Day 2

I can’t believe it’s only day two!!! I feel like I’ve been here for a while, just because we’ve done so much. This morning we woke up from our 12-14 hours of sleep to a wonderful breakfast and hopped on the bus for some good training. In the morning we focused on body position in contact, ball retention, making swift devastating tackles (head up, get close, shoulder and squeeze). I also split off with the tight five in the morning and worked on the power position and core strength stuff. I felt like this morning started off okay for me, and actually I did a little bad for a couple drills….and then got better at the end.

We broke for lunch at about noon and ate at in the stands of one of the crusader’s rugby pitches. Then we headed off to the locker room to practice our rendition of “The Star Spangled Banner” and ended up having an impromptu dance-off complete with Schmarra showing us how to pop, lock and drop it…Tunney doing some breakdance spins, Sherri coming in with the worm, and Shoddy generally acting crazy (not really, the eagle coming out of the shell dance was kind of amazing, or should I say Sha-mazing). Even Kentucky joined in with some fantastic hick dance…the electric slide, and Sydney doing her “yoga” dance…or whatever it is…kindof awesome. I didn’t bust out the temper tantrum, but something tells me I probably should have.

Anyway, so after lunch we paired off and did some peripheral vision work and then hit the pitch for our second session. We ran through a bunch of drills working on movement off the ball, running angles, creating space, decision making and trailer communication…everything seemed to be improving as we went along. There were a lot of dropped balls, but I think that will clean up with a bit more time. Hopefully soon tho, b/c our first game is tomorrow. So then the tight 5 and backs/backrow split, and Barb told me to go with the backrow, which is absolutely awesome!!! At first I was a little shaky, but I got better as the day went on and really think I proved that I am ready to be #7. I still need to work on a lot of things though. Especially, getting mentally into our game plan of fast paced rugby, rucking over (no bridging), talking, coming from depth, and reading the set piece better. So we ended the day with a scrimmage (not full tackle, sort of) which went ok…we were definitely a bit messy and chaotic, but dangerous in attack too. So then we stretched down and headed back to the hotel.
That’s where the staff announced that there’d be mandatory ice baths in the freezing cold swimming pool outside. Wow. Not my forte.

It was of course hellaciously cold, but we passed the time singing away and for some reason I went up to my neck. The bath proved to be a great choice though because now I feel a lot more mobile than I did right after practice. Again dinner was amazing and Kate was crazy about bread while Tess was cracking up the whole time at Tanya and Shoddy’s shenanigans. The jersey ceremony followed that and Barb really emphasized possession and point of contact…definitely two things to remember tomorrow. I got jersey #20, which is really exciting because if I’m flanking, I really want to come off the bench and make a positive impact…and charge the team with positive energy by making that amazing tackle/run…it’s going to be awesome.

After the captains meeting, we got to head back to the rooms and I got to chill with Amber and Lach (my sister and her fiance), which was amazing. Shoddy and Tanya were in here too, and we were just having a great time joking around, trying on our jerseys, and talking about crazy dogs and Katie Mac’s terrets. Love this team. Love this country. Love this game.

Sweet dreams,

Turls

P.S. I posted some pics on flickr if you'd like to take a look...