This past week, the team flew back to campus and then was off to Arkansas. We flew into Little Rock Thursday night and had to bowl Friday in the Mid-Winter Classic Tournament. Almost all of the top schools were participating in it, so we knew we had to step up our game. Friday we bowled decent and afterwards we went to dinner with our Coach's parents. We had a great time laughing over stories of previous years and joking around with Delaware State. Saturday we bowled a little better and ended up 5th at the end of the day. That night we met as team and discussed how to boost our moral and confidence. I think we all took to heart what was said and it was shown on Sunday. We bowled exceptionally well as a team and bonded even more. We finished fourth overall and had a record of 12-3. We didn't bowl as well as we wanted, but fourth place wasn't that bad. We stayed an extra day in Arkansas since classes haven't started yet, so we spent the day at the mall. We flew back Monday afternoon and have a whole week to relax and practice.

One of the main things that I think everyone on the team, including the coaches, learned was to have more confidence in one another. Confidence to an athlete means believing and having faith in yourself as well as your teammates. In the sport of bowling, as well as in almost any other sport, an athlete needs to depend on their teammates to accomplish the ultimate goal of winning. Confidence and team bonding can be a hard thing to accomplish, but once it's done, great things will happen. This past weekend, we gained another member to our Lady Hawks Bowling team. Her name is Paula and she came to UMES from the Dominican Republic. Two of members on our team, Martha and Maria, already knew her, but it was a new experience for the rest of us. She is a very outgoing person and will be a great asset to the success of this team. She will help to raise the intensity level and keep everyone's head in the game.

The rest of this week will be spent on practice and getting back into the swing of things. Tuesday night we had our first practice since before winter break. Doug, our assistant coach, was there trying to tweak our games. We bowled scotch doubles and the team had to serve a penalty if a spare was missed. This is a great way to learn discipline within a person and also a great way to get the team to motivate and cheer each other on. That was one of the best practices I think that we have ever had.

Then today we did some community service work at a local school that has grades kindergarten through high school seniors. We sat in with the gym classes and taught them how to bowl. They had five little portable lanes that rolled out with pins and a rubber bowling ball. It was a great way for the team to help out the local community and also give some information out on bowling. We talked to some of the older kids about different colleges and what we thought were the most important things to look for. We are heading back to the school Friday morning to work with some more of the school's gym classes.

Finally, we had another team practice tonight, that was just as good as the one on Tuesday. This time our head coach, Sharon Brummell, and assistant coach, Papa, came to watch and help out. We started off with a couple scotch doubles games and then went into bakers. A baker game is where you have five people on the team bowl one game. The first bowler bowls frames 1 and 6; the second bowler bowls frames 2 and 7, and so on. Those games went really well, and then we just did some spare shooting. The practice was very productive and we bonded even more as a team.

This weekend we head to Bowie, Maryland to bowl the Lady Bulldog Classic. Wish us luck and I'll update you sometime next week!

-Kristina

P.S. Go Hawks!