University of Toronto Athletics

September 24-26

On Friday, September 24th, we all piled onto the bus yet again and headed to Ottawa for our next two league games against Waterloo and Carleton. We made a pit stop at the Ontario Police Station where we were all surprised when we picked up John because we thought he was going to be away in India for the Commonwealth games.

Even though it was a long ride before stopping for dinner in Kingston, the time went by quickly thanks to some great movie choices by “KJ” (Pitts McGritts) including She’s the Man and House Bunny.

When we got to our hotel in Ottawa it was pretty late but we still had a team meeting before going to sleep. In the morning we had to get up early because our game against Waterloo was at 10:30 a.m. The game ended up being a big test for us. We had never been in a game where we had been losing before. When we were down 2-1 we knew we had to push hard and keep working if we were going to win. We did that and ended up winning the game 3-2. We were all really proud of ourselves for this win because we really earned it and it showed us that we can still come through in tough situations.

The rest of the day we got off so we spent the afternoon checking out downtown Ottawa. Collectively we decided that we would make an exception to our “no treat rule” on traveling weekends so we could all indulge in some beavertails. KJ, Ally, Natty P and myself hit the marketplace and did some shopping. Not surprisingly, Natty P bought a few things. We all went back to the hotel at 7 p.m. for our goal setting meeting. The meeting went for over two and a half hours and we talked about team and individual goals. We talked about what it means to us to be a Varsity Blue and why we are on this team and it got pretty emotional. We came up with words that define what it means to be on this team for all of us, which helped bring us together more as a team.

The next morning we got up and prepared to play Carleton. We knew Carleton would be a much easier game than Waterloo but it is important for us to go into all of our games with the same attitude and to make sure we play “Varsity Blues hockey” no matter who our competition is. We beat Carleton 10-0 in the freezing cold and wind. It was a good game for us as we generated lots of corner opportunities to practice our offensive corner plays and also our forwards did well getting the ball in the net in the circle.

October 1-2

The whole next week at practice was spent preparing for our game against Guelph on Saturday. At the time Guelph and us were tied for first in the OUA and we were both undefeated. There is a big rivalry between us and Guelph because every year they have been our biggest competition. We headed out to Guelph on Friday well prepared for the game. It was an early morning game and when we all got up to go grab Tim Hortons for breakfast, it was pouring rain. We had a good warm-up and were mentally prepared for our competition which showed in the first half. At half time we were up 1-0 after Natty P scored on a penalty stroke and our defence was doing a great job at shutting out their two best forwards (who are the two top goal scorers in the OUA).

In the second half though, things began to fall apart and we panicked, letting Guelph into our circle and we gave up a lot of penalty corners. The final score ended up being 4-2 for Guelph which was a really upsetting result for us. Even though this puts us in second place now, I think it was a valuable learning point for us. Up until this game we hadn’t faced any really serious competition so this was almost like a wake up call for us. If our goal is to win the CIS championships, we are going to have to refocus and train harder because in the CIS tournament every game will be a challenge like this.

With only a one hour recovery in between our games we had a very rushed lunch and team meeting at the Athletic Centre at Guelph. We arrived at the field with only enough time for a short warm up before the game against McGill started. We should have dominated this game but a number of things factored into us only pulling through with a 2-1 win. Our heads weren’t really into the game and we weren’t mentally prepared. I think all of us were very physically and emotionally drained still from the hard game against Guelph just before. A win is a win though but we know now the importance of preparation for the game.

After this weekend of games we knew we had to focus and train much harder this week. Despite the awful weather, we were at the turf practicing everyday again. We had our second round of fitness testing in the morning on Wednesday which was really good because everyone’s scores improved so much-especially in the beep test! We have practice on Thursday morning again and then we leave in the afternoon for two more games in Kingston this weekend. We play McGill at 11:45 am and Carleton at 3:00 pm on Saturday. It will be important for us to play hard so we send a message to the rest of the OUA this weekend!

And that’s the DL from your Varsity Blues field hockey team.

Go Blues Go!

DOT