A Weekend in Iowa - Day 1

I love the drive down to Iowa.  Weird, I know, but that's me sometimes.  270 miles from my door in Woodbury to the Sheraton (except when I detour through Rochester on my way down to see family) and as many parents I'm sure will understand, heavenly peace and quite when you've spent four out of the past six months dealing with a colicky baby girl.  As long as Andy (our U12 girls coach and my roommate for the weekend) doesn't snore, I'm in for a two good nights of sleep!

The grass turned green somewhere about 15 miles north of Des Moines.  Nice.  Tournament officials had been in constant email contact with coaches warning of possible field changes for some of the games this weekend due to the poor weather conditions of late, and I was happy to see that there was no snow or standing water around. 

I flew by the University exit that I would normally take off I35 to get to the Sheraton in order to take a quick jaunt over to the Hidden Valley field complex to check things out.  The complex looked fantastic, as did Field #1 where we would open up tomorrow morning.  I stepped off 108x68.  A little short, but decent size.  But moreover, coming off the field in Virginia a few weeks back, this one was flat and had grass on it.  Lots of grass.  Thick grass.  This would be our biggest challenge in terms of getting accustomed to the conditions down here as we are coming off of 5 months of fast turf play.  The girls will get tired more easily and their feet/legs will feel heavy, and I'll need to make sure to stress the importance of over hitting ground passes early on.

I made my way back to the hotel (10 miles away), and then over to the Marriott (3 miles away) to check in our teams.  This is another reason why I like this event.  Everything is in easy driving distance from everything else once you're down here.  I've been to some larger regional/national events where you need to drive close to an hour to get from tournament hotels to fields.  Not here.  Moreover, at this event all the teams play at one complex which helps generate the excitement in the girls with all the hubbub surrounding the games.

We had set a 7:30PM Friday night meeting time for the players who were in town to go out for a light jog and stretch.  We had 30 girls among the three teams in town in time to participate, so we took them out to a large grassy area just across the hotel parking lot for some light movement activity and fun group games.  The munchkins (U11s) were a little nervous to be around the older U13s.  We divided the girls into five groups of six players for the evening activities, with each "team" comprised of some U11s, some U12s, and some U13s.  By the end of the 30 minute of relay races and other team challenges, each team was full of smiling faces.  Nice way to start the event.

We finished the short session by talking to the group about the importance of hydration this weekend, about focusing on things that were in their control (see Controlling the SEA), and about being courteous to other hotel guests this weekend.  We set curfews and pool restrictions, let the teams know what time to be at the fields tomorrow morning and what uniform combination to wear for the first game, then send the kids off to hang out together prior to the 9PM in the room curfew.