Day 7: Goodbye Stranger
This morning brought the triumphant return of dryland to our lives. Basically today's dryland was the same as a three days ago: four stations of arms, legs, abs, and stairs. Today we added a new wrinkle, frog jumps. Much of the time that my group wasn't doing Frog Jumps, we spent poking fun at the others as they attempted to jump. We also got as many frog themed jokes as we could: (including, but not limited to: Frogger, Kermit, Slippy Toad, and the Black Ranger from Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: The Movie). Distance did two broken 1000s and called it a morning.
In between practices, I went through all of the rest of my food. So that's no fun.
Adam, Doug, Ryan, and I met on the beach to put together our team awards for tonight's 'banquet'. Our awards were just a collection of superlatives and nicknames for all of our teammates.
At tonight's practice, Greg gave us the challenge of learning everyone's end of the year goals. While kicking up and down the pool, each of us had to share our personal goals and afterward we were quizzed. It was interesting to learn everybody's goals, and it makes me excited to see what we can do at Conference and beyond this season.
We wrapped up practice with a relay race between the middle-distance/distance swimmers and the sprinters. Each person had to do 4x50s, and I'm proud to say that the distance/middle-distance swimmers emerged victorious.
At our banquet tonight, we shared a meal of pizza (again) and were treated with some entertainment provided by the Sophomores and Freshmen. Both groups had to put on a skit and perform it in front of us. The Sophomores did a tribute to senior, Mike Moravek. The Freshmen were much more theatrical with a story about Sam Hoffmann getting lost on New Year's and being led back to the hotel by the seniors, each played by a different freshman: Scott Reher as Doug, Brennan Reynolds as Glover, Greg Alexander as Mike, Mitch Reecher as Ryan, Teryn Solan as Me (Eric), Evan Weyrauch as Adam, and Derrick Rendon as Ben. When they finally made it back to the hotel, they were greeted by Ben Ertl as Greg Earhart who proceeded to inform the boys that they were out after curfew. It was great, all of the frosh nailed their roles.
Tomorrow we have practice in the morning, we're grilling out on the beach for lunch, and we're catching a late flight back to Midway and Carthage.
Training Trip has been great, and I'm sad to say that my last one is nearly over. Time flies when you're having fun. Next we have J-Term and taper and conference and nationals and then it's over.
This is my last post from Florida, and likely my last post for the Red Tide Report. These four years have flown by. Thanks for those of you who have been checking in and reading my work, you've been a great audience. Thanks for those of you who've given me words of encouragement during the writing of this blog whether it's in person or through text messages or even facebook. You're all great.
I'm gonna miss this when it's over.
Signing off for the last time,
E.Ross
Nothin' to it folks...