I Survived!

The first crazy weekend for me at Pacific is over and I survived! I am completely exhausted, but happy it all went relatively smoothly.

I spent nearly 24 hours in the press box of Lincoln Park Stadium over the 3 days. Friday was a men's and women's soccer double header. They took on Whitworth and for the guys this is the team who has won the conference 4 years in a row and are chosen to do the same again this year. So the nerves were high. The women went into overtime and pulled out their first win! They scored just 2:34 into the overtime period and in soccer that ends the period. The men pulled out a 2-1 and while that sounds awesome it was full of stress of my student worker crew. A time discrepancy between our scoreboard and the refs caused our coach to get a yellow card and Whitworth got a free kick that bounced off the top crossbar with 7 seconds left. The coach was still mad by the time I sent workers down with stats and they both go ripped! I felt bad for them, but in the end I decided it was nothing to stress about. We scored 2 goals, they scored 1, therefore we still had the win no matter how close the kick was at the end.

Saturday was the event that everyone in the office has been stressed about...the first Pacific home football game in 19 years! Pacific disbanded football after the 1991 season, but has brought it back this year. Our team is mainly freshmen, so it is a bit of rough going. Coming from Central's strong football tradition I was asked a bunch of questions I was unable to answer. I have worked 2 games while at Central and attended maybe 4! Volleyball season kind of overlaps football now doesn't it? :) However, I was asked to be there as support for the statcrew and my boss. My main responsibility during the game was to keep the Twitter feed going with the play-by-play and then post game get the players and coaches for interviews and tape an interview with the head coach for YouTube. Over 3,000 people attended the first game and the support was great for the young team. I just found it interesting to see so many tents set-up tailgating on campus grounds, because that is rare at Central! The Boxers didn't win, but I think the support they got was a moral victory.

Sunday I was back in the press box for another soccer double header. The women pulled out their second victory of the season against Whitman and the men followed with a 4-0 shutout of Whitman. The day went smoothly, but was just a long day after other full days of games!

While all these games were going on at the stadium, the men's and women's golf teams were also hosting their Pacific Invitational. The women golfed Saturday and Sunday and the men golfed Sunday and Monday. So while I didn't have to be at the meet, I had to be in the office to send results to the other SIDs and write stories when the meets finished. Over the weekend I wrote 8 stories! Coming up with wording to sound different each became harder as I got more tired! But overall I felt like I achieved a lot during the weekend!

Sunday I wish I could have been in Greene celebrating my mom's birthday, but clearly the distance does not allow that. I was able to talk to her before the soccer games and got a card sent to her, but if anyone wants to take her to DQ that'd be great, because I couldn't!!

This week I spent Monday getting out the weekly notebooks, which I am finally getting better at! Tuesday morning I got the honor of writing about the 3rd and 4th men's soccer players to receive student-athlete of the week. Each week I have to nominate soccer players who had good playing weeks. Each week this season Pacific has won the men's offensive player and it has been a different guys each time. This week my defensive nomination was selected too! It's kind of cool being able to nominate someone and then have them selected and for 3 weeks in a row!! The other new press release I got to write was the fact that the men's soccer team jumped from not being rated to 14th in the national poll. They are currently 6-0-1 and have a good chance to finish right at the top of the conference. After the rating I was told if they make it to the national tournament there is a strong possibility I would get to travel with them to cover it all, so let's keep cheering on the Boxers!!

Wednesday I finally got a day off!! It is my first day off since labor day and trust me it's much needed. I got to sleep in and get a bike ride to Hagg Lake in, plus a nice little stop to pick some blackberries along the route. Then I headed to Hillsboro to get my oil changed. Let me tell you it was an experience! I have never gone to Jiffy Lube, in fact I always just schedule my car to be serviced when I am home on break. And in Greene, the mechanics just know what to do and will pick-up your car at home! Here I was asked a bunch of questions, had to pick out my oil and make decisions! AHHH! Then wait patiently while they finished. Oh well, add it to my list of new experiences. After the oil change experience I just bummed around Hillsboro and hit up Panera, because I have the MyPanera club card and had a freebie to use. Also I highly recommend the Pumpkin Spice Latte! It was great to just have the day to myself.