NCAA Rowing Championships Blog: Day 1
5/26/2008 12:00:00 AM | Rowing
Michigan's first varsity eight earned an at-large bid to the 2008 NCAA Championships, which are being held May 30-June 1 in Sacramento, Calif. The Wolverines left for the West Coast on Saturday (May 24) to get in some advance training in the Northern California conditions that they will experience later this week.
Reporting on the team's travel exploits from Sacramento is junior Julia Nelson, who is an English and French major. Her first entry covers the opening day and half of travel from Ann Arbor to California on May 24-25.
SUNDAY | MAY 25, 2008
We saw a superstar! I know, you don't believe us! It's not like we're in downtown LA. We're not even in the bottom half of the state, but before we even left the airport we saw Beverley Mitchell, the starstudded actress herself! (You know, Lucy from 7th Heaven, the feel-good sitcom we all grew up with.) She got her bags off the same baggage claim that we did! This was within the first five minutes of departing from the plane into California, and it was a great way to emerge from the coma a four-hour flight can put you into.
Hold on, to say our travels were completely uneventful would be selling them short. There were some enjoyable moments, some even exhilarating! For instance, while waiting for our connecting flight in Chicago three of us had to run to the plane having missed last call -- (cough) Ashley Kroll, me and (director of rowing operations) Charis Mitchell. This was one of the more exhilarating moments, seconded, if not beaten, by the opportunity to watch our very own softball team win its game against Virginia Tech. The flights were scheduled so courteously so that we would not miss the blessed event, and it was great to watch the game wearing our travel gear in another city, and then to have the girls win was just icing on the cake.
I've had a lot of reminders this past day about how cool it is to be a Michigan athlete, particularly as part of this team. For instance, after our whiplash awakening from being star struck, we went to Ashley Jones' home for dinner. She is originally from the big, bad city of Oakland, and luckily her mom lives 15 minutes from the Oakland airport so we could fill our hungry bellies with a homemade feast. It was apparent as we walked in the door that her mom knew rowers because there was tons of delicious food, which we enjoyed on their back patio with mountains in the background. This is my first time to California -- they have mountains, they have palm trees and, although it was chilly last night and I bundled up with a blanket on the porch, it's heating up today and I'm loving being spoiled by the beautiful weather!
Weather is not the only thing we're being spoiled by! Ashley is the aunt of two adorable little girls who made us goody bags to take on the road with us. They decorated paper bags and had a whole spread of fruit, red vines, trail mix and cookies for us to take along with us to munch on. I loved meeting her family, and I'm super excited to meet the rest of people's parents coming in this week.
We have so much to look forward to this week, I cannot wait! In fact I didn't wait to start exploring -- I had authentic Mexican food for lunch today and plan on excursioning through the cute, historical town of Rancho Cordova this evening. I'm really just trying to soak it all in -- all, includes sun! It was less than 50 degrees for three of our final practices in Ann Arbor last week. Needless to say, I'm feeling very appreciative to row in sunshine and get a good sweat on. We have one more practice this afternoon and tomorrow morning, and then we get tomorrow evening to explore a bit. I'm going to get back to watching the softball game now. Whether in Michigan playing ball or Cali pulling on oars, GO BLUE!
