Welcome Everyone

 D3 Lives Matter

Hello all, and welcome to my segment of D3 Lives Matter. Throughout these posts, I'm going to take you through my life as a D3 athlete getting ready for my first college season. Before I can start with that, however, I'm going to take you back to the start of my freshman year. 

College life began with Welcome Week, a week I wish I could go back to, of no stress and no classes for incoming freshmen to get to know their surroundings and peers around them. During this week, all of the incoming freshman softball players (and our honorary transfer) would get together almost every night and play card games in our dorm rooms. Which was normally Uno, with an occasional spoons game played (but with forks). This is where we began to really bond as a class and where I found some of my now best friends. 

After about a week of classes, we were able to start up our practices, where we practiced for 3 hours, 3 days a week. Although it was a lot of hard work, and A LOT of running, I am definitely missing these practices and can't wait to get back at it.  Throughout this time in the fall, I was really able to get to know a lot more of my teammates and made some great bonds with them. After our practices, the freshmen would have our study tables, which we needed for six hours every week. This consisted of us getting 2 hours in 3 days a week from 8-10pm after practices. With study tables being so late and immediately after practice, all the freshmen would rush out of practice to be able to go get food from our on-campus restaurant, WOW, as well as change. This gave us some good bonding as we were all able to laugh about how stressful it was to get there on time.

The fall season ended on a high note with our fall play day. We played a total of three games with our coach subbing everyone in, so everyone got a chance to play, as well, so she could see what we were working with for the spring season and what we needed to work on during our winter training. Although I was only able to play two innings, I thought I was able to make the most of my opportunities by catching well and hitting the winning run in for our game with two outs. I will never forget how nervous I was, though, to play in my first-ever college game, even if it was only for a scrimmage. 

For the rest of the semester, after practices were over, the team had lift at 6am four days a week. To say we were exhausted may be an understatement, but we definitely had a blast at every lift. Whether it was with blasting music or even having a disco ball at our lift. We were always able to find a way to have fun and stay energized throughout the whole lift. Especially with our strength coach, Coach V, there was never a dull moment. He always makes sure we are having a good time while also making sure we are pushing ourselves to our fullest capabilities.

Anyways that's it for now, blog! Thank you so much for tuning in on this first segment, and I look forward to keeping you all updated throughout this spring season!