Let The Summer Begin!

Ok, so the weather didn't feel like summer...but...

Summer leagues signify the beginning for me.

Tonight was my first night of sand ball.

The first night in over three years since I've played sand leagues.

A group of us girls from my open gym indoor volleyball league

decided to make up a team and play some outdoor ball together.

A really fun buncha girls with great attitudes.

On a whim, I sent off a text to my ex and he was willing to sponsor us too!

So we go from being the Hawk Eyes to Team DQ

It felt GREAT!

My team won 2 out of 3 matches giving us the win.

Afterwards, I was approached by an old friend to sub on their co-ed league, and thought - why not. I was already warmed up, and ready to go. The ref laughed that I was brave enough to go another round given how cold it was. Seriously, I was toasty. During the first game, I started out barefoot - foolish me - the sand was like sticking your feet into Lake Superior on a subzero day. FOOKIN COLD. I swore my toes were just gonna break off. I *KNEW* I shoulda wore my sand shoes, but thought I was above it all. After the first game I ran and grabbed my sand shoes and MAN oh MAN did that make a HUGE difference. My feet became toasty and actually quite flexible - a far feeling from when I thought I'd find broken off digits in the sand.

Another key was layering. If I learned anything this past weekend in the Boundary Waters, it was the importance of weather specific clothes and layering. I wore my trusty Australian Merino Wool zip top, with a singlet underneath, and then I had stopped at Target and picked up a pair of long-length exercise pants, which I wore under my shorts. Over those, I wore my windpants for the first game, then shed them for game two. I was warm. Most everyone else was in long pants, jackets, hats, shoes, etc...and I was playing in my element. My serves were good (except 2 serves out of 6 matches where I hit the ball a bit on the side sending it out on the left), and I had several diving saves in both games, which made me feel pretty damn good overall. I felt right at home inspite of my apprehensions going in of being so sedentary of late, as well as not playing ball for the past three weeks, much less three years of no sand ball - which really is more strenuous given you're trudging through deep sand.

Yeah the fat girl rocked the court!

GO ME!