Christmas Break

Sorry it's taken me so long to write on here! My Christmas break has been a little crazy. I've seen so much family and old high school friends in the past 2 weeks. It's been really great. I can't believe it's already Christmas! This year has gone by too fast.

Over the break I've gotten to work a little, save up a little spending money for next semester. I work at my dads restaurant when I get a chance. It's a fun job. I get to basically hang out with my tables all day. Everyone is in such a good mood during the holiday season. I'm loving it! Other than working, I've been hanging out and catching up with other friends that I don't get to see very often. Living two and a half hours away from home doesn't seem very far but it really is when you don't get to go home very much, especially during season. When I do go home during semester I want to see my family so that leaves my friends having to wait till Christmas and summer break to catch up. They don't seem to mind though.

I hope everyone has a wonderful Christmas and rest of the break!

Season Recap

Soo, season's over. A teammate summarized this year best by saying, "this season has been a team growing and building experience. We have built on old talent with added new talent, and now have a strong foundation for the next few years. The team chemistry on and off the field has allowed character building and a RSU family to enhance the relationships we already have taken from our experiences this year."

I know we had fun this year. It probably has been the most enjoyable soccer season I've ever experienced. I hope next year, also being my final year, will be as special as this year has been.

Well, we lost in the 2nd round of the SAC tournament to SNU. They went on to beat OCU in the finals and won the SAC championship. We ended up 13-7 overall this year and 5-5 in conference. Our record wasn't really good but we achieved a whole lot I think. We beat teams that we didn't think were beatable but then we lost to some teams that we shouldn't have lost to. Overall, it was a fantastic season but expect we will do much better next year! I promise!

Right now we are just working out on our own. After Christmas break we will come back together and start working out for off-season. This year will be our toughest off-season to date (ugh) I'm sure but once we get back into it I don't think it will be that bad.

Anyway, thank you to everyone who supported us this year! We had so much fun playing at home with all the fans we had. We really did have the best and definitely the most number of fans at our games compared to anyone we played all year. I'll keep posting throughout the rest of the semester and update everyone on what has been going on. Happy Thanksgiving!!

Conference Tournament

Man, I'm so proud of my team. We beat the #3 seed, Oklahoma Baptist, in the SAC tournament yesterday 1-0! It was a HUGE upset. They beat us earlier in regular season at home 1-0. Our girls played so well and were smart about how we played. We went up a goal pretty early in the 1st half so we had to defend the rest of the half then another whole 2nd half. Along with defending the entire 2nd half, we had to do it into the wind! And Oklahoma wind isn't just a breeze. We held on though. I was shaking after the game I was so pumped up. Now we are only 2 games away from the national tournament!! We play Southern Nazarene on Tuesday at their place. If we win that game then we'll play the winner of Oklahoma City and John Brown in the finals. They'll be two rough games but I have faith.

Now onto other stuff. I hate that we had to miss homecoming Saturday. They always seem to schedule it RIGHT in the middle of our post-season play. It is kind of frustrating. I wish who ever puts together the schedule would consider the other sports (cough, soccer, cough). It seems like we get the short end of the stick most of the time. Anyway, I'm done venting. In all, I'm just very proud of my girls and we worked really hard to get where we are. If you are in the city Tuesday come watch us play! We'll try and bring home a trophy for everyone!!

Soccer Update!!

Sorry it's been so long. Can you have Senioritis and not be a senior?? I guess they would call it Junioritis in my case. Who knew college would be so hard?

Anyway, season's coming to an end and it's kind of scary. I can't believe my junior year is almost over. I'm going to be a senior here soon!! (ahhhh!!) We have two more games left until playoffs. Tonight we play Southern Nazarene University and Tuesday we play Northwestern University. They are both "must wins" if we want to place well for conference tournament. The first round of playoffs start on Friday the 6th. We don't know who we play yet but who ever it will be it will be a good game for us.

This year has been a little rocky. We play really really good one game and then the next not so well. It's really frustrating. I wish we were as consistent as other teams. That's not really saying much though because all of the teams in our conference have played a little inconsistent at some point. Everyone has a loss to someone else in the conference. It's almost like a big circle. You beat them, they beat you.. blah blah blah. You know?

But everyone should come out tonight for Senior Night! It's the last home game a bunch of our players will have. We play at 5 and the boys at 7. It should be a good game. Hopefully the weather won't be too terrible. (Cross your fingers)

Welllll, we are 3 games into conference play. I wish I could say that we are 3-0 but we lost last night to Oklahoma Baptist University so we are only 2-1 in conference. We have just come off the biggest win of the season Saturday night against Oklahoma City University to just turn over and get beat by a team, I have to say, was not better than us. We didn't play as well as we should and it was a huge learning experience for everyone (I hope). Anyway, since last night was essentially last night, we can hopefully move on and focus on our next game which is Friday afternoon at 1:00 in Shawnee, OK against St. Gregory's University. Wish us luck!!

One Long Week

Being a student-athlete has it's perks but it also has it's downfalls. You get to pick your schedule before everyone else and travel and do other cool things but there are also a whole lot of responsibilities that go along with it. This past week has been the busiest and probably most stressful week I've had since I've been here. I had 2 tests, 4 papers and 3 games in the course of 7 days. Because of the amount of school work I had in such a small amount of time I did not put as much into each activity as I would have if it weren't so hectic. I just wanted the week to be over. Although I am anxious to find out how I did on my assignments, I'm not real excited to find out how I did compared to how I could have done. Some people might not have as hard of a time adjusting to the time constraints but I definitely am. You have to love the game a whole lot to try and play a sport and excel in school as well.

On a lighter note, we won our games Tuesday and Friday this week against Sterling College and Southwest College. There was a big crowd, probably our biggest of the season, at Friday night's game. Plus we had somewhere between 20 and 25 recruits out watching, including my little sister Tatum! It was so exciting to get to experience this trip with her! I remember my recruiting trip out to RSU. I was so nervous and so excited at the same time! I just hope she had a good time whether or not she decides to come here next year.

Today we played Ottawa University and failed to produce a single goal while letting in quite a few. We lost our first game of the season and losing sucks. Enough of that!

Anyway, we leave tomorrow (another example of being a student-athlete by keeping up with class even while you are on the road and missing class AND getting back at 3am in the morning for class at 9am) for Plainsview, Texas. An 8 hour drive to hopefully up our stats and come home with a win in our first conference game against Wayland Baptist University.

Successful Weekend..for the most part.

We ended up winning both games this weekend in Kansas (yay!) but it was a rough weekend to say the least. And trust me, winning is so fun but it's just not as awesome when you play bad.

I absolutely HATE turf!!! I know you aren't supposed to make any excuses for playing bad but seriously, I hate playing on turf! I don't know if you've ever played a soccer game on it but it really messes with you. Your touch is off and when the ball comes at you, you don't quite know what it's going to do. I blame our bad weekend on it. Coach Larkin will say different but he wasn't out there with us (technically).

Even though we didn't play our best we still got our two wins and that's what we went up there to do. So successfull weekend..for the most part.

Our next home game, if it doesn't get too nasty because of our great Oklahoma weather, is tomorrow the 22nd at 5 and the boys play at 7. Come see us play!!

Heyyyyy

Hey guys!
Bailey Lynn here, this is my first entry, of many, to my mini-blogs that I will be writing throughout the 2009 soccer season. I'll keep you all updated on what's going on with me and the team as we travel, practice, and do work on the soccer field.

Here's just a little bit about me. I'm a junior goal keeper from Oklahoma City and am majoring in Political Science. I'm not exactly sure what I want to do with my degree but I've still got two years to figure it out.

I chose Rogers State because I liked the idea of starting a tradition. I'm one of three girls from the inaugural 2007 soccer team. Our first year we went 20-3, won Conference Tournament and were one win away from making it to Nationals. Successfull huh? Sadly the year ended there. The second year of the Hillcat soccer program wasn't AS successful but most other programs would have loved to have the kind of season we did. We won 13 games and had 4 All-Conference picks. This season we are off to a good start. We are undefeated through our first three games and there are a lot more wins to come.

We are fixing to head out to Kansas for the weekend for our first away games. I'll be sure and keep you guys posted on how we do!