6AM

About two weeks after making the team, I was officially accepted to Florida State University. The summer came and went, and it was time to start my first year of college and be a Golden Girl. This required waking up at 5am for 6am practices. Luckily another Golden Girl and my best friend Kaitlin lived in the dorm next to me, so we both made sure we were awake and ready for the day. Every Monday we had a 6am practice at a YMCA 20 minutes off campus to accommodate where my Coach Wendy lived in SouthWood. We would all show up in basically our pajamas, no makeup, rushing to be on time. If you were late to a 6am practice, you had to run stadiums. The system was just being late in general is one stadium, every minute after that was another stadium. One stadium run required you run all the way up the stadium stairs (about 80-90 depending on where in the stadium you ran) and walk down. Let’s just say, not many people were late. 6am practices were usually low key with some stretching and technique across the floor work. When a volleyball game came around, or football game, depending on how well we did determined how much practice we needed. Sometimes we would end up having 2 or 3 6am practices because of our poor performance, and tensions started to rise with the rookies and the veterans. Being a rookie was a hard job to do when you had 10 vets breathing down your back about being perfect so 6am practices were avoided. I’m not quite sure how I made it through these 6am practices, nor do I know how I will accomplish it again.