At the beginning of any season, a team sits down and draws up its goals for the year.  Since the beginning of this season we have talked about the potential we have, and how successful we can be.  This past week, we took our game to a new level, proving to ourselves and our fans that we have a reason to be optimistic about the postseason.

On Saturday we traveled to New Hampshire to take on Merrimack, and came out with our sixteenth win of the season.  But even more exciting was last night's win over Bentley.  Stonehill/ Bentley games never fail to be thrilling, but they usually don't go into four overtimes!  After the fourth overtime we came out ahead, with an 87-82 victory over the Falcons.  The win improved our overall record to 17-3, and secured our first place seeding in the Northeast 10.

With seven regular season games to play, it's important for us to take it one game at a time and finish strong.

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On another topic, Super Bowl XLIII is this Sunday in Tampa Bay.  Many people will tune into the biggest game in football to see whether the Steelers or the Cardinals are the best team.  As Stonehill is located in New England, many students are pretending the Super Bowl isn't happening this year because the Patriots aren't playing. 

For me... it's all about the commercials anyway.  Will Britney Spears return to the Pepsi ads?  Or this year will she be riding a Clydesdale?  Which beer company will come up with the most outrageous skit?  And what are these one-second ads we've been hearing so much about?  Since Super Bowl ads can cost up to $3 million for a 30-second slot, that means one second runs about $100,000, right?  Money well spent, provided they include some monkeys in it.

That's my advice for all advertisers.  Regardless of whether the product is beer or licorice or shampoo − go ahead and stick some monkeys in there and viewers will be dying for more.  Something about our simian ancestors that just makes me want to go out and shop.

Talk to you soon!

Meg

This past weekend we traveled to St. Rose for another NE10 battle.  Unfortunately the game came down to the final seconds, and we came up a bit short.  We were faced with our third loss of the season, which left us in a three-way tie for first place.  Losing back-to-back games on the road, we headed to Pace on Tuesday night in need of a win.  Pace was part of the three-way tie for first place, making the game even more important.  We defeated the Setters and improved to 15-3 overall.  As the season goes on, each game continues to get more and more important.

On Tuesday history was made, with the inauguration of our first African-American President, Barrack Obama.  There was an unspoken understanding of the importance of the events all throughout Stonehill.  The inauguration was shown on televisions across campus and many professors took the time away from class to make sure students were able to witness history.  As a student athlete, we were on the bus traveling to Pace as President Obama took his oath and gave his address.  Luckily he didn't get it right the first time, so we were able to hear his oath a second time.  All of the events of the day were inspiring for all of us in many different ways.

The new President has gained a great deal of attention throughout the world, and I would like to take a moment to focus on a few of his qualities. 

1. His love of the game.

Obviously he has shown a great interest in basketball, which in my eyes means he can do no wrong.  He is constantly looking for pick-up games, and has talked of replacing the White House bowling alley with his own personal basketball court.

2. He is the "Life of the Party".

Any guy who can attend 10 different inaugural balls is a hero in the eyes of any college student.  He didn't only attend them all, but he danced at them all.  Not to mention that the youth ball proved to be the most exciting.  It's just too bad our team had a game that night and couldn't make it.  Maybe next time!

3. He's a family guy.

It is no secret that his daughters will be in the spotlight for much of their adolescence, which truly is some of the worst years for young girls.  The one thing they have going for them is that their father dressed them in J-Crew on the first night!

This weekend we go on the road again and travel to Merrimack.  I'll keep everyone posted on how we do!  Wish us luck!

Talk to you soon,

Meg

Happy New Year, everyone!

I know it's been awhile since my last entry, but now that we're back in the swing of things with classes I'm ready to get started again.  We finished 2008 with an overall record of 10-1, ending the year with a victory at home against Dominican.  This put us in the middle of winter break, with many games ahead of us.  We traveled to Bentley to improve to 11-1, and then had two back-to-back wins at home against Molloy and St. Anselm.  It was then time to get back on the road, where we traveled to Syracuse, NY, to face Lemoyne College, where we suffered our second loss of the season.

Coming back from Lemoyne it was time for second semester classes to begin.  With winter break being shorter this year, it seemed as though we had just finished finals when we were all starting new classes.  We started this week with a couple of tough practices to prepare ourselves for Wednesday night's game against St. Michael's.  We defeated St. Michael's 67-56 to improve to 14-2, securing the first place spot in our league by one game.

I have to take you back a few weeks when we went on the road to play at Adelphi right before Christmas.  We left campus on December 21, in the middle of Massachusetts' worst snowstorm of the year.  Any story that starts out like this is bound to be memorable, but it wasn't the weather that got in our way.  After a long bus ride, which took much longer than it should have taken, we arrived in Long Island to have dinner at one of Coach Brown's friend's houses. 

Now I have to take a minute to set the scene for everyone.  Coach's friend lives in an enormous apartment building, and unfortunately she lives on the sixth floor.  As the 18 of us stood at the doors of the elevator waiting for them to open, someone had the idea for all of us to get into the same elevator.  When I say all of us, I am referring to all 14 players, our three coaches and our trainer.  We piled into the elevator and the elevator started to go up.  We jumped off the first floor, zipped over the second floor, snuck by the third floor, climbed past the fourth floor, crawled up to the fifth floor, and then ....

We stopped! Unfortunately the elevator filled with 18 people was not able to make it up to the sixth floor, but was instead stuck halfway between the fifth and sixth floors.  At this point the laughter in the elevator suddenly ceased, as one by one we realized we had not made it quite to the destination. 

As coach's friend and her family stood waiting at the elevator on the sixth floor, they realized that the Stonehill Skyhawks weren't going to quite make it to their living room.  About five minutes later, after what seemed like a half hour, we were helped out of the elevator one by one.  We then continued on to have a wonderful dinner, and lots of Christmas fun!