Reflection

As I wrap up this blogging project, the last post on this blog will be about how I've changed over the course of the last year. I've changed a bit in the last year. I've become more proactive in the last year. Before I would always procrastinate everything. I was really lazy, if I could wait to do something, I would wait until the last possible minute to do it. Now I've done a better job with my time management and getting stuff done on time. Now I have more free time than I did before and the quality of what I do has improved. Also the amount of effort I put into things has increased. Before I would do things halfway and then just give up a lot. I wouldn't really finish things that I started. Also in sports I wouldn't put in as much effort as I could and now I've been putting more effort into what I do.

Image courtesy of The Shot Doctor

I've gotten bigger, faster, stronger over the course of the last year. I've started going to the gym and have been training a lot harder. Last year I couldn't last an entire game. If we were playing a good team I would be done by the half. Now I've been able to last longer. Not the entire game yet, but I can swim harder, longer and that has made me a better player. I've also developed a lot of my skills. My overall fitness level has increased as well as my health. This blogging project has also given me a new perspective on writing and I've learned a lot about this type of writing. Blogging isn't the same as writing an essay. It's a completely different style and requires a lot more creativity to write. I found that it can actually be kind of fun. 

Tough Game

We went to a tournament that lasted 3 days. It was far enough away that we had to stay in a hotel. We had one game on Thursday, two games on Friday, and another two games on Saturday. The first 4 games were really easy. We won every game by 4 or more points. This got us into the finals. The finals were in the afternoon on Saturday. We had played really well leading up to this game, but we were playing a good team. The game started and they scored the first goal. Then they scored again, and again. We were down 3 to 0 halfway through the first quarter. Things weren't looking good for us. Then I scored a goal to make 1 to 3 and the very next possession I scored again. We were within 1 point. At the end of the first, they scored one more goal to make it 2 to 4. The second quarter went really well for us, we scored 3 unanswered goals. We took the lead at 5 to 4. I don't know what happened, but we just started playing really well. We were all on the same page and knew what to do. At the half we were up by one.

Image courtesy of Daily News Hungary

The third quarter was back and forth no one could really do much. Our defenses took over they managed to score one goal, but we were able to come back with a goal of our own to keep the lead. We were playing really well, but so was the other team. No one had a clear advantage; the game could go either way. The fourth quarter started and we came our hard. We scored a goal within the first 30 seconds to go up 7 to 5, but then, they started to make a comeback. They scored one goal and then a few minutes later another one to tie it up at 7. There were about 2 minutes left in the game when we scored again to go up 8 to 7. Then they answered to make it 8 to 8 with a minute left. It was their ball. We stopped them and got the ball back with 28 seconds left in the game. We had one more possession to win. We called a timeout and talked over what we were going to do. We set up and 10 seconds into our possession, we get an exclusion. We were up a man with 15 seconds left. It doesn't get better than what just happened. We pass the ball around for a bit and someone took a shot and missed. We got the rebound and missed the shot again. The game was over. We went into sudden death over time. We won the opening sprint and set up our offense. We missed a shot and then they missed one too. On our next possession I got an open shot from around 9 meters and I barely missed it. On their next play we were caught out of possition and they scored. That was it. We lost.

Swim Meet

So Today, I am going to get a little off topic and talk about a swim meet I went to last weekend. It was a prelims/finals meet, which means that qualifying is in the morning and finals are at night. I swam the 100 free, 50 free, and 100 back. My morning sucked. I did really bad. My 100 free was really slow. I went a 57 when my best time was a 54. When I went to talk to my coach after the race, I said that it was really bad, and he said, "Yeah. I had to watch it". He said it was aweful and I knew it was. My 50 was a little better. He told me to go a 24. I went a 24 ... .97. I said to him, "Hey, It was a 24". The 100 back was also pretty bad. I went around my best time. The top 8 from each event go to finals at night. I qualified 7th in the 100 free, 3rd in the 50, and 8th in the 100 back. I was really close to not making it back. I told people, "Yeah I meant to do that. I just wanted to go fast enough to make it back", but actually I tried to go fast. I went home in between the sessions and I was just thinking to myself, "How I am gonna go fast at night". My dad kept telling me that I went really slow, and I said that I was gonna go a lot faster at finals.

Image courtesy of Summer Games

I showed up to finals that day really nervous, but also excited. Warm-up was a bit of a struggle, because the water was so hot. It was like a hot tub. I don't understand why they would pay so much money to keep it that hot. Honestly I would've like it to be really cold than really hot. I tried to keep my mind off how hot the pool was and on how I was going to swim. My first race that night was the 100 free. I went really slow in the morning and knew that I had to redeem myself that night. I was behined the blocks and was really nervous, but in my head all I was saying was, "Lets kick some ass" over and over again. It sounds really dumb, but it worked, because I dropped 5 secounds from the morning. I went a 52. I looked up at the scoreboard and then saw the time I went and I thought, "No way". I didn't think that I could go that fast, but apperently I did. I look over at my coach and there were a bunch of my teameates there and they looked as confused as I did. I was really happy with that. My next 2 races also went really well and it was very good meet for me.

Championships

So we had water polo finals a while back and it went pretty well. For the varsity game however, we lost by 1 point. We played against porkchops team, but he didn't play. I have no idea where he was, but everyone else from that team was there. We started off with the lead and I thought that we could actually win the game, but our third quarter was one of the worst quarters we have ever played. All of us just sucked. We couldn't play defence or offence. I had a really bad game. I couldn't make a single shot. Something was really off with my shot. I should've scored 2 to 3 more goals. There were six on fives where I had a wide open shot from around 4 meters and I just missed the shot. I don't know what was happening. It was probably one of the worst shooting performances I have ever had. In the end it was a pretty good game for the whole team, but the third quarter just killed us. They came back and took the lead from us, and we just couldn't get it back. Our first half was amazing and probably was the best water polo that we had ever played, but the third quarter was just really bad. We almost won, but almost winning isn't winning.

Image courtesy of  Exposure

The JV game went better than the varsity game. We won and got third place in the entire tornement. My shooting was a little bit better than the varsity game, but that was probably because the goalie was a lot worse in the JV game. I scored 4 goals in that game and we ended up winning by 1 point. We had the lead with 40 seconds left in the game, but I thought that there was less time and that I could just hold the ball for the rest of the game. I was wrong. The shot clock was gonna run out before the game ended. I was just swimming around with the ball trying to waste time, when I looked up at the clock and realized that I wouldn't make it to the end, I thought, "O crap, what am I gonna do". The shot clock ran out and there was 5 seconds left in the game. The other team got the ball and started swimming down the pool. Luckily I was all the way down on the otherside so they would have to go the enitre length of the pool to score. At about half way the person with the ball shot it and luckily our goalie blocked it. If that went in, everyone would've gotten pissed at me and I wouldn't have heard the end of it. It was an ok game for us and we got third which was really good. It was a fun season and now I really don't know what to do with my life. Water polo doesn't start again until February and I don't know how I am going to make it through all that time. It's gonna be a struggle.

People Need To Swim

There are not many swimmers on our water polo team. There a couple football player, a hockey player and some people that just joined and don't play any other sports. The biggest problem we have is that There are only 3 people that are on the swim team. One of them just joined, and he is not that fast. So really there are only 2 people that are fast on our team. Other teams can destroy us on counters, because their guys can out swim most of our guys. When we set up our defense is really good, but our transition defense is really bad. We need more people to start swimming. It would help us so much if everyone on the team could out swim everyone on the other team. I need to get the team to be on the swim team, or just swim in general, because they are really bad. I can get 3 body lengths on basically everyone on the team and there is one kid thats faster than me. He is our sprinter and we haven't lost a sprint since he joined the team. The rest of our team on the other hand, has to swim. Also our counter attacks are pretty bad.  Luckily that's like the only thing we have been working on in practice the last week.

Image courtesy of JeffCable

The people on my team are kind of clueless when it comes to counter attacks. We go over it a lot in practice, but when it comes to a game it just doesn't happen. Everyone forgets what we did all week in practice and they all just swim straight to the goal. There is no organization. Nothing. Everyone is just swimming around like a chicken with its head cut off. It gets real old real fast having to yell at everyone to go where they are supposed to every time there is a turn over.

Image courtesy of NeslsonNDHS

Except in practice when we are doing a counter attack drill, we can do it perfectly fine. I just don't get it. In a game no one can do a counter attack right, but in practice we can. Does everyone else on the team just like freak out and just start swimming to the goal during the game? or what? I makes no sense to me. How do you do something perfectly in practice, but then when it comes to game time we just forget everything and do it all wrong? We have championships in two weeks and I hope we can get it together before then so that we can win our game.

Finals

We don't have any games for the next two weeks, and that is the last week this season. It is the finals and for JV we are playing for 3 against Kearns A, B, or C. We lost to all of them during the season. I know what you're thinking. How did you lose to a C team? Well... Half the team was gone. There was a swim meet and there was no one at the game. We only lost by 1. I was carrying, but I missed the last second shot to tie the game. I just barely hit the cross bar with 2 seconds to go. We also lost to the B team, but I'd rather not talk about that one. It was kind of sad how we lost. There was one super aggresive kid on the C team that really pissed me off. When I was guarding him he would shove his head into mine. I have no idea what he was doing. I was so confused.

Image courtesy of Boston.com

For the Varsity we are playing for 6th place. We lost our first 3 games, then tied one, and won the last 3. We ended off the regular season looking really strong. We finally got it together and won some games. Hopefully we can win against whoever we are playing against for 6th. We probalby should have done better than 6th, but at the start of the season we weren't really playing at our best. We have won the last 3 games we played and we should carry the momentum into the last weekend. I have no idea who we are playing, but I hope that we can beat them. There haven't been many people that I have hated in the varsity games lately. We have been winning and it is way more fun when you are winning. I haven't had the urge to hit someone in a varsity game for a while. I guess that's a good thing. Only 2 more weeks until the end of the season. I'm really sad about that and really don't know what I am going to do with my life once the season ends.