University of Richmond Athletics
JJ's Journal
11/25/2002 | Women's Soccer
Nov. 23, 2002
In her fourth installment, Meredith Johnson discusses the flight to Portland.
TGIF...Thank Goodness It's a Flight!!!!!
It's 2:30pm and we are rounding the troops and heading out to the Richmond airport, where we split into two groups and begin our journey. As we are unloading our bags from the airport shuttle Hillary informs some of us that Soccer America Magazine predicted that we would fall to the Portland Pilots 4-0...little does Soccer America know what kind of motivation they put in our step by printing that, and motivation is something that we did not need more of. I mean what is a pilot anyhow...do they attach propellers to their hats or something? Ill show them how to fly this weekend, fly home for Thanksgiving that is. Once we get into the airport we start off by causing havoc before we even get our tickets. In one corner you see people waiting in line for their tickets and in another corner their is a revised, personalized, minimized game of handball going on between me, Jenna, Jessica, and Megan Ogilivie, that's after we tried to play wall ball and knew that that would turn into "peg each other with a small rubber ball as hard as you can"! That game was quickly extinguished when we almost knocked out one of the ceiling tiles.
As soon as we checked in it's time for the first flight to take off which is carrying the majority of the team. Of course they chose me to do a random check right before I got on the plane. While they were going through my bags they made me take off my jacket and lift my arms for the wand...that's when it got embarrassing since I sweating under my fleece in a shirt that showed sweat marks...its all right though we all got a good laugh out of it. After getting on the flight we departed for HOTT-lanta to connect to Portland. The other flight was on route to Cincinnati about 2 hours after us. When we got to Atlanta we start walking down the terminal when we hear these two people clapping and cheering on Richmond and everyone who is not part of our team is staring at them...yes, those would be my parents!! Another girl on our team also had a nice surprise; Kaile's father was taking his soccer team to a tournament in North Carolina from Florida and surprised her in the food court. It brought a tear to our eyes and hers.
I am writing y'all this entry from the plane on route to Portland. When we all filed into the back of the plane a family group around us asked if were a marching band or pep band, rudely enough we all just had to laugh for a bit. One time we were on an away trip (surprise, surprise) and in the same day we were asked if we were an ice hockey team and then if we were a cross country team. Correct me if I am wrong, but aren't those two sports a bit contradicting. After that we were getting ready for take off and the pilot gave the Richmond Spiders a special shout out where we got lots of cheers and then when they announced our opponents there were a few boos, immediately Ogilivie pops up jokingly from her seat looking for the noise makers, about to tell them that their momma wears combat boots (don't ask something she liked to say when she was younger} it was quite comical.
After traveling for a little while the hostesses walk around with headphones for the movie...so nice of them, until they ask for $5.00 a pair. None of us wanted to watch Stuart Little 2 all that much anyways. That's when we tossed around the idea of taking on the different characters giving them our own monologue and making our own movie, trust me that movie won't stay G for too long. At this point everyone is either sleeping, listening to music, or trying to motivate themselves to do schoolwork, which is very difficult when you have to play the #8 seeded team in the country for a shot at the Elite 8 round.
We are on schedule to arrive in Portland 12:30 VA time-9:30 Portland time, while the rest of the team gets in around 1:30 VA time. I will put my money on the fact that we will all hit the bed hard immediately ready for some shut eye so that we can get up and train hard in the morning. The team wants to wish the best of luck to the Men's and Women's basketball team as they are currently taking on Radford and Delaware respectively as I write this in their first games of their season, the Football team as they take on William & Mary tomorrow, and the Men's Soccer team as they take on ODU in the first round of the NCAA's tomorrow night!
