Jazz’s Journal – 2012-2013

PRE-SEASON, LIFE ON THE ROAD

I figure that I best begin my third entry early in October before my midterm madness begins because this is one of the things that I tend to put aside when I get too busy (sorry, but its the truth). Every school year starts off the same, September is a breeze with your focus being on getting back into the student-athlete grind, and then BAM! It is October and you have a paper and a midterm one week, two midterms the next and prep for your fourth year seminar discussions. All the while trying to get back onto the court from injury and not to mention a hectic pre-season travel schedule where you know you will battle between watching "Say Yes to the Dress" on TLC or studying for your midterms, or my most beloved past time, sleep. I know I am not alone though, there are 900 other varsity athletes doing the same thing, 14 of which will be travelling with me on those trips and have been hard at work practising for the past month...

As you can see, I had the best intentions of finishing my third entry in record time, but alas midterm madness trumps all. I started this entry a little less than a month ago, when we had only played 2 pre-season games and I was still trying to make my way back onto the court from a lovely sprained ankle. Now nearing the end of October, we only have 2 pre-season games left and I have made my way back on the court (thanks to the awesome treatment from Jessie in Athletic Therapy and the support of an ankle brace).
I should warn all of you superstitious people out there, never even touch crutches unless you need them, not even to get a ball stuck on top of the net in the gym. Also, never make statements to your rookie Kate Yallin (aka TY) about how you have "never rolled your ankle before", because two days later you will roll your ankle and be out for a solid four weeks. At least that is what happened to me. I took pictures throughout the bruising and swelling process of the sprain, which was probably the most entertaining part of the injury, the colours were pretty. I've attached the one that I thought was the best, or most gruesome depending on your perspective. I did hesitate to talk about my injury on here, but realistically everyone is going to see me wearing my ankle brace anyway, it isn't really that much of a secret.

So far we have played 11 pre-season games, with a record of 7-4. This past weekend we had three games at home, prior to this our record was 7-1. Needless to say, the weekend was not as successful as any of us had hoped. We went 0-3 losing to the University of Victoria, Concordia and Acadia. All were strong competition, but the Gryphon team we are capable of being did not show up in the gym on any of our game days, or at least not until the fourth quarter (just a tad bit too late). Pushing through adversity though, there were positives that can be taken from this past weekend. For starters, we know that we can't coast through games like we have been, not when it comes to playing against tough competition. We can't pick and choose our spots of when we play with intensity, we need to play consistently for 40 minutes. As our assistant coach put it after our game on Sunday, we can't put ourselves into a deficit where we have to play every possession perfectly, scoring every possession and not letting them score on any possession. This makes perfect sense, because that is what we did, we waited until the fourth quarter to play with intensity and urgency, where the only way we could win the game is to score every basket and to not let them score again. To state the obvious, the pressure of playing a perfect game kind of is a lot to put on your shoulders, and takes the fun out of playing.
Before our set of home games, we played in two other pre-season tournaments (UPEI and Queen's), as well as two other exhibition games versus Ryerson and York. Travelling with the team is always entertaining and usually hilarious. Road trips are when you make the memories that will last, like when we were dropped off at a Boston Pizza a few kilometres down the road from our hotel and had to walk back because our coaches were scouting another game. Well, afterwards it was rainy, so instead of walking we ran back as a team, and making sure to be safe, we called out all of the potential hazards along the way ("pothole!" "curb!" "puddle!" "uneven ground!"). Halfway through this jog, some of us felt like we may throw-up since we just carb-loaded for our game the next day and we were laughing so hard after someone yelled "uneven ground!", so we began to walk back...and then decide to have a road-side photo shoot.
Another great adventure from that weekend was on the Sunday when we used the three hours of tourist time we had to have lunch at this amazing place called Boom Burger and then had Cow's ice cream. I also had my teammate Erin Tilley (but we only ever call her Tilley) put my hair into pigtails like Anne of Green Gables and all afternoon I kept them in for several photos as a joke for a few friends back home. Two of my insane teammates also decided to take a polar bear dip in the Atlantic Ocean that day. Surprisingly, the one who was all gun-ho (spelling?) about it was second-year guard Barbara Inrig-Pieterse (Barb), and it was Marlee Freeman (Mar) who needed coaxing from all of us (as well as Barb while she was in the ocean already). I would have thought it was the other way around, but it was a moment that I will never forget (especially since a few of us captured it on video and several photos).

This coming weekend (first weekend in Novemeber) we will be playing in our final two exhibition games against non-CIS opponents. We'll be travelling to Buffalo on Friday morning to play Daeman College and play Shawnee State College on Saturday afternoon. The following weekend will be our season opener, where we travel to Toronto to take on the University of Toronto and Ryerson University. After that we will have our home opener against Queen's on Saturday November 17th!

Now enough procrastination, I have a second round of midterms and a paper to write. I hope you enjoyed the entry and that I made your day a little brighter after reading this. If not, my apologies, I did my best to be witty.

Interesting Facts- I decided I would do two this time since I have been ignoring you faithful readers of my blog:
- Kate Yallin's nickname TY stands for Tiny Yal, she is the youngest of the five Yallin sisters, but is the tallest by three inches, get it? I'm the only one on my team that likes it and calls her it too (potentially because I made it up and am biased towards it). No one ever calls Erin Tilley "Erin", in fact I didn't know her first name was actually Erin until a few months into the summer of scrimmages, even now when someone says Erin it takes me a second to realize who they are talking about).

- Being that we have been on the road several weekends in a row now (and that all the rookies know this, some having to be told after they sat down, cough....Erika McFadden...cough), but I have a specific spot on the bus that I have sat in since my first year. I don't really like change and I am superstitious. Being in fifth year, one of the few vet cards I pull is having my own spot on the bus, I think I have earned that over the past four seasons.
 

A Gryphon at Heart

Being a Gryphon athlete has defined my experience at university. All of my fondest and saddest memories, my triumphs and my heartbreaks have been involved with being a Gryphon athlete. Some may see that as a bad thing, but those that understand what it is like having a team behind you, beside you rather, will understand. For those of you that don’t understand what I mean and for those of you that do, but want to know precisely my experience of being on the women’s basketball team…let me clarify.

First and foremost, I go to the University of Guelph in order to attain my Honours degree in Psychology. I am not a basketball player who is going to school; I am a student who plays basketball for her school. School and marks have always been my top priority. I am my own worst critic and anything less than an 80% is not quite good enough, in high school it was 90%. Despite this, it has still been my involvement with being a Gryphon athlete that has defined me and in essence sculpted who I am today. I attend all my classes, study hard and try my best to be prepared for midterms, but I know that isn’t the most significant part of how I have come to be who I am.

Living off campus in your first year for some may seem ludicrous, how would I ever make any friends living at home and not in residence? Being on the women’s basketball team I already had 12 other girls that I instantly had something in common with, we were all in pursuit of competing and succeeding at the next level. I also had four fellow rookies to start this experience with: Ali Dzikowski, Sam Russell, Kara Muhlhausen and Laura Rajnak. You see, I had a group of girls I would spend a minimum of two hours of practice with, running drills, scrimmages and running suicides together. Not to mention the times that we spent working out, travelling to and from tournaments and games, and then actually playing in those games. There are two alternatives to how we would feel about each other: we would either hate one another and not want to spend any more time together than we had to or we would love each other and spend the free time that we did have with one another. As you can imagine, we grabbed lunch before practice, shared a mid-day and/or post-practice library session, celebrated birthdays and went to movies on cheap Tuesday. On top of having these amazing teammates, I was lucky enough to have an awesome student assistant coach (Loval) that is my fellow sappy music lover and thus is my concert partner in crime. We also had a team manager (Mama J) that you can tell by my nickname for her she is a very prominent fixture in my life and has become one of my best friends. Also, having worked at Client Service for four years, and four summers, I have met some friends who will forever have a place in my heart and always bring a smile to my face.

Each year’s team has several familiar faces and some new faces, but the affect they have on my life never changes. My team is like a family is not an accurate statement, my team IS a family. When the season gets into full swing we all see each other more than we do our “biological family”. Even with me living at home, I become so busy with school and basketball that there are days when I get home after a long day of class, workout, practice and library that all my Dad hears me say is “night Dad, I love you, see you tomorrow” and then I am in bed asleep. He understands though, and is my biggest supporter. Always has been.

My team (just writing that and the thoughts that come to mind brings a smile to my face) and my teams from previous years (again, I smile) all have girls that I will never forget. Let’s just say, I feel bad for my future husband, for our wedding reception is going to have several tables filled with my ridiculously hilarious and rowdy teammates.

In regards to my statement of having all of my fondest and saddest memories, my triumphs and my heartbreaks being involved with being a Gryphon athlete, that doesn’t necessarily mean that they are directly related with our success on the court, or that they even happened on the court. The relationships I have gained from being a Gryphon, the moments that I shared with the people I have grown to love and the support I have received from my family (biological and not) throughout my four years, that is what has made me into who I am today. The moments I have shared with the people I have met through being a Gryphon on the court and off, have been mostly beautiful and sometimes heartbreaking. These have given me the opportunity to grow from a shy 18 year old girl who would not start a conversation with a stranger at all costs to being a confident 22 year old women, despite feeling 87, to feeling comfortable talking in front of a group (albeit it a medium one, no bigger than a fourth year seminar class of 40 people).
Being a Gryphon I have been able to meet other Gryphon athletes from various other sports, as well as keep in touch with high school friends pursuing their respective sports at the next level. I must admit, that the inspiration for this blog entry came from another blog post from a fellow Gryphon and friend Caitlin Beaton. She is a third of the Gryphon rugby trio that have started up the fundraising/support campaign aptly named “Gryphs for Canada” in order to off-set the costs of fulfilling their dreams of playing rugby for their country on the National Senior Women’s Team. The trio is also comprised of Morganne (Mo) Linthwaite- who I have gone to school with since middle school and played basketball with for six years, and Jane Kirby- it was through our conversation together that the term “fifth-year wonder” was brought up. Beats’ (it is weird calling her Caitlin) blog entry was titled “Once a Gryphon, always a Gryphon” and those same words that she was told, were told to me by the same mom, at a tailgate that the basketball alumni held in my second year at homecoming.

If you have stayed on reading this blog for this long thanks, I am just a little passionate about being a Gryphon can’t you tell? Since you have read this in its entirety, I am guessing you care somewhat about what I have to say, or nothing is interesting on facebook and you needed a last resort source of procrastination from doing school work. So, I ask that you check out my friends’ facebook page Gryphs for Canada, follow them on twitter @gryphsforcanada and check out their blog here http://gryphsforcanada.wordpress.com/ . After all, we are all Gryphons, and I am a firm believer in Gryphons supporting Gryphons.

Fun fact: As I said above, Mo and I played basketball together for six years and when we first met in grade seven she towered over me! The tides have changed since then as I had my growth spurt late in grade 11 and now at 6 feet have a solid three inches on her. I really wish I could see her face when she reads this.
 

Better Late Than Never...A Year and-a-half Later

It is the beginning of July as I write my first journal entry in a year and-a half, sorry! I promise I'll be better this year, being my last I'll be sure to keep you all updated on a semi-regular basis this time around. I know that it is really only Kayla Goodhoofd's (a.k.a Goods') Dad Herb, and my own, who are really anticipating my return to "Jazz's Journal". Since I am going into my fifth year I have appropriately been calling myself a "fifth year wonder" whenever people ask me if I still have one more year or not (humble, I know). Although, it isn't a title just exclusive to myself- I would call any fifth-year athlete a "fifth year wonder"! For example, the Men's Basketball team Captain and fellow Guelphite, Dan McCarthy, is also a fifth-year wonder.
Half-way through the summer means that we are halfway through our off-season conditioning program. We've finished our general strength and max strength portions of our program, and are now a week into our strength endurance portion. Did I tell you how much I love lunges? I mean I L-O-V-E lunges (please note the sarcasm folks). With saying that, "no pain, no gain", right? If you aren't sore from a workout that you did from the day before and shudder at the thought of walking up a set of stairs after, you're not working out hard enough and you're wasting your time. On top of our training program we scrimmage twice a week. It is a weird thing not seeing everyone every day, needless to say we do tend to use our warm-up to catch-up...needless to say that Tom does not enjoy this! We have been getting good numbers lately for scrimmage, which allows us to get a better run in playing full-court. A special shout out should be given to my rookie Dana Van Balkom (a.k.a. DVB) for not missing a single scrimmage this summer, with the lovely drive from the Hammer every Tuesday and Thursday.

Our pre-season schedule is online already, and if you take a look you'll see we're heading to Prince Edward Island this year in October! Road trips are always fun, harder to get through the older you are though. I swear I need a solid four days to recover after a long road trip, which is not possible during pre-season or our season schedule. "Fun" fact: I cannot for the life of me fall asleep on a bus or an airplane, some of my teammates pass out before we hit Gordon Street. So jealous. As a payback I usually end up taking pictures of them on my phone or my i-pod, occasionally posting them on twitter. Unfortunately for Goods, she is usually the victim of this revenge simply because she sits within easy picture-taking range and is one of those lucky individuals who has no trouble falling asleep on a bus.

I'll leave this entry with an interesting fact, which I plan on doing for each subsequent issue of "Jazz's Journal".

Interesting Fact Number One:

This upcoming 2012-2013 season, I will have played with 4/5 Yallins, having not played with Steph as she graduated in the 2006-2007 season and my first season wasn't until 2008-2009.
 

Jazz’s Journal – Issue II

I guess I should first apologize for the gap in between my blogs, it kind of took the back burner to school and basketball, I hope you can forgive me!

We finished our pre-season with a 3-6 record, having travelled to Halifax, Toronto and Kingston for exhibition tournaments. In our trip to Halifax we had the opportunity to play in 3 exhibition games against Acadia, Dalhousie and St. Mary’s University at the beginning of October and showed progress in each of those games as a team. Although we didn’t pull out any W’s, we still improved each game and learned what we had to work on in our upcoming practices. Not only that, but the trip gave us the chance for us to get to know each other better, more specifically the rookies getting to know the vets a bit better. I would say that was definitely accomplished. Road trips, though exhausting at times, are when a lot of memories are made. Whether it be the diet-coke that Sarah Dinsdale somehow made explode all over me on the plane ride home or the pre-game Rock Band jam session in Conrad’s basement (we had lunch at Alison Conrad’s house before one of our games, she hails from Halifax), Hali had some good memories. I’ve attached a picture of the team, excluding Ali D and Al Yal as they stayed back at the hotel to be studious, during a quick sightseeing session on our last day there. Unfortunately, no pictures were taken of sleeping teammates in Halifax; although there was a war of those pictures in Kingston (which won’t be posted).

Fast forward a month and a half of practices and workouts and we are four games into our season, with a 2-2 record. We lost both of our season opener games to Carleton and Ottawa, these games signified our tenth and eleventh away games of our year, it is safe to say we almost forgot what it was like to be in our home gym in front of our own fans. After going 0-2 in Ottawa we had some kinks to work out this past week in practice, one of which was playing as intensely against each other as we would in a game. Obviously we weren’t out there throwing teammates to the ground, but we definitely made one another work harder by playing more physical and in each other’s faces. This past weekend we had our home opener, as we hosted Queen’s and RMC. As you can deduce from our record, we pulled out two W’s in our home opening weekend, beating Queen’s 69-59 and RMC 90-49.

After our game against RMC on Saturday afternoon we held a meet and greet for all of our families in the Gryphon Lounge, which the Yallin family took up half the room (sorry that will be my one and only dig!). It was a chance for everyone to get to know each other and for us to stand around the food table and demolish 12 pizzas (and a cake) after a big win. One thing is for sure, as all of us stood in the Lounge with our families, we would not have been able to get where we are without the love and support of our families. With that being said (this is where I get sentimental), my Dad has been so supportive of me over the years. He was the one who stood by me in my decision to stop playing fastball in order to focus on basketball, drove me to practice and all of my tournaments throughout high school and was a constant source of encouragement. He has fulfilled the duties of being both Mom and Dad for me and my siblings, and has done an amazing job.

I hope that my blog has made you forgive me for the large gap between my first! I will try my best for there not to be two months in between entries, but I should remind you exams are coming up…although a blog could be written in procrastination of studying (just kidding, I don’t procrastinate).
 

Jazz’s Journal – Issue I

After a long off-season of juggling jobs, summer classes and training the Guelph Gryphon Women’s Basketball team is ready to jump right into the 2010-2011 season.

During the first week of classes we held our open scrimmages and tryouts for the team; these were filled with energy and enthusiasm evident through the effort and competiveness of all the girls. Once Friday’s tryout was over the team was made and consists of 16 girls in total, which includes 7 returning players and 9 new faces. Tom O’Brien, our new interim head coach for the season, chose to give four returning players the option to be a captain this season and all four had accepted the challenge. Those four captains are fourth year veteran guard Alex Yallin, third year point-guard Ali Dzikowsi, third year forward Sam Russell and yours truly. The benefit of the team having four captains is that each of us is a leader in a different way and not to mention the fact that we do have quite a few rookies to keep in line! Speaking of those rookies, all of the veteran players are really excited about seeing what they have to offer the team this year!

Our pre-season is going to start off with a bang as we’ll be travelling to Halifax at the end of this month! I’ll be sure to bring my camera and post some pictures for the blog following the trip, and my teammates should be fair warned that no picture taken of them sleeping with drool out of their mouth is off limits to me posting (just kidding, I’d never do that).

In order to get ready for the upcoming season we’ll be practicing 6 times a week as well as spending a few days a week in the weight room. Oh yeah, did I mention we have to keep on top of our school work? And some of us even have part-time jobs. Being on a varsity team is a huge time commitment, but I’m not complaining, it in a way forces us to have better time management habits than most others. I’ve also met some of my closest friends on the team; we’ve gone through a lot together in my past two seasons and have shared some pretty awesome moments together. Sorry for getting all sentimental there, those that know me well knew it would be coming eventually!

I think I’ll leave it at that as I have spent long enough dissecting this blog and should get to bed as we’ll be having our first official practice tomorrow. I’ll write another blog that’ll include some more information on our rookies and how the new school year/season has been going for all of us.