Name: Darlene
Year: MIT Class of 2006
Major: Brain and Cognitive Sciences
Height: 5'9"
Favorite position: Handler
Personal strength: hammers, low release breaks
Personal goal: fix my backhand
Interests: ultimate, making girls run, cooking, red sox
(Darlene is very good at making girls run.)
Name: Jin
Year: UVA 2002, grad: MGH Institute of Health Professions 2008
Major: Cognitive Science, grad: Doctor of Physical Therapy
Height: 5'4"
Favorite position: oh man... mid, defensive wing, zone handler, coach :)
Personal strength: scoobers, getting injured
Personal goal: coach sMITe to Nationals! (and eventually play again)
Interests: besides ultimate? biking, climbing, cooking/baking
Our beloved coaches :) Without them, sMITe would fall apart. Practices are always organized, except on the occasional chance that Darlene can't seem to split the team into whites and darks for scrimmages. =P (j/k Darlene) But seriously, they're great at helping our team improve personal skills like throwing form and being more aggressive in catching and making sharp cuts, but also teaching team stuff like spread and zone D, to name a few. I've never played spread before until two weeks ago and I've been told that it's really hard to teach because it's such a variable, fluid offense, but our coaches have been doing a great job breaking spread down into different plays and teaching it to sMITe.
It's always endearing to watch Jin hobble around in a demonstration. She tore her ACL this past summer and when she started coaching sMITe in the fall she was hobbling around on Briggs Field on crutches. But she's come a long way... On Monday she was running around the track and doing some active warm-ups. It's really amazing to see how quickly she's healing. And I particularly like Jin's personal goal of coaching sMITe to nationals :)
One of the things I appreciate the most about our coaches is their focus on fitness as a part of life, and not just being in shape for playing ultimate (although that is a very important part too). Both of them work out regularly and they're both really good about teaching sMITe how to lift properly, how to do track workouts and how to stretch different things to prevent injury and also when we get injured.
Yesterday Smeri did an awesome job of making the rain stop right before practice but then there was too much slush on the turf to practice outside, so we ended up doing the first track workout indoors together. At the end of practice, NG brought heart-shaped cupcakes:
Darlene: how did you get your boyfriend to bake cupcakes?? i can't even get mine to put his bowl in the sink :o(
me: haha i have a very well-trained boy
Darlene: apparently
me: actually he didn't bake them, he just helped frost them and is going to bring them
Darlene: well, that's still good training
Smeri suggested that NG should be our soccer mom and that he can bring us orange slices and cupcakes after every practice. And he can drive around a 14-passenger van to tournaments. :)
On another note, I withdrew my GRT application because I decided I want to live with Smeri and Doris next year. And because Smeri gave me a lot of crap for wanting to be a GRT after we've been talking about living together for the past three months already. =P In my defense, I submitted my GRT application around the same time Smeri and I started talking about living together. Anyway, like I told them, we better find a kick-ass apartment.
