Friday, May 16, 2014

Coming into Summer!


We are now 7 games into the 2014 NWSL season. As a proud member of the Seattle Reign I am happy to report that we currently sit at the top of the table as the only undefeated team in the league. Thats exciting. But it is not a championship yet. We have a long season and playoffs ahead of us still. In the last couple of games we have not had our best performances, we have pulled out some wins that could have gone the other way. But that is both the most beautiful and ugliest thing about this game. And we are proud of every point we get! Needless to say, same every team in this league, we are a work in progress and we are working towards peaking at the end of the season. And we know we have a lot more growth to make before that crucial time arrives.
Life outside the stadium has been particularly nice! We were on a long road stretch which is always a bit tough on our social lives. We spend a lot of time in some spectacularly average hotel rooms, and a lot of money on strange food combinations put together from grocery shopping for meals that we dont need to refrigerate or cook but somehow can still put together to make a decent meal of. Lauren Barnes is the queen of this and somehow made a dinner of an uncooked sweet potato, avocado, some sliced turkey meat and a coco cafe. I looked at my bowl of luke warm oatmeal and somehow felt jealous of her creative meal. Oh, the sweet life of a professional athlete. Oh, the irony? 
Summer time is approaching rather rapidly! My east coast friends (Emma Nelson) have told me that it was 90 degrees the other day, with humidity! And they have still not officially said its summer yet, which basically means that I will never spend a summer on the east coast because I will melt by the end of spring. On a more pleasant note, here in Seattle we had a day of 80 degrees which was just enough to give me a red hue and force Kim Little to lather up 72 SPF no less than 5 times in a 4 hour boat outing. It has since cooled back down to a solid 60-65 and I am perfectly happy with this temperature. 
Our schedule over the last couple weeks has been pretty crazy with having a game most Wednesdays and Saturdays. That really didnt leave much time to do anything fun because we needed to save our legs and prepare for the next game. So I spent a lot of my time reading. I read Chelsea Handler's book Chelsea Chelsea Bang Bang in a solid three and a half days. It was hilarious and I think Keelin and Elli were annoyed with the amount of (trying to be quiet) laughing I did whilst reading it. You know how difficult that is? When you read and its absolutely hilarious and you want to laugh out loud but no one else knows what you're laughing at? And its not even like you can explain it to them with out reading them the exert... and thats equally as annoying. So I spent a lot of time reading outside where I could both soak up the sun and laugh without worrying about being "that girl." 
So, thats been life over the last couple weeks here! A lot of team time in hotel rooms (which I must say I thoroughly enjoy), time spent on soccer fields in other states and the most enjoyable part... winning! Our next game will be in Kansas CIty on Wednesday of next week. Its nice to have a solid week before our next game to get our legs back under us.  
As always, thanks for reading!

Much love,
D