Simone Lee Blog #1 - Day one at the OTC

Simone Lee is a member of Milwaukee Sting 16 Gold and is one of 24 players who has been invited to Colorado Springs and the U.S. Olympic Training Center to compete for a spot on the USA Volleyball Youth National Team. The 12 members selected to the team will then compete at the NORCECA Youth Championships in the Dominican Republic at the end of June. Lee will be blogging for the Badger Region during her experiences.

5/31/2012
Today was so much fun! I arrived in Colorado Springs and a shuttle bus took myself and five other girls to the US Olympic Training Center. The weather here is absolutely beautiful! (not too hot and not too cold). Once we got inside the doors we immediately had to get a registered ID. This ID will get us in and out of the building and get us in the cafeteria to eat our three meals.

After we got our IDs, we headed on over to the gold room where we received our three workout shirts and a grey sweatshirt. After all of that myself and a few of the other girls went to our rooms and unpacked our things. We had a lot of time to kill until dinner and our workout so we just caught up on each others lives.

At around 5:00 we all went downstairs for dinner. For dinner we had barbecue chicken, mashed potatoes, steamed veggies, Mac and Cheese, and a biscuit. It was DELICIOUS!! :) after dinner we all went to a meeting with all of the coaches talking about important things like substance abuse and drug tests, how to properly use a social media site (do's and don't's), and the importance of staying healthy during this tryout. The meeting was soon adjourned and we all headed over to the practice facility.

To start out practice, every session we will do a dynamic warm up to get our blood pumping. Our athletic trainer, Brian, will lead us through this. Today, since it was the first day, we didn't do a whole lot. We did some passing with partners, and serve receive, but after that we got into the competition. We played four on four for a little while then we added a middle hitter and the first hit had to be out of middle back. The setters had to set a ball called a bic. It is a little lower than a pipe and it is much closer to the net. After four on four, we ended this session with some short court. Brian didn't want us to just stretch, he said that keeping your heart rate up will help the cooling down process. After the short court we ended the day like we end every session, with a loud USA!! Today was so much fun! I can't wait to play even more volleyball tomorrow and compete for a spot on the Girls Youth National team!

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Here's a link to the USA Volleyball press release on the training team: http://usavolleyball.org/news/2012/05/17/u-s-girls-training-team-selected/48024