Nov. 25, 2008
BELIZE CITY, Belize -
Editor's Note: The Illinois State softball team is participating in an international tour in Belize from Nov. 22-30. Throughout the trip, GoRedbirds.com will provide Illinois State Athletics fans with player and coach blogs, photo galleries and fun facts about Belize. Tuesday's blog comes from senior pitcher Amber Smith.
Hey, you Redbird Softball fans! This is Amber Smith, and here is our update from Belize.
Today (Monday), was day three of our trip. We woke up around 8:30 a.m. to a delicious home-cooked breakfast. We all met downstairs in the hotel's little breakfast room. There was fresh fruit, toast and cereal. We also had some scrambled eggs (I personally liked to eat mine with their famous hot jalepeno sauce), delicious papaya juice freshly squeezed and some homemade jam. Hotel Mopan itself is a cozy little hotel. There are three floors to the hotel and my teammate, Beth Current, and I stay on the patio floor with lawn chairs to sit in outside. There is air conditioning in our rooms, except for the coaches, and we have every channel available to us here that is offered in the United States. There is an exceptional few channels that I have never seen in my life that are quite funny.
Around 9:10 a.m., we loaded up the bus and left for the field for a weights/conditioning and practice. The weight room was nothing that we are used to having back in Redbird Arena. Ceiling fans are used to circulate air throughout the gym, and the weights are not the same as ours, but nevertheless, it was what we needed to get a workout in. We went through a six-station circuit that included abs, calves, triceps, lat pull-downs, hanging knee-ups and dumbbell curls. After we were done in the weight room, we went onto the field for a conditioning workout with Chris Carter, our strength and conditioning coach. When that was finished, we changed into our cleats and began our practice, which consisted of numerous hitting circuits. We started with hitting off of the tees, then we went to fungo, we bunted off of Shannon Nicholson (our pitching coach), hit soft toss off of Tina Kramos (assistant coach) and finished the day off with hitting live off of Shannon.
Tonight (Monday), we play the Telemedia Women's Softball Team and the Belize National Women's Softball Team. We are looking forward to some good games tonight, as well as throughout the rest of the week, but I will get back to you later tonight for the game recap and highlights of playing against another country.
Later that night ...
So, we just arrived back from our games tonight (Monday). We came out with a win in both of the games. Before both of the games tonight, we participated in the opening ceremonies with the two other teams and the Sports Administer and the President of the Belize Softball Federation. Casey Gorrell caught the first pitch of the game, then we did the traditional gift exchange with the other teams. We received a water bottle, T-shirt and glass mug, while we gave them an Illinois State softball T-shirt with a pen. The first game, we won 11-0 against the Telemedia Women's National Championship Team, and the second game was 4-0 against the Belize National Team. We played really well together both of the games. Everyone seems to be stepping out of their shell and really expanding their talents for this team. The current time is 12:40a.m., and we just got done eating a delicious meal at the Celebrity Restaurant. Now, it is time to shower up and hit the sheets!!! Take care, you Redbird fans, and there will be more blogs to come!!
- Amber Smith
