ALOHA!Okay so in all honesty after spending 10 days in Hawaii I hope I don’t hear that term for a long time. We had a great trip that was filled with many adventures!
We left here at 3:45 am on Jan 29th to catch our 6 AM flight from Vegas. We had a layover in San Francisco – and then we arrived in Honolulu around 12:30 on Thursday afternoon. We didn’t have practice so the team had a free day to spend it how they wanted to – beach, shopping, sleeping, probably no homework.. Typical for a college student! Ha We only gave them a few days in the sun as we were there for business first.
Saturday was our first game – we played Hawaii Pacific who was at that time first in the conference. We played good and ended up beating them and giving them their first loss of the conference year!
Super bowl Sunday was another free day – I am sure most of them spent it doing homework (yeah right) Some of the girls got surf lessons – which I really wanted to see!
Monday we played BYU Hawaii which is by the north shore- This was a scary night as one of our players (Breanne Haslman) went down with a neck injury during the game. This was the single most scary moment in my coaching career! Needless to say we spent the night in ER – Bre had a 2 day stay in Honolulu (just how she wanted to spend her time in Hawaii) but in the end she is okay. Not sure if she will be able to play the remainder of the season, but we are thankful it ended the way it did. We ended up losing to BYU Hawaii, which was unfortunate.
We played Chaminade next – we were only up 2 at half – very disappointing first half, but coach Larson gave the girls a good talking too and we ended up scoring 69 points in the second half. That was a great turnaround and that was the team that I have coached all year. Megan Tidwell went 9-9 from the feld and grabbed 17 rebounds for the game. Both are new DSC records..
Thursday we caught a plane to Hilo – We took Friday and went over to Kona which is on the other side. I gave the girls two options: cut across the state for the shorter route, or take the scenic route along the ocean. We took the route across the state. Lets just say I felt like I was playing Mario Kart and wasn’t a fun drive.. My hands hurt so badly from gripping the steering wheel – they never will do that again. Most of them were car sick. We rented a boat to go whale watching and snorkeling.. They said so many whales are out this time of the year. Just our luck we didn’t see ONE.. lol However did see some sea turtles and the snorkeling was unreal – saw about 100 foot down all clear. (this is a great sell for my recruits who are reading this right.. lol)
Friday during our practice Megan informed me she would beat me in leg wrestling. I feel I have strong legs, so of course I welcomed the challenge. After all if I beat her she was buying me lunch. Anyways it lasted approximately 1.5 seconds.. She flipped me so hard I almost went to the chiropractor.. ha So really she is strong.. LOL
Saturday’s game against Hilo didn’t go well – 2 more kids got injured in second half and that really hurt us. We were up 9 thought and couldn’t close the deal- So many fouls were called our game was 2 hours and 15 minutes – we almost missed out flight. We left the gym at 7:50 and our flight to Honolulu left at 8:20. We got everyone threw and made it barely.
We then caught a flight to San Francisco and another flight to Las Vegas. We ended with a record of 2-2 – and we are now 12-9 on the year. I can’t tell you how proud of my team I am .. With all the bumps in the road with injuries they continue to play their tales off. We have 6 games left and I want to send my seniors out on top because they have helped me more than I can ever tell them.
By the way – our new mascot is the RED STORM!
