USA Select Team to Argentina
May 30 to June 11, 2006
Day 1 – May 31, 2006
By Elena Martinez, LSU
Today was everyone’s first day in Argentina. We all arrived at different times, but for the most part we all made it to Buenos Aires for our two o’clock practice. In my case, Nikki Gonzales (Libero, St. Mary’s), Santiago Restrepo (Coach, Oklahoma), and I were forced to go straight from the airport to the gym after a ten-hour flight from Houston. Our departure time was delayed from 9:00pm to 1:00am, which put us into the airport at 1:10pm, leaving hardly anytime to make practice. We got there just in time.
During practice we worked on serving and passing, as well as running through our different serve-receive rotations. This practice was our first, so the main objective was for us to become comfortable playing with one another. We all got along extremely well and were anxious to play together. When practice was over, we were fortunate enough to have the opportunity to watch the Argentina Men’s National team as they prepared for their upcoming matches. During that time, we all received our jerseys, warm-ups, and took our respective headshots. We were all really excited to get our new gear!
Once we left the gym we made our way back to the Hotel Sheltown where we took our much-needed showers! The rooms are small but comfortable and it’s a team consensus that bed size doesn’t matter, as long as we have somewhere to sleep; we are all exhausted. We rendezvoused in the hotel lobby at 7:00pm for a dinner of chicken and rice, with vanilla ice cream for dessert. Now we are all ready for bed to get a good night’s rest before tomorrow’s matches. We can’t wait to show Argentina what the USA is made of! BUENOS NOCHES, Y’ALL!
Link to Official Argentinean FEVA Page
