March 20, 2001
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Whew!
Sorry, but I just had to take a deep breath before I sat down to write this column. It's been a while since I've had a minute to do that. Four straight weekend tournaments on the road sort of leaves you feeling like Dorothy after the tornado that swept her up out of Kansas dropped her off in the Land of Oz- a little disoriented and wondering what happened to your home.
The Stanford that I returned to last Sunday night was a lot different than the campus I left on a Wednesday afternoon four weeks earlier. Not that we haven't been back to check in for a few days each week, we did, but really it was only enough time to get your life ready to leave again.
Apparently few things have happened here while we were gone. Our men's and women's basketball teams won Pac-10 titles, winter turned into spring, midterms turned into finals, and Lake Lagunita turned back into a lake. I'm sure there's more but while you're caught up in the tornado that is our tournament season though, you sort of forget that the rest of the world keeps ongoing too.Time loses all meaning as you pass back and forth through the four time zones across the country. The seven days of the week get smashed down into two: weekdays and weekends, or in other words, school days and softball days.
But now we're home again. I guess I should be happy about it, like Dorothy was when she finally got back to her family in Kansas, but to be honest I feel like I'm going through withdrawals.
It's like have nowhere to be, nothing to do, even though there's more than enough schoolwork to keep me busy for a few weeks. I know that there are things going on around campus and friends that I should reconnect with but all I really wanted to do on Monday afternoon, the first day we were back, was call up Sarah(Beeson) and Jess (Mendoza), Dre (Jessica Draemel) and Robin (Walker) to see what they were up to.
Yeah, I'd seen each of them just about all day, every day for the past four weeks but you just can't jump out of such an intense ride and expect your adrenaline to stop right away. I was missing them, and the adventures we had on the road. Like getting stuck in Las Vegas or lost just about everywhere we tried to go. I got in my car to drive down to the store and realized that I missed having Jess to DJ the radio. I missed having a game to get excited about everyday. And going out for flurries and shakes at Sonic or Dairy Queen after games.
Basically, I realized that I was back home but without my family. Even though the road is a tough place, it's also a time for teams to grow together. To learn about each other as people and struggle through adversity together. They say you never really know a person until you live with them and for the last four weeks, that's really what we've all done.
I mean, how else would I know that Robin likes to have tomato juice (ugh) on the airplane or that Sarah orders lemonade at just about 95 % of the restaurants we go to.
I was thinking about all that stuff and the good times we'd had and started getting sad until I realized that we still had the best part of our season in front of us. Conference games and then post-season were right around the corner would be blowing into town before I knew it.
So maybe these next two weeks are just one last chance to take a deep breath before the tornado sweeps us up again.
Whew!
Better do it while I can.