Liz Strunk's Preseason Diary: Entry 1
10/12/2005 12:00:00 AM | Women's Basketball
Oct. 12, 2005
Winston-Salem, N.C. -- -
Well, it has finally arrived. Something I have dreaded and yet looked forward to at the same time for the past three years is now here. Senior Year! To say it went by fast is an understatement. It is crazy to think about how the team has changed from year to year and that Porsche, Keila, Cotelia and I are finally the "old heads". I still think about the first day we all met and how we promised each other that by the time we were seniors, this program will be better. And I'm happy to say that we were right. It has been an amazing journey and there are still steps to be taken this year.
This fall has been intense and demanding, but we have managed to have a few laughs along the way. With the personalities on this team, there is always time for a joke or two. We seem to have had a few issues in the weight room this year that were addressed by our strength coach, D. Bass. He created a list of rules for teammate, Maya Bennett and others to be followed at all times during our lifts. For example, the #1 rule for our team in the weight room is that you have to be able to count. You would think that as student-athletes at Wake Forest we would be able to handle this... yeah, well you would be surprised. Another rule is that there is no dancing in the weight room and especially no watching yourself in the mirrors while dancing in the weight room. This was not Maya's favorite rule, to say the least. A quick list of the other rules include: no singing, no high pitched screaming, no laughing obnoxiously, no arguing across platforms with other groups and no playing in the chalk. And the list goes on and on.
Despite all of this, we increased our weights dramatically as a team this off season and even formed a new group... the "clean club". This means your hang clean and power clean combined are more than 300lbs. I can proudly say that I am the secretary of this club (D. Bass promises t-shirts are on the way to prove it... but we are still waiting!) And ahh yes, you can't talk about fall workouts without mentioning something about the conditioning.
We knew we were in for a tough preseason when coach came up with the First Annual Deacon Decathlon. We each were assigned a partner and we competed in 10 events: bench, hang clean, push press, vertical jump, 100-yard dash, 10-yard shuttle, 400-yard sprint, a two-on-two tournament, a free throw competition and the mile in two days. I must say Tara Tate and I dominated the weight room events with Cotelia and Christen in a close second! But the winners of the first annual decathlon were Porsche and Corrine. And I still say it was rigged!
Months of conditioning in the heat, getting stronger in the weight room and training in the gym hardly seem like enough to prepare us for our little getaway into the mountains this weekend. That's right; we are doing things a little bit different this year. Coach P is loading us up on a bus and hauling us to Boone, NC for the first weekend of practice. There is also a rule book for this weekend... no iming, no headphones, no ipods, and get this... no cellphones! If you know anyone on our team, you understand how big a deal that last one is. It's going to be a crazy weekend! Just us and the mountains and the gym.... Sounds like fun, right? Don't worry, I will be letting you know... so until then... Go DEACS... and in the words of Erin Ferrell, holleration!