Indoor Softball

Since I am from Iowa, we can't play softball year round. We are known for pretty nasty winters (which they are...), and it lasts from about November to a little bit into March. Someone was pretty inventive though, and thought of the brilliant idea of playing indoors! It is completely weird the first time you do it, but it's actually kind of fun! It's exactly like outdoor softball, but there's walls and ceilings. It depends on the tournament you are going to, but most indoor tournaments, you are aloud to slide on the turf. Also, some tournaments count it as a foul ball if the ball hits the ceiling.
One thing that is tough to get acquired to is the bouncy floor. On a softball field, unless the dirt is packed down real tight, the ball doesn't bounce that high. In an indoor place, you could bounce a softball off of the ground like a bouncy ball. It is spectacular if you are a slap hitter (which I am yay), but it is absolutely terrible if you are fielding it. Also, sometimes if you hit a line drive into the outfield, it can bounce over the makeshift fences. That turns it into an automatic double. This can be a bummer if you are fast and it could have possibly been a triple, but it is a life saver to the slower people who would have otherwise only gotten only a single.
Another thing to get used to is the ceilings. If you don't pay attention and the ball is hit up into the air, it could actually be potentially dangerous. When the ball hits the ceiling, it kind of just ricochets all different directions, and rather fast too. It can be a good thing too, if the ceiling is low enough, it can stop homeruns and save the pitchers butt! One of my teammates would have definitely gotten a homerun last weekend when we played had the ceiling not been there!
My favorite part about indoor is sliding on the turf. For me, I steal almost every time I get on base, and I use a slide by instead of a regular pop up slide. It's the most fun thing to do because when you do a slide by, you purposely try to slide past the base, but at the last second, you grab on to the base and flip over on to your stomach. Fun in any kind of situation, indoor or outdoor. But when you are indoor, you just fly all over the place. The first time I did it I flung by the base so fast that I took the base with me! Good thing or I would have been out!
A lot of people don't enjoy playing indoor, but it's a time to get all the kinks out and get ready for the softball season. Try some new things, and just try to have fun with it!
Word Count: 495 words
Image: http://archive.inside.iastate.edu/2011/0217/0217.php

Too Cold for Comfort!

Since it's track season, and its February, I feel it's important to address the need for stretching. Stretching is important in any conditions, but it's extra important when it's cold outside. If you think about it, it makes sense. People use the phrase "warm up" when stretching out, and if it's warm outside, there is not much warming that your muscles need. That's why it's always easier to play sports in stifling heat rather than the freezing cold.
For a runner, it is a good idea to start out with a run. Get your muscles moving. For my track team, we run a mile on our track, but since its February and in Iowa it snows so much I want to cry, we have to run in our school parking lot because the track is covered. Usually we run for about 10 minutes.
After we run, we do all sorts of different stretches. Most of them are dynamic, because you need to get your muscles nice and loose by moving them around. First we start with hamstring and quad stretches. There are many different stretches for these muscles. Knee pulls, toe pulls, toy soldiers, walking RDL's, lunges, side to side lunges, and Spiderman's are my favorite. Then, you get into the running stretches. These work on your running form, like high knees and pushing off of the ball of your foot. "A" skip works on picking up your knees, and if you do them correctly, it stretches out your hamstrings. "C" skip is my favorite. It progresses off of "A" skip, but instead of just putting your foot down, you kick it out and put it down real fast. This also stretches hamstrings. Quick step is very similar to "C" skip, you just add running in. Then there is anklings and straight legs. These are practically the same thing, you just bounce off of the ball of your foot, but in anklings, you are aloud to slightly bend your legs. Obviously in straight legs, you have to keep your legs straight.
These are just a few different stretches you can do, but I highly suggest you do something before you start a run in the cold weather. It is very uncomfortable, and there is a very high chance you can pull a muscle, which believe me, is no fun at all. Be smart and stretch!
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Image: http://www.womenshealthmag.com/fitness/stretches

Qualifiers: soak it all in

The best part about the club volleyball season is going to the qualifier tournaments. For those of you who don't know, a qualifier is a tournament that if your team does well enough, you can qualify for Nationals. These qualifier tournaments are the most amazing things. You walk in to these giant convention centers and there is just court after court. There are like 100 of them! If that's not cool enough, there's venders set out all around. You can get really cool things like headbands, clothes, and I've even seen phone cases and random stuff like that. Going to these tournaments just makes me feel like a professional. 

These tournaments are incredibly tough to win. It depends on the division you play in, but all of them are hard. I'm not sure what all of the divisions are, but I do know that the top division is called the open division. In this division, you have to be super really absolutely fantastic otherwise you're going to lose almost every game. Yay for my team because we are playing in the open division for most of the qualifiers we go to. We have to be on our game! 

I wish that I could have been on good teams every year I play volleyball because the qualifiers are the best part and I haven't been to one since I was like 13. That makes me super excited for next weekend because my team is going to our first qualifier in Minneapolis. It's a 3 day tournament and we have to do good on the first day for any of it to count. Wish us luck!

Let the running begin...

The time has come!!!! Yes you guessed it, track season is almost here! Exactly 23 days until first practice! How do we feel about this? I'm feelin a little shaky, considering there's still snow on the ground, but I am very excited.

Last year, the season at my school was a little rough. We have over 2000 people in our school and yet only 30 girls go out for track. Doesn't seem right does it? So if you didn't already guess, that means we're lacking in the speed department. We only had 1 girl go to Drake Relays this year and my freshman year I had 3 events go, plus like 15 more events.

Track is an individual sport, but it's also a very team dependent sport too. If your not fast enough to make it to State in open events, your whole team has to be on point. One messes up hand off and all your hopes and dreams are over (maybe I'm exaggerating that!). 

I am dreading the first, maybe 2 weeks or so of season because those are the days where your getting back into running everyday  and your legs feel like they are going to fall off. This happens to me every year! Last year was a little worse because I'm vitamin D deficient and apparently if you don't have enough vitamin D in your body, your muscles can't get rid of lactic acid (the stuff that makes it sore). It was a terrible time! I recommend taking ice baths, they actually work. It is terribly hard to make yourself do them, but it's worth it I promise! Once you force yourself to get in, stay in for like 10 minutes. Your legs will eventually go numb so it won't be as bad!

Practicing is a hard thing to do for track because if you're not already fast, there's not much practicing can do to help you. Plus, practices at our school are outrageous. One day last year, we did 17 200's at 100%. I felt like I was going to die! In the long run, I think those kind of days paid off because we turned our season around and ended up bringing 18 girls to the State Track Meet. Always a really fun experience. It is very important for every runner, may you be distance or sprinter, to work on your fast twitch and your slow twitch muscles. Alternate days of practicing hard sprinting and days of longer strides. For sprinters, long strides are not as important unless you are a 400 runner. 

Hopefully you are all ready to get runnin, because first day of practice is right around the corner!

Volleyball: refing and scoring clinic

Worst part about club volleyball season, the refing and scoring clinic. My team was just told that we needed to get certified. One of my teammates actually wrote a blog post about this too! It takes a solid 4 hours to complete, and you already know how to do all of it! Or maybe you know none of it and it's just a lot of rules you don't understand. But push through it, you need to be certified to play club.
Fortunately, you can now do your clinics online, when I was younger, you used to have to actually show up at a lecture and listen to someone speak about refing and scoring. REALLY boring. But, you didn't have to take a test at the end. Now, after you've watched the lesson, you have to pass a quiz about it by at least 90%. Fortunately, you can take a pre-quiz and if you pass it, you get to skip the whole video. That saves a good 20 minutes! Unfortunately, the pre-quiz has like all these trick questions and its just terribly confusing. You probably end up having to listen to the whole video.
Thank goodness for me I passed 3 of the pre-quizzes and didn't waste and hour of my life!
They really should make the videos more interesting because it's very boring. The voices in the video are very monotone and slow and who wants to listen to that on a weekend when you have to listen to that all week at school? NO ONE! 
Now that I've done all of my complaining, I do understand why we have to do it every year. It surprises me a lot how much I actually forget from one season to the next. It's a good refresher. Also, some people desperately need the help. I have had teams ref for me that have absolutely no clue what they are doing. What I'm wondering is how the heck did you pass the clinics! It also is really awesome when you are refing and you make this super weird call (like an illegal block, I had never seen one EVER until last year!) and your like , yeah I did know that! They should really make the parents take the clinics too so they wouldn't haggle the refs so often. Parents, settle down, you have no clue what's going on!
Yeah I know it's the most boring 4 hours of your life, but sit tight, it'll help you in the long run!
Word Count: 395 words

Everyone hates a poor official

I think every single athlete can agree with me on this, EVERYONE HATES POOR OFFICIALS! Unless the calls are going your way of course..:) But, 99.9% of the time, a bad official is going to make bad calls for both teams. Sometimes it is so blatantly bad that your just like, baffled! It has happened to me before MANY times in softball and volleyball. It's just... UGH. That's my best explanation of it. UGH.
There are many different kinds of sports officials. There are referees for many different sports like football and volleyball, an umpire for softball/baseball, and there are judges for gymnastics and diving. I think there are a few sports out there that don't really have an official (consider yourselves lucky). There are people that look for false starts in swimming and track, but that's not something you can really mess up.
The worst thing of ever is that very blatantly bad call. I've had this happen to me more times than I can count because in softball, I am a slap hitter, and almost every single at bat it is a close play. But, it is the most frustrating thing when you have an umpire that calls the play before it already happens. They see the ball hit in the infield and they automatically think that you're going to be out. I have beat a ball out by a solid 2 steps and the ump still called me out. Believe me I wanted to storm out there and give him a good slap in the face!
I can bet $100 that pretty much everyone has seen a professional game where the calls are just botched so horribly. It just happened a week ago in the Steelers v. Ravens playoff football game. I have never seen so many horrible calls against one team in such an important game. It especially peeved me off because the Steelers are my favorite team. My whole family was just yelling at the TV so loud. It would be very unfortunate to be those refs because they probably get a lot of hate afterwards (even though they deserved it in the Steelers game...)
I think the only people who take poor calls worse than the athletes are the parents. I know that it's the worst thing that could ever happen in my dads eyes! He yells at those officials like its his job! I can think of this specific time during softball when I was called out (but was clearly safe of course) he was yelling how horrible the umpire was, and the umpire turned around and said to my dad "I know how hard it is to accept the fact that your daughter was out. I had a kid who played too, and eventually I had to learn to think with my brain not my heart" and this is the best part, my dad said "Yeah well I think with my eyes!". I literally love him so much for that!
So, I think we can all agree that bad officials are the worst thing to plague the planet earth! But if there's one thing I do know, you can't let it affect how the rest of your game is going. That is the worst thing you can do. Just let it go and prove it to them the next time. As my favorite saying goes, "The ball never lies!". Cause it really doesn't. You'll see!
Word Count: 573 words

Lauren Chamberlain: Softball Powerhouse

Lauren Chamberlain is one of the best hitters in college softball right now. She plays at Oklahoma University and is a senior this year. For a little bit of background info, Oklahoma is one of the top softball schools in the country. Lauren's freshman year, they were WCWS runner up to Alabama, the next year they were WCWS champions over Alabama, and the next year they were WCWS runner ups to Florida State University.

Lauren's freshman year, she hit 30 home runs, earning a batting average of a .357. Her sophomore year, she hit 30 home runs again, with a batting average of .458. Her junior year, she was injured, but still hit 12 home runs. If you didn't know, 72 home runs is a heck of a lot of home runs. That is 10th in career home runs.  She is my idol. It has always been a dream of mine to play on a D1 college team that goes to the Women's College World Series, and she has been there 3 times, and no doubt will be there a fourth. 

It is the most amazing thing to watch Lauren play a game of softball. She is always cheering and it is awesome when she hits a home run. She still gets beyond excited when she hits a home run, pumping her arms in the air and gliding into home to her teammates. She has a love for the game that makes her spectacular. You can tell she is a team player, one of the most important characteristics an athlete can have. 

Not only is Lauren an incredible softball player, but she is also very talented at singing, and is very funny. I always enjoy going through her vines and other social media. Yeah I know that's kinda creepy, but you know you have that one famous person you do it to also. She's even done an interview where they had her hit different types of fruits. Probably one of the more entertaining things I watched. 

Lauren Chamberlaun is the kind of softball player that makes little kids want to be great. Everyone aspire to have as amazing of a college career as she did. I know that she inspires me to work harder to get to the D1 level, and eventually achieving my dream of playing in the WCWS.

Word count: 390 words