My name is Dan Stein and I am a junior attackman at Hofstra University.   It is 10 pm here on Long Island, just 4 days before our season opener on Saturday against UMass.  There is a lot of excitement around the locker-room and at practice as we prepare for the upcoming game. Everyone is getting focused and getting ready for a battle on Saturday.

I live with a couple of guys from the team in a small house about 300 feet from the lacrosse facility, James M. Shuart Stadium. If you drove down our block, you could tell from the greenish/yellowish paint job, which house is ours.  Although, it might look run down and abandoned from the outside, the interior is not too bad.  The rooms are decent-sized and we put a lot of effort into keeping it livable.  Our basement barely has enough space to fit our washer and dryer.

Recently, senior defender Tom Shuey left his full sized drum-set in our undersized basement, which now makes doing laundry a lot more difficult than it already was.  In our time away from lacrosse, you can find me and my housemates sitting around the television watching a movie or having a barbeque in the backyard.  We created a makeshift fireplace in the back there, and on a nice night we'll all bring couches and chairs out and congregate around a fire.

Today was a long day for me.  It started at about 9 am with a quick shower and then heading off to three consecutive classes.  My first class of the day, was ballroom dancing.  I am not joking. I am actually taking a ballroom dancing class.  Surprisingly it isn't that bad, and I find myself doing well. 

After that I went to my film class, which is my major, and then a history class, which is my minor.  From there I went right to practice. Today's practice was intense, as we are preparing for Saturday.  The only thing on all of our minds is UMass, and we are working hard to get ready for the game. We still have two more days of practice to get better and fine tune some things before the weekend.

This is it for me tonight, I have an early team film and lift, and should get some sleep.  Talk to you next week.