A Trip to New Orleans

Monument at the Hurricane Katrina Memorial

   Ok, this isn’t tennis related, but I really wanted to talk about it! Last week we had fall breakand two of my teammates and I headed down to New Orleans with Habitat for Humanity to help build a house! That’s right, Caitlyn Lawrence helped build a house (you’re thinking you wouldn’t want to live in that house, but really, we did a good job).

After the ten hour bus ride we arrived in Ward 9 of New Orleans. We first visited a memorial site for Hurricane Katrina. It was unbelievable to see it, the date especially: August 29, 2005. That was six years ago, yet they are still rebuilding the area. In the neighbourhood we were in many of the houses were still destroyed from the hurricane. 

One of the houses destroyed by the hurricane

 We spent two days on a worksite in Ward 9 and we had the lucky job of laying out the foundation for a house. We arrived on the site at 7:45 a.m. and after a quick introduction we got right into building. It was crazy since most of us had no experience with building a house before. I thought we would just be assisting other workers, but no we were doing the majority of the work. They gave us a quick demonstration of what needed to be done and then we were getting down and dirty trying to accomplish the task. 

What the site looked like on the first day

     The work was slow at first while we were trying to figure out what exactly we were doing, but we started to pick up the pace with some practice. A couple of hammers to the hand, scratches, cuts, and sunburns later we had finished all the work that needed to be done so that the concrete could be poured in for the foundation. It took a group of 25 people two days to do it, but by the end we were all really proud of what we accomplished.

It was really a great experience and a very rewarding way to spend my fall break. What was really awesome is that we got to meet the lady who was going to be living in the house once it is finished! I was really sad to leave the site and would have loved to stay to see the entire house be built. I recommend to anyone who ever has the opportunity to take part in an activity such as this to try it. You will be so happy you did. 

The Lady Pacers hard at work! Me, Gina, and Margot!

Change of season means a change of schedule

The USCA Lady Pacers are into their off-season! A change in season means a change inNCAA rules, which means a change in our schedule. We now have fitness scheduled four times a week and you must go to at least two of these sessions. Besides fitness, we have a two hour team practice once a week, and a singles match against another player on the team. We are also required to hit on our own at least two more times per week. 

It doesn’t sound like a lot, but with us more than half way through the semester it’s quite busy with school work. Each player has to manage their time well to be able to meet their training requirements. On the upside, it makes it really easy to see who is motivated to play and improve and who needs to be motivated which is good to monitor with our season starting in January. 

If you're thinking about making a new training schedule, also think about this: "how does your diet affect your performance?" Most of us are working, in school, and a high performance athlete - doing all that requires A LOT of energy. Each of our energy needs are different and our bodies respond differently to the food we put in it. This makes the food you eat a very personal as well as important aspect to your success! 

I’m not going to say what you should and should not eat (everyone and their uncle’s dog has an opinion on that these days), but I am going to say that maybe you should think about what you eat.  A good idea is to try journaling what you eat for a week and see how your performance changes. You may realize on the day you ate three chocolate bars before practice you didn’t play very well, but the day that you had a bowl of pasta for lunch your practice was great. Monitoring it may cause you to change your eating habits which may also cause you to see improved performance on the tennis court! 

I challenge you to try record what you eat for one week and see how it affects your performance. You may think of recording your findings in a table like this, or simply use your journal.

	Sun.	Mon.	Tues.	Wed.	Thurs.	Fri.	Sat.
Breakfast
Snack
Lunch
Snack
Dinner
Notes on Performance

 Try it out and your tennis may take a big jump by realizing what you eat can really change your performance.