Ok, ok I know what your all thinking, the whole “let's make fun of the opposition” didn't really work out for us on Friday. Ok, I'm sorry Ashleigh, I'll be the first to admit that your goal was karma.  So anyone else with jokes can go ahead and lay them on me. I guess my good luck of Just Kickin It only works when I'm nice and I talk up VMI in positive ways.  Hopefully my good luck will return tomorrow.

That aside, I can't believe we are about to embark on our last road trip of the regular season. It sounds like it's going to be quite a journey. The game is at 7 and since we are going to South Carolina, I'm hoping we can be back before BRC March down...Good thing we were promised a sleeper bus :)

Tomorrow is going to be an exciting game. Word is the Blue Hose do well stepping up to competition. The good thing is that we do the same thing. Hopefully, by them stepping up, we will step up to them and be victorious. I'm pretty sure that is how it works. Actually, all we really have to do is play the same game we have always played. If we use our strengths and play our game, no one can beat us... well unless it's raining.

Taking it back a notch, Sunday's win was a huge deal. We played so well, even with Sarah at the pumpkin status. Kat Underwood played an amazing game in the midfield. The sports information people agreed to make her position on the media guide next year as GK/D/M/F... since she pretty much plays it all. She worked her butt off (and face a few times) for us and it really showed. It seemed like Richmond was underestimating us from the beginning. They played a lot of their freshmen. I think our freshmen showed them how soccer was played. Chrissy's goal in the last minute was awesome. Angela also made some great saves. Overall, it was a well played win. We now have a chance of finishing with a winning season. We are also still at Audrey's goal of 20 goals against for the season. With two more shut outs this week, we have it. I guess we will just have to get off the bus tomorrow and show the Hose that VMI means business.

Part VI (Oct. 23)

I think my roommates have forgotten who I am. After three away games in a row, their response to why I can't hang out this weekend is "Oh right, another away game". The good thing is they are super supportive and are happy when I come home a winner. I know they are looking forward to being able to see us play this weekend on Sunday, like many of our fans around Post. I know I miss having a home crowd and Patchin Field.

But that's Sunday, Friday comes first. Friday is a huge game. Easily the biggest game of the year. If we win this we are in first place. A place we can easily hold with the rest of the games we have ahead of us. The good news is we have more than a chance. We have a really good shot at this one.  Their go to man is the big bad Ashleigh Gunning. Coach has been talking about her all season long. Personally I'm not scared at all. She's back for her fifth season, and what is even better is the fact that it is senior night for them. Angela asked if Gunning gets another senior night. That made me laugh, but really I was thinking the same thing.

I want this win so bad. The seniors want this win, as do the seconds and thirds. The rats don't even know how bad they are going to want this win but hopefully they won't get to have the chance to know what it means to want to beat this team.  Apparently they have another billion dollar field. Coach is excited about the nice drainage. Hopefully the rain will hold off long enough that we won't have to see how well it works. Megan didn't want to drag her rain gear for the fourth time without using it. I told her she better because you know if you leave it, it will rain but If you do bring it, it won't rain.

This is going to be a tough weekend. But the good news is, for the first time in our schools history, we aren't the underdogs anymore. We're more like the little engine that could! :)

Part V (Oct. 20)

I'm pretty sure that makes it 4-for-4. I think I spend more time on Just Kickin' It blogs for the fans then I do actually doing homework. Oh well, whatever makes us win. I was a little worried that I wouldn't have anything to say before UNC Ashville, but I was definitely wrong. This was one of the most eventful away trips yet.

I guess I will start with the fact that we had a sleeper bus. I know crazy, right. I think the trip was only 3-4 hours away but by the grace of god (you know who) we got a sleeper bus. I think that itself was the origin of all our humor. I think watching Sarah or myself try and climb into a coffin like bunk is hilarious. We also ended up leaving Christina asleep in the back of the bus when we went to eat. I think she was a little freaked out when she woke up and realized she was on the bus alone. I think everyone got the biggest laugh out of Amanda. I like to call this part of the trip “Amanda and her head part two”. Sometimes it's a rather difficult concept to grasp that when force is applied to a door it reaches its max swing and then rebounds with the same force towards you. Amanda decided to use her head to stop this momentum and resulted with an immediate goose egg on her forehead. I think Emily was rather startled to hear that a player needed ice while we were at a gas station hours away from the field.  Ninja Dyke was soon put into effect and she was wrapped up and ready to go. After she recited her cue words, “red, ball cup,” we knew she was ready to go and the bump was gone by game time.

When we finally got to the field, after getting to High Point 3 hours early and killing an hour in the mall, we arrived at the nicest sports facility I have ever seen. There was mad money put into this facility. The locker room for visitors was really nice. Z bee-lined for the flat screen TV and started flipping channels. I think the Lifetime movie she chose really got us ready for the game. I think the team was also really impressed by High Point's score board. It was amazing. It was like a enormous computer screen. It was very impressive.

We ended up playing very well. We showed that the past week of practice really got us turning back in the winning direction. We played together. We really were on fire.

It was a crazy game, but we pushed through. We got our first away win of the season and we were treated with Olive Garden with a more than usual budget, compliments of Donny White. We slept the whole way back, in bunks, on the benches, in chairs and a few rats were upset they missed FTX and were spooning in the back. Overall, it was a great trip and I'm looking forward to tomorrow's trip.

Part IV (Oct. 17)

OK, so I want to apologize to my loyal fans who have been checking every day to see if I have updated.  It has been proven that if I don't update the day before a game we do poorly, so hopefully this entry gives us some good luck for tomorrow.

I really don't like the state our team is in currently.  The last 3 games have been played by a whole different team. A lot of factors go into how we have been playing. Injuries, of course, have hurt us tremendously. In the past two weeks we have had a torn ACL, injured ankle, major concussion and now a pulled hamstring. Everyone also seems to have some form of the barracks plague (I know I do...*sniff sniff*), we are barely holding on to our bench. Not having Audrey in the middle has been a loss physically and mentally for our team. She is an important part of  what holds the midfield and defense together. The good news is her and Chrissy are both back, and I think that is steps 1 and 2 to getting things back to normal. I think we need to just relax and play the game we have always played. We need to play to our strengths.  If we play how we have played in the past, we really have a chance against High Point tomorrow. We would have a chance against any team in conference. We know what it is like to win games now. We just need to pull out of this sink hole and figure out how to win on the road.

We still have people asking us when our next home game is.  It seems like forever away as we travel to North Carolina and South Carolina 3 times this week. Our hardest double header of the season will come next weekend when we play at Coastal Carolina and then 2 days later play (at home against) Richmond. That's going to be a very demanding weekend. Hopefully we are done with injuries and we can work on having everyone healthy by then.

In the past two days, practice has been really intense. The team is starting to pick things up again and we are tackling harder, making more runs, playing faster and playing smarter. Our mile test on Wednesday also had amazing results. Several of our freshmen made it for the first time. Everyone dropped some time off their mile from the beginning of the season.  Angela and Amanda were just over the 6:30 time limit. Kat also dropped 1:30 off of her time. I know Coach was very happy and it just goes to show we aren't out of shape, and fitness is a reason why we have beat teams so easily. Angela and I still don't know who is playing on Saturday but the competition between us has stepped up at practice. We both have something to prove and we are working hard to show we want to start. The team is also working hard because we know that we have some weight to pull for those still injured.

I'm looking forward to tomorrow's game and hopefully our guest trainer for the weekend will be able to keep us whole going into the rest of our away streak. Until next time -Heidi

Part III (Oct. 3)

VMI is all about history. It's all around us.  Heritage and tradition is what makes this place distinguished. Every day we become part of that. VMI women's soccer is now doing things that women have never done at VMI before. Every game we win is better than before. Every shutout we get is better than the last.  It feels so good to help change the notions that people in the Corps have about Athletics, and women's roles in Athletics.  We are giving women at VMI a better image. People are interested in our wins. I don't think women's soccer has ever gotten so much attention. I was walking to the bathroom last night, and 4 out of 5 people I passed told me good game. Life at VMI is so much more bearable when you have the Corps' support. I got so used to people asking if we lost again that I'm almost shocked when people I don't know congratulate our win. It's a nice change.

I'm so glad we are winning. Two conference wins in a row, both shutouts. If you asked me last year where we would be this year, I would never have expected this. I don't know if our wins are due to our economical track workouts, having captain runs in the rain on our days off, or simply the fact that we are actually playing as a team. We actually look like Division 1 soccer. We finally have an defense and an offense. We look so good. We also have fans for support and overall it just feels so good to be part of this program. I could say that if our winning streak ended here I would still feel good about our season. But that's the awesome part. I know we have so much more to come. We have more wins and I know we are going to have some big upsets in conference.

I honestly didn't think that we were ready for Wednesday's game. More than half the team was asleep in the locker room 90 minutes before the match.  A few stragglers were doing homework and listing to I-Pods, but no one was their usual gameday self.  Z wasn't passing the ball around in the locker room, the music was 15 decibels too high as usual, but no one was dancing and excited. If I was asked before the game how I thought we would do, I would honestly say we weren't ready. But, that wasn't the case. We were more than ready. We were 3-0 ready. Somehow we put it together on the field and magic happened.

In Arizona, we joked around that our theme song needed to be some weird European song from Keri's CD called, We Need a Miracle. I think we definitely found it within ourselves, and the Big South standings are showing it.

Now we have Charleston Southern on Saturday. The football game is going to take away our fans, but hopefully that won't affect us.  I'm still looking for a win and shutout number three!

Part II - Arizona Or Bust (Sept. 24)

We got the chance to feel like a true “Division 1 team” this past weekend.  The 18 of us left VMI at 2am and slept our way to Charlotte, N.C., where we then boarded a plane sending us to Phoenix.

Arriving in the dry heat of the Southwest, we boarded “sleep the whole way trying to drown out the monotone rock music” van 1 and “dance to techno music and laugh at the rats and Heidi videotaping every rock formation we pass” van 2, and headed 146 miles and 6000 ft in altitude to the mountains of Flagstaff, Ariz. This was the point where we stopped breathing. The temperature was cooler and the mountains were gorgeous, but the altitude hit out lungs hard right away. During our first game on Friday night, the announcer welcomed us to 7000 ft by instructing us to, “hold [our] breath” as he introduced us to the Lumberjacks. That's when we all groaned at the fact that we were just insulted as being weak for only living a mere 1000 feet above sea level, however, I don't think anyone actually heard our groans since the air was so thin.

The game was very hard fought. Despite the fact that we were dying due to sickness from the barracks plague we brought with us to the west and altitude sickness, we actually played a really good game.  Amanda Berrios scored our only goal of the match after Megan Strand tricked the goal keeper into thinking she was going to redirect the ball into the goal, allowing the ball to dummy her and hit side netting (don't worry meg we know you planned on doing that :) ).  I'm not sure, however, if Amanda actually remembers scoring after she missed a diving header and headed a lumber jack in the forehead later in the first half. On the sidelines she later recalled her mother's name and the three code words, red, ball, cup.  She did, however, insist we were staying at the Fairlawn inn... which was sorta the same thing as the holiday inn. The game resulted in a 3-1 loss and the entire team felt miserable afterward.  It was such a good effort and definitely a game we should have won.

Saturday was a nice treat, at least for nerds like me. We were treated with a trip to the Grand Canyon. I think for me this was a huge highlight of the trip. I could go into a huge nerdy rant about how awesome it was and how awe-inspired I was, but I'll save my readers that are reading this.  (the embarrassment I would get from my teammates).
   
Sunday was our final game. We were treated in warm up with the world's worst warm up CD. To this day I think we are all convinced that it was a joke. That or it was sent form the commandant's staff as punishment for missing this weekend's parade. We were the only people on the field besides a few tech guys setting up. We were welcomed with the sound of bag pipes blaring the classic “Amazing Grace” from the covered stadium.  This was then followed by Queen, depressing rock songs and Rocky Horror Picture Show's Time Warp. I think if there is anything to blame our 2-1 loss on, it was the cacophony ringing in our ears the entire game from this warm up CD.

The game was another hard fought loss. Since I was volunteered to do this blog I think I have the right to brag about my “3 more ft and it would have gone in by itself” goal. The wind was a huge factor in that game, like coach pointed out at halftime. I joked around on the sidelines that I was most likely going to score in the next half to tie us 1-1. That's pretty much exactly what happened. The goalkeeper was caught out of position, and with that and a combination of a good wind and a heck of a punt, my 70-yard kick bounced over the keeper and was tapped in by Olivia Moore feet away from the goal line. I think it was honestly the most proud moment in my life. For a goalkeeper, that's something we joke about on every short field and every windy day. I never in my life thought that I would actually have an assist like that. It was awesome.

We ended up losing the game 2-1 to two headers. It was a rough loss to swallow but I think overall, our effort in Arizona proved that we have learned a lot about ourselves as a team. We were able to cope with sickness, a huge altitude difference and distractions from having family members there that our western teammates never see on the sidelines. It was an awesome experience for everyone on the team and I think the van ride home, at least in “party van two”, proved that we truly are coming together as a team. There are so many memories that I wouldn't have enough space on this website to talk about. Everyone had their own personal favorite memories that they spent most of this week telling friends, family, and roommates. I really hope VMI soccer has another chance to travel like this. It was well worth the time and money.

I also want to send a quick thank you to Gil Minor for the very generous donation to send us to Arizona. I want to ensure him that we appreciate his continuous support of women's soccer, and we hope that he continues to support us as we fight for our first winning season.

Next opponent is Liberty this afternoon, and after a weekend like that I think we are ready to get our first conference-opening win in VMI women's soccer history.