Sunday, November 27, 2011

Minor Change - Olympic Qualifier date SWITCHED!

Okay....my bad I've been a little MIA with the blog but not because nothing has been happening in the volleyball world! On the contrary so much stuff is going on that I've been pre-occupied.  Thats going to change dont worry :)  The biggest news of the week was that our Olympic Qualifier, which has been scheduled for January 2012 for probably a year now, has been moved to May 2012.

This is obviously a massive change in our schedules, not only for training purposes, but for funding as well.  We only had enough funding to get us through to January, now with the change, we won't get paid for the January-May months.  Which makes training very difficult. If we can't find Pro contracts, then we will continue to train in Winnipeg but we'll only train in 1 time per day (instead of our usual 2 times per day) because we will need to get jobs to survive (food is kinda important when your an athlete).  Our coach has decided we will train in the mornings come January, and the afternoons will be set aside for employment. Imagine this, the most important year for training, and we have to cut it down due to a lack of funding.  Oh well, on the bright side maybe my hips will finally heal and won't be all bruised and cut up from diving on the gym floor all the time. No but seriously, we'll find a way to manage. Check out this little video of Jen and I discussing the change of dates!

Sunday, June 5, 2011

Jaki fails her bus trip and we get an inside-out car wash

Normal Saturday afternoon, just heading home from Cosco after picking up 12 cartons of Almond milk, chicken wings, veggie platter, ghiradelli brownie mix, and Cozy Shack pudding, and Lauren and I see Jaki waiting by the side of the road on Pembina highway. We figure shes probably going home to Rez, cause none of us have any friends outside of volleyball here in Winnipeg, and shes waiting at the wrong bus stop, for the wrong bus, on the wrong side of the road. We figure being the good teammates we are that we should probably swing around and pick her up and drive her home. However, by the time we make it to the bus stop, the bus has already come and whisked her away!!! So heres the video of us chasing down the bus....Oh yea and after we got a free car wash :) SCORE!

Thursday, April 14, 2011

Hola Hombres

The Full Time training centre girls of Team Canada took a little trip down to Costa Rica to train/scrimmage against Team Costa Rica.  Sometimes we get scared of the food in foreign countries cause it can make us siiicckkkk and no one likes to play volleyball with a sick tummy....so we talk a little bit about our fun food preferences haha. Enjoy :)

Saturday, April 9, 2011

Making Acupuncture Look Easy

Recovery is important for every athlete. Every Friday night after practice, we jump in the cold tubs, then the hot tubs, then get massaged, then sometimes get needles stuck into us (aka acupuncture).  Sometimes we get stuck in the clinic fairly late, so to speed up the process I just figured why not help out and take some of the needles out of my roomie Beth myself. She only shed a little bit of blood haha....

Sunday, March 20, 2011

Quebec trip to check out CIS Nationals

Wow its been a while since I posted a blog! The whole collapsed lung thing combined with surgery, recovery, rehab, its been a couple of long and tough weeks! Luckily, I'm almost back to 100% with training so I'm feeling a lot better :)

We took a trip with our coaches to Quebec City, Quebec, to check out the Canadian University volleyball nationals. Check out some of the highlights here, including some game footage from the semis and the Finals. Congrats to the UBC Thunderbirds for their 4th consecutive National Championship!!!! Good work ladies!!!

Thursday, February 24, 2011

Collapsed Lung

This post is basically self explanatory. Basically, my lung collapsed during cardio training one day, but we didnt figure that out until a couple days later....

Tuesday, February 8, 2011

Trip to Thunder Bay, Ontario!

One of the best parts of playing on Team Canada volleyball is the travelling!!!  So far, I haven't gotten a chance to travel outside of Canada with Team Canada, but this past weekend, I went on my second trip within Canada, to Thunder Bay, Ontario!  

I explain it to some degree in the video, but basically we were there to run some clinics with local middle school/high school players, check out a Lakehead University vs Ottawa University volleyball game, and then we got the chance to play Lakehead University. Heres a little peak into how the trip was...

Oh and ps - how sweet are my video editing skills now?? Haha....still working on them...

Sunday, January 30, 2011

The Gritty Grotto!

We work out 5 times a week in this underground cave!  Chest, arms, legs, shoulders, back, all once a week....and throw in a little cardio now and then. Check it out!

Thursday, January 20, 2011

Finding out how we deal with stress....


In every match, there are going to be stressful moments. Whether your winning, losing, or its a tight game, how you handle stress and adjust to it can make the difference between being a winner and a loser!  We're so lucky to have an amazing sports psychologist who we work with. Every week, we talk about how we can perform better in practice, set goals, how we can better motivate ourselves and also, when we get into a stressful situation, how do we deal with it.  Adrienne (our sports psych) attached these weird little cables to our earlobes, our fingers, our head and the back of our necks to monitor how we dealt with different computer simulations that put us in different stressful situations!  Beth (another Team Canada player) helped me out by filming!  We couldn't film the whole thing but check out all the cords connecting my head to the computer...

Friday, January 14, 2011

Even Head Coaches need birthday celebrations...


It was our head coaches birthday (Lupo) and Nadine (one of the players) was so nice and went out and bought some cupcakes to give to him as a birthday surprise.  She also bought some "sprinkles" aka sparklers, but couldn't find anyone with a lighter (we later learned that instead she accidentally walked in on the University football teams sports psychology meeting and got scared and then ran away).  Anyways....heres a little clip of us surprising him in the office before practice!

Wednesday, January 12, 2011

Some thoughts on how physical testing went...

Well, let's just say we're still a little sore but we know it can only really go up from here :)

Video Blog - The Drive

First Video Blog!  The drive from Vancouver to Winnipeg was definitely not an easy one. Never seen so much snow on the TransCanada especially through the Rogers Pass. We avoided a couple of avalanches and got re-routed a couple of times! Check it out...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nX7M08PbkE8

Moving to Winnipeg!

Hey Everyone!

After playing for one year on the Team Canada Women's Volleyball "B" team in 2009, and then after making the "A" team this past summer, I decided to move from Vancouver, BC to Winnipeg, MB to train at the Full Time Training Centre for Team Canada Volleyball so I could improve as much as possible in the year(s) leading up to the Olympics. This past summer, I was one of 3 players not selected to travel and compete with the "A" team at the World Championships in Japan.  It was really hard training all summer, working out almost every day, and then not getting the chance to compete in one of the biggest volleyball tournaments in the world (other than the Olympics of course!)  With this blog, I'm going to post some videos and let you have a little glimpse of what it's like to be a National Team Athlete who trains 5 days a week (sometimes 6!), for 5-6 hrs a day.  This is my job and its tough, but I love it!