The Inside Pitch with LC: WCWS Edition (Day One)
6/1/2016 12:00:00 AM | Softball
June 1, 2016
Senior catcher Lauren Connell will be blogging throughout the softball season to let Michigan fans in on what happens outside of the field of play. This week she takes "The Inside Pitch with LC" on the road to Oklahoma City for a daily blog at the 2016 Women's College World Series.
WCWS Day One (Wednesday, June 1)
All year, our team has worked to get to Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, and yesterday our journey finally became a reality as we embarked for the Women's College World Series. Our frenzied day began at the locker room in Ann Arbor, as we went through endless mental checklists of everything we needed for our trip to OKC and once again tried to fit as many articles of clothing as we could in our giant black adidas travel bags. Hutch brought her selfie stick that we got her as an end-of-season present, which has been quite entertaining already. Stay tuned for more pictures this week from Hutch's selfie stick, which has instantly become her favorite new toy. We then departed for a local airport and climbed aboard our own private 737 plane, which was so big that we each were able to get our own row, leaving us all feeling a little bit like celebrities.
As we landed at the airport in Oklahoma City, there were a ton of people waiting outside the gates, which we were all a little surprised by. We later learned that the NBA's Oklahoma City Thunder team was landing around the same time as us at the same airport, although we just missed getting to see them. After landing and loading all of our bags onto our bus, we headed to our hotel downtown, checked in, and settled our belongings into our rooms for the week. We are hoping we will be here for as long of a stay as possible!
Team 39 then got dressed and ready because we had an event we had to get to: The WCWS Banquet! All of the eight teams arrived in their respective school colors and scoped out the competition for the next week -- and some of us got to reunite with old travel teammates while we were at it, too. In Sierra Romero's case, she got to go say hi to her sister Sydney, who plays for Oklahoma. The night was especially extraordinary for Sierra, who was named the 2016 USA Softball Collegiate Player of the Year. We were all so excited and proud to call her our teammate when we heard her name called. Congratulations, Sierra!!
After the banquet, we headed back to the hotel and relaxed for the night -- the calm before the storm. With a busy day with the media and a team practice scheduled for the next day on top of a long day of travel, we all headed to bed pretty early.
We have work to do here in Oklahoma City.
Go Blue!
LC
