Victory was ours on Monday night. #4 Thomas More fell for the first time this season to the one and only Stormy Petrels. It was a hard fought game by both teams, but in the end we were able to prevail. This is a really good win for us. With this confidence, hopefully we will be able to come out of this weekend with a couple more wins. This is the first time that we are on the road for conference play and the SCAC is a tough conference to play in. There is no easy game, especially on the road. Tomorrow, yes New Years Day, we leave bright and early at 9am to head off on a 7 hour bus trip with our guys team to Memphis, TN. Friday night we will play Rhodes and then on Saturday we will head over to Birmingham to prepare for another game against Birmingham Southern on Sunday. This is the set up of most of our conference games. Its rough but you get used to it. It is just nice that this first trip is over Christmas break so we can get used to the travel without having to worry about classes as well. 2008 was a good year, now lets bring in 2009 with a bang!!

This is Hannah Brooks, our defensive specialist and a major team leader, hitting a free throw.

Christmas is one of the best times of the year!! I mean, seriously, spending time with family, no school, presents, it's just amazing!! Santa was good to me this year which always makes it even better. :-) But after a couple days to relax, it is back to the grind. It is the day after Christmas and our Petrels are already back to work. We had practice this afternoon to get out some of the Christmas cookies that we stuffed our faces with and we are preparing for another big week of games. We play #4 Thomas More on Monday then travel to Rhodes and Birmingham Southern next weekend. Thomas More is looking for some revenge after we beat them last year giving them their first lose of the season and knocking them out of the NCAA tourney. It is the last game of 2008 and should be a fun game to watch!!

Due to some technical difficulties and time restraints, I apologize for it being so long since I have written. Things have been crazy here in Atlanta over the last couple of weeks and I am now here to update all on the Petrel lifestyle. Below is a pic of us after we won the tourney in Wheaton.

Upon returning to practice after Turkey Day, we ran and ran and ran and ran and then after that ran just a little bit more. Coach had to make sure that we got all of the turkey out of our systems that first day back. There was no time to waste because cross-town rival Emory was coming up that Tuesday and we had to be ready. While we looked good in practice upon our return to the court, the cosmos were not inline for us come that Tuesday night. To say the least, we did not play well and Emory put together a well-played game to beat us 85-84. It sucks to lose, and it sucks even more to lose to your rival. Luckily for us though we did not have a lot of time to wallow in our sorrows, for another big game was only 3 days away.

This year, we had the pleasure of opening up our conference season with conference rival Depauw. Depauw was won the SCAC since I have been playing college ball and we had only beaten them once and that was my sophomore year. Needless to say we were up for this game. While not playing our best in the first half, we managed to only be down by 3 at halftime. In the second half we came together and pulled out an 84-81 win. Needless to say it was an exciting game. While all we wanted to do was relax and go get some drinks to celebrate, unfortunately there was no time for this. The way our conference works is that on weekends of conference play, you play two games (one on Friday and one on Sunday). This leaves little time for turn around, so after the cheers of winning the big game on Friday we were back in the gym Saturday morning preparing for the second conference game of the season the following day. Playing two games in a weekend can wear on a person after a while, but I guess it is good practice for the big times when you are playing back to back days. We played Centre on Saturday and after a slow start, ended up winning 83-67. This is Tina Grace below. She is the second tallest starter (behind me) at a height of 5'8 going against a much taller Depauw player. Our team lives by the motto "the bigger they are the harder they fall!!"

After a long week full of emotions and lots of sweat, all anyone wants to do is have a slow week with light practices and easy classes, but that was not the case for Oglethorpe students this week. This week, we had finals. In a four day span, I had two papers due, a project, and three tests to take; not exactly the week you want to have right after an exhausting weekend. But now, it is over. Thank Goodness!! And now, for the next month, it is nothing but basketball!! How does life get any better then that??