Since this is my first blog entry, I figured I should introduce myself and the team I'm on. My name is Kristina Frahm and I am a sophomore at the University of Maryland Eastern Shore. I am on the Division I Women's Bowling Team and we are the 2008 NCAA Champions!! It was a great honor and experience to be a part of that, especially starting as a freshman. Last year, we had three freshmen starters in the Championship and we are back and ready to defend our title. We also had three All-Americans, Maria (Rodriguez) and I are returning, and I was named NTCA National Rookie of the Year. We had a very successful season last year and are hoping to do the same the rest of this season.

               We take bowling just as serious as any other sport does. Many people think of bowling as just a recreational hobby, but it can take you many places. We are up at six in the morning, three days a week for work-outs, and practice individually five days a week with team practices Tuesday and Thursday nights. We have our set of six lanes located on campus that we can practice on whenever we need to, and we also have Millsboro Lanes located in Delaware that support us every way possible. We have our head coach, Sharon Brummell, who was named Division 1 Coach of the Year, our assistant coach Doug Dukes, who puts in a lot of effort to make us better bowlers, and our other assistant coach Vince "Papa" Brummell, who supports us and takes stats for the team.

                As a team, we strive to perform well on the lanes as well as in the classroom. We are a very diverse group, having members from countries like Colombia and Germany to members from all over the United States. We lost two seniors and one graduating junior last year, so this year has been more of a rebuilding year. We are in the Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference (MEAC) and are currently tied for first with Delaware State. We are very big rivals with them on the lanes, but are the best of friends off the lanes. We continue to work hard as a team concentrating on team-building exercises, academic study halls, community service work, and strengthening our games. We worked very hard the first half of the season and plan on working even harder for the remainder of the year. We have nine tournaments remaining, three of which are the MEAC Championships, ECAC Championships, and the all important NCAA National Championships.  We all have been working hard over break with both our physical and mental games. We get back to school January 14^th and fly out to Arkansas on the 15^th for the Mid-Winter Classic.

                Well I think that's a good introduction to our team and I plan to keep you posted as the season continues!