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!   :)