a hot dog costume, and Jenn wore a pea costume. It was hilarious hearing one of Chelsea's balloons pop when she dove for a ball. We carried this costume tradition on when we went to one of the men's volleyball games. Plummer, Kat, Chelsea and I suited up to go support men's volley. I think the costumes are a good way to let out some goofiness that all of the freshman have.
KA: When I was in 7th grade, I was at a volleyball camp with some of my best friends and there was an older guy also playing that we all thought was really cute. I'm sure it was very obvious we were crushing on him and at the end of the camp, I figured I'd never see him again so I asked to take a picture with him. A year later when I went to my new high school, I found out he was a senior at the school and he remembered me.
It has been fun for me to play on the same team with these two because I have known both of them since before they came to school. Shannon and I met each other the summer before my freshman year of high school at a USA Beach Volleyball camp where Coach Andrew was our counselor. More recently, I met Kat when I was her camp counselor when she came to Stanford during her senior year of high school.
Thank you to everyone who has been following the BeachBlog as well as our 2017 season. We are so excited to start our first road trip of the season and head down to Southern California this weekend. I am not thrilled about our 5 AM Saturday departure time, but I am definitely looking forward to a weekend playing in front of family and friends.
We will be playing at Cal State Northridge on Saturday at 2 p.m. PT before playing three matches on Sunday at Irvine Valley College against TCU (11 a.m. PT), IVC (1 p.m.), and Hawaii (3 p.m.).
Hope to see you all there!
Pay10