Room23: Four more games

Hi All,

Since I last wrote, we have played four more games.

On Tuesday we headed up to Virginia Tech University. Some of you may remember the massacre 4 years ago there where several students were shot by another student. VT is also a big and popular college in Virginia with a huge football program (as you will see from the photos below). It is a big rival of Longwood and a pretty successful program.

It is about a 3 hour ride up there and we took a big luxury bus that had WiFi and DVD facilities. Awesome and comfy.

Before the game, I was honoured to meet Dr Gary Bennett who is the Sports Psychologist for VT. I had made contact with him whilst research coaching opportunities over here and he maintained contact with me. I was humbled that he took 10mins out of his day to come and meet me as he was in between appointments. I am hoping his acquaintance will last several years.

Anyway onto the games. We split the games with VT 1 win a piece. First game we won 4-2 and the second game we lost 7-6 on a walk off hit in the 7th inning. The second game was a bit strange with us getting 4 runs in the first inning and them getting 5!!!! All of us coaches had a bit of second guess of ourselves after the game as when it was tied 6-6 in the 7th, we felt it might be a good idea to walk their hitter with a runner on 2nd and 1st base open, but on a 1-0 count we decided not to walk her and of course she hit int he winning run!!!! That is how you learn the game, make a mistake and learn from it.

We had the day off yesterday and as I have finished all my shopping and am now trying to take in as much history as I can, I headed over to Charlottesville, VA. Charlottesville is the home of the University of Virginia which was founded by none other than Thomas Jefferson in his retirement years. What I was really there for was to see his home Monticello, which is an architectural masterpiece. But when I got there I was informed that I'd probably decided to visit during the busiest week of the year, the week before Easter. So all the tours were sold out. But I took in the free 20min introductory movie about the man and the place and wondered through the gift shop. I bought a renouned biography and will try to read as much as I can before I return there next week perhaps. I also bought a t-shirt depicting one of Jefferson's well known quotes "I cannot live without books", 1815. But I did spend a lovely hour or two in the main street mall and have added a photo below.

Today we played another double header against Binghamton University at our house. We won the first game easy 8-0 in 5 innings and then lost a tough one, 9-11 in 8 innings in the second. There wasn't much to learn from the second game except to say that sometimes you just have to tip your cap to the opposition and say they played a good game. We did have some opportunities in the last inning to perhaps come back and either tie or win the game however we made a couple of mistakes and never made up the entire 4 run deficit we began the inning with.

So tomorrow is Good Friday but softball doesn't stop. We have practice at 2.30 tomorrow and then it is Seniors Day on Saturday. Seniors Day, from what I can make out, is to celebrate those who are in their last year of college, Seniors being 4th year students. We have a double header against another big rival in Liberty University who are only 46 miles away in Lynchburg. After the games, we have a BBQ for the Seniors and then we get on a bus and travel the 5 or 6 hours up to Penn State University. We stay in a hotel and then play a double header against Penn State on Sunday. We then get on the bus and head back to Farmville. Monday we will have off but we do have the athletic banquet Monday night. The banquet is to celebrate the achieves throughout the year of athletes from all the sports at the university. That means after the long ride Sunday night, I'll get up Monday morning and drive up to Short Pump to pick up my suits so I can look spiffy for the banquet! Then we practice Tuesday and then a double header on Wednesday. We are then off softball for 10 days as it is final exam week.

So thats it for another few games as well as a summary for the next 6 days.

Lets hope those mighty Dockers knock of the Bulldogs on Monday.

Happy Easter to all and I hope you all spend some time remembering the Diggers on ANZAC Day.

D