Overdrive in overtime

“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, therefore, is not an act but a habit.” Over the course of the past two weeks we have lost one match and won three. The weekend before last, we lost to James Madison University on strokes after overtime. It was supposed to have been a home game but our pitch wasn’t ready at the time unfortunately so we had to travel to the University of Virginia to play on their blue coloured astro. This was the second time that we’ve lost on strokes. I must admit, at the time it really was a total confidence killer but these girls have a fantastic attitude and we rallied back. We had plenty of circle penetrations and hit the post on numerous occasions, but we failed to score. I enjoy the overtime. It is 7 v 7 and I tend to play the role of the highest player, so I get to go back to my days of being a forward and trying to create legitimate attacks on goal, I really enjoy this position. However, it requires a serious work rate so I need to really start pushing on with the fitness!

On Sunday, we traveled to Longwood University and beat them 3-1. The first half wasn’t the prettiest but we certainly upped our performance in the second half to ensure a win. They were a very physical side but we responded with three nice goals. Away from the hockey, the girls gave me a present of a flat-screen TV to put in my room for the course of the year; this is just one example of their generosity! While I certainly won’t have much time to watch it while we’re “in-season”, I’m sure it will be useful throughout the course of the year. I attended my first American football game last weekend. It was brilliant! It was more of an entertainment event than a sport. So much goes on around the actual game itself, between most of the college car parks being cleared out the night before in preparation for the fans to the tail gating that goes on in these car parks before the game. The stadium capacity is about 9,000 and the tickets were sold out for this game. We arrived back from our match just ten minutes into the game. The Spiders beat the Virginia Military Institute 34-19. Our pitch was finished last week and we had our first training session on it last Tuesday. It’s always nice to be training on your own home turf. It’s a particularly bouncy surface and is like needles to fall on! I really like it overall though. We played American University in our first home game last Friday. This was my first time really experiencing the torrential rain that falls here. It was crazy! I really enjoy the rain over here though because usually there’s a humidity of about 90% and it’s between 23-27 degrees Celsius so we don’t pile on the layers, like we do back home. I rather playing in the rain here than the sun, without a doubt. The only problem with the rain here is that with it, thunder and lightning tend to come and the lightning strikes quite close to us, so we have to stop playing. Luckily enough, the thunder and lightning stayed away on match day. We all thoroughly enjoyed our first home game on the water-based surface. American University beat Richmond 5-1 last year so, once again, it was quite a shock to the American college hockey-playing public that we pulled this off. This victory was especially sweet because it went into overtime and we beat them in the first half. It works like golden goal. One of our midfielders scored off a short corner and the game was then over. It was certainly a relief not to have to go to strokes, after losing both times we went to strokes in the past! We had a huge “tail-gate” after the match. There was all sorts of food there, from burgers to salad to – my personal favourite – the desserts section (and I’m supposed to be an “athlete”, I know!)

We trained for an hour or so on Saturday and I spent the rest of the day doing homework and resting. On Sunday we traveled to the blue astroturf in the University of Virginia (UVA) for the second time in a week, except this time we were going to be playing them. UVA have a strong reputation for being a really good team over here, they have quite a number of internationals. Over here, outsiders tend to judge your team partly on the amount of international players that you have. Richmond has two, a Bermudian girl and myself. Other colleges with a bigger number of students would have quite a few more. The UVA brass band were out in full force, even if it was lashing rain; they played all the usual catchy band tunes. There was a good sized crowd in attendance, as appears to be the trend at college hockey games. We had a really poor first half, we were extremely frantic and they took advantage of this, leading 2-0 at half time. We came out in the second half more composed and ready to play our own game. They scored another 5 minutes into the second half but then we really turned the tables. We played direct, intense hockey and came back by scoring two goals. We forced a short corner with the last play of the game, and having really shook their defensive PC unit I was convinced we were going to score, but the first runner was out really quickly, and deflected the ball out of bounds. After making such a great comeback, it was very disappointing to have lost but we all learned another huge lesson and that is that we cannot afford to let good teams, such as UVA, get an advantage of three goals on us so easily just because we had a really poor 1st half. Just a quick mention about my club, Catholic Institute. I would like to wish both the men’s and women’s squads the very best of luck this season. The ladies 1sts began their season with a 6-0 victory over Bandon away last weekend. Keep up the great work everyone!