Beach Worlds Player Blog: Semis!

Day 5
Fitbit steps: 18,618 (7.7 miles)
Team fun fact learned: Jessi works with a handful of former DI athletes and they play in a corporate ultimate league. She gets to huck to former cornerbacks.

Another birthday we got to celebrate today: Happy birthday, Cree!

Celebrating Cree’s birthday.

I’m feeling pretty solid considering we’ve been out in the sun, walking around and running on sand. My legs are feeling slightly fatigued, but interestingly it’s my arms that are the most tired. Is this because they have to work so much harder to get you up to speed on beach? Is it from all of the burpees Nora has its doing for warm up? (It can’t be the burpees cause I’ve been skipping them, sorry Nora!) We’ve done a really good job as a team making sure everyone is remembering to stay hydrated, to make sure everyone is eating well, and Nora has been reminding us non-stop to use the foam roller and lacrosse balls. All of that has been really helpful since I am notoriously bad at all three.

Warming up for semis (with Skyd!).

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These past two days we’ve had the 8am round, which means we are walking to the fields somewhere around 6:45am. This seems to be when the shift change for the construction workers happen. Imagine bus loads filled with men wearing blue jumpers and bright green safety vests, filing single file down the promanade. It makes more sense how they can build so quickly if you know these workers are toiling away 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

Never ending construction.

…really.

Another fun fact about this team is that the majority needs coffee to play in the morning. This has been an adventure as the coffee shops don’t open till 7am, the same time we are supposed to start warming up. These past two days we have sacrificed one or two people to miss a part of warm ups in order to make sure the team is properly caffeined. So far this seems to be working and luckily tomorrow we are playing later in the day.

View of the palm island from the master suite.

Short update on our semis today as we prepare for finals tomorrow: The wind was nothing like what you may have seen on the live stream for the afternoon games. It was upwind/downwind instead of the swirling cross wind that showed up later (if you can even call it that). We got a couple upwind scores early on by working the disc and were able to hold the lead until the end. Hadiya Rodrigue of Team Canada sang us our national anthem in the spirit circle after the game. That girl is good!

One interesting thing our captains had us do before the game was a quick two-minute meet and greet where both teams mingled on the field and introduced themselves to a few players they didn’t know. I really liked this idea and I hope we do it again tomorrow. We have tried to put an emphasis within our team to introduce ourselves to the other team on the sidelines during games, but having a formal forum like this was honestly pretty cool and could go a long way because you’re more likely to engage in a civil discussion about a call if you know the person standing across from you.

Watching the first not hazy sunset from our room.

Our final will be streamed in case anyone wants to stay up/wake up early! Here’s to hoping the wind cooperates. I’m really happy for the US teams that pulled it out today because it takes incredible skill to throw and catch in those conditions, but I wish they would have had the chance to showcase the sport and their athleticism as it should be played, you know?