Coach of the Year, and Women's Coach of the Year).

As a senior and captain, I am incredibly proud of our women's team. We started off the meet
with a bang and ended just as strong. We broke numerous school records, one American Record, and achieved our goal of qualifying people and preparing for the NCAA championships next week at Texas A&M.  As I've mentioned before in previous posts, our focus for the season has always been to be our best at NCAAs in March while taking the necessary steps along the way, no matter the consequences.  Losing meets throughout the season was tough at the time, but each one definitely taught us something about the character of our team. We've had our work cut out for us during this time between the meets, but are doing a good job preparing for next week.    

The championship part of the season is here, yet the season seems hardly
half over.  This is by far the most exciting time of the year, while at
the same time it is the most overall taxing...emotionally, mentally, and
physically. All of the hours we've spent pouring our hearts and passion
into reaching the next level now has the opportunity to shine through
our performances at Conference and NCAAs.  
 
We wrapped up the duel meet part of the season in style with wins at FSU
in a tri-meet that also included Texas A&M. It was an exciting meet,
with many lifetime and season best performances on both our men and
womens teams. It was a bitter-sweet moment for my senior class, as it
was the last time we would be competing for Auburn at that level, but
most importantly we are very pleased with the way we capped off the
meet. Now it is time to focus even more on our goals for the rest of the
season. Our goals this season have pertained primarily to the coming
championship weeks and the preparation we have done so far has been
solid. It is important to get sharp in the water and really maintain and
sharpen our focus on what we want to accomplish.

This weekend, we host an event in correlation with Swim Across America
to honor our amazing coach. As you may have read in my previous posts,
Richard Quick was diagnosed with cancer days before Christmas. Here is
the link for with more information if anyone is interested in finding
out more or donating
(http://www.swimacrossamerica.org/Page.aspx?pid=604).

Next week, Auburn is hosting our Conference meet for the first time in
my 4 years here and we are really excited about the opportunity.  Most
people in the SEC will agree that the energy at our conference meet tops
that of NCAAs.  It is the last time that the men and women get to
compete together at the same meet and the energy created by this
commitment for each team to succeed is overwhelming (plus SEC fans are
crazy). 

As far as an outlook for the coming weeks, we are ready to go.  We've
lost a couple meets this year--some pretty close ones and some that
should have been a lot closer.  But I truly feel that each loss has
taught us something about the makeup of our team and our willingness to
keep fighting, no matter the circumstance.  Resiliency will help us
overcome any obstacle that is thrown in our way.   As a popular saying
goes, we may lose a couple battles, but we will win the war.  

In closing, I want to share with you a poem that my coach gave me when I
was younger but one that I've kept alive in everything I do.  Never let
go of what you believe and dream, and never ever give up.
War Eagle!!
Emile
Mark 9:23

 

Hope everyone had a blessed holiday!  I mentioned in my post before Christmas that we were headed to Ft. Lauderdale for Christmas training. We actually ended up staying in Auburn and had an amazing week of training.  Our team got served a pretty big piece of news two days before Christmas however.  Our head coach, Richard Quick, was diagnosed with brain cancer.  They did a biopsy and discovered that the tumor was inoperable.  He is currently looking for the best possible way to fight it. I'll keep you posted as we know more, but ask you to keep him and his family in your prayers. A local church in town has set up a prayer pager that you can call after saying a prayer for him. Richard and his wife June have the pager and it goes off everytime the number is dialed.  The number is 334-742-5224.

We began our spring semester last Wednesday.  Our break seemed pretty short but most of us are ready to be back in the routine of things. Our first home meet was also last week against the University of Texas.  They traveled to Auburn for a meet Thursday afternoon and while both teams had some solid performances, Texas won both the women's and men's meets.  There are a lot of things to be learned from the meet, and we are ready to work hard towards getting better each day and are focusing better on the process of reaching our goals. Even though it was a hard loss for us, I believe that we will be better because of the whole experience.  It will only bring us closer as a team and ignite a stronger passion in us to stay the course.  If we use this opportunity to grow and learn more about our commitment to the team and our goals, we will be where we want to be in March. 

I'll check in next week with some more insight on how the second part of the semester goes with balancing school and the championship part of our season.  Until then, War Eagle!   :) 

Hey everyone.