Pioneer LogLewis & Clark College’s Student-Run Newspaper

Sisterhood of the soccer playing seniors

September 17, 2010

by Scott Pisapia, Cat Kitts, KT Browning, Annie Hancock, Aly Robinson, Stella Gilliland

Four years, three coaches, and two houses later, the only five seniors on the women’s soccer team are still together and thriving. Accompanied by two adorable kitties (Coon and Thunderstar) as well as a young and wily Natalie Stratton (’12), we have entered a new year together and as a family we are readapting to the lifestyle of a student athlete at Lewis & Clark.

Things so far this year have been very different. Soccer started about a month ago with the infamous “hell week” that actually consists of ten days of getting our asses kicked twice a day. Some of us learned that pulling an all-nighter and raging at a Lady Gaga concert the night before running up the side of a mountain ten times at the crack of dawn is not the wisest choice. Others (first-years) discovered pain for the first time. One girl even said that “hell week” was the most physically demanding thing she had ever experienced. The upper classmen just snickered considering this year’s “hell week” could be considered cute next to last year’s agony. Not only did we begin the year with three new coaches, whom we met two days before our first practice, but we also got about a million first-years who are slowly getting used to the demands of being an athlete in college.

The new coaches (head Coach Jim Tursi and assistants Chase Jordan and Lauren Miller) have been a great addition to our team and to the program. Though vastly different in every possible way from our old coaches, they have helped us adjust to the changes and have already improved our team as a whole and the players as individuals.

Thus far, we think Jim is great. We can all tell that he is a classy coach and has worked with the experts because of how hilarious he thinks our attempts to play soccer are at practice. Occasionally, he will ask us to apologize for the mistakes we are going to make in a drill prior to even starting the drill. He particularly likes to harass Stella for her quality of play in practice and will kindly ask us to just take her home. Tursi is often just sitting off to the side at practice with a huge grin on his face or is outright laughing at us for our lack of success. Chase, our assistant coach, has the opposite reaction to our skills. He calmly likes to remind us to take “deep breaths and make eye contact” before starting a drill either because he thinks we are five or because he thinks we play like we are. Chase is having a hard time allowing himself to laugh hysterically at our antics. We are not sure that Chase thinks we are as funny as we think we are, and we find ourselves quite entertaining so it’s an awkward conflict. On the other hand, we won Lauren’s heart over by putting “Diva” on our warm-up CD and by having our little pre-game dance sessions in Room 10 before home games.

So far this year we have had our fair share of funny instances. Star striker and captain KT Browning was pummeled during an away game, which resulted in her severely spraining her ankle and having to sit out of practice for the following week, but before KT could sub off the field after this serious injury she had to succumb to her rage blackouts and get some revenge. So she continued playing and during the next play of the game managed to get herself in a tiff with the biggest player on their team, which resulted in KT “accidentally” slapping the girl and then gracefully bowing out to attend her ankle. Recently, both Stella and Cat have had very close encounters with losing one of their big toes to two very different but equally tragic mishaps. Our household is so happy to be back into the swing of things, which consists of not getting enough sleep, watching trashy TV shows instead of studying, and making frozen pizzas for dinner every night.

As usual, our fearless leader Arob (Aly Robinson) tries to force quinoa and crafts on us at all hours. Her last craft consisted of hand-making an apron and perfecting her kitchen specialty of quinoa with red wine SAUSE. Due to the coach-imposed “dry season” our whole household has been suffering from lack of alcohol intake after a long day, which has resulted in us relying on more frozen pizza and trashy TV to ease our pains. We are, however, slowly learning the merits of a dry season: first and foremost is the rager we are going to throw after the season is over that will serve as the kick-off to us beginning our work towards regaining our drinking shape.

This is our last year together as student-athletes at LC and we are really looking forward to the season getting underway and us kicking some ass. We are excited about the potential of our team and about the expertise of our new coaches. And last but not least, come to our party when season is over.