Recap of the Big Ten Championships...by the Champ

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Editor's note: Big congrats to Caitlin on her win at the Big Ten Championships on Sunday!

To say that the Big Ten Championships was exciting would be an understatement. We competed and we competed hard but came up short. Michigan State and Michigan were better than us on Sunday. I am proud of the girls on my team for fighting for places and fighting for the win. We scored the same amount of points that we did in 2009 when we won, and there is no reason for us to not hold our heads high. While we wanted to win, third place against a talented field is nothing to cry about. We feel confident coming off of the weekend and look forward to the next task, the Mid-Atlantic Regional Championships.

We arrived back in State College around 1 a.m. Monday morning. It was a struggle to wake up at 8 a.m. for my 9:05 class but I got up and stretched my sore body. My ankles ached and my calves pulled as I hobbled to class, but the more I walked the better I felt. By practice time I felt much better and was ready to enjoy our swing day. Swing day is something that Coach Sullivan likes us to do every week. Typically every Monday we take a swing day, which is 20 minutes of easy jogging and leg massage. Most of the time, it’s my favorite day of the week. It is always the best thing about Mondays. Yesterday, Tuesday, we took another easy day, keeping our run on the shorter end just to make sure we were fully recovered from the weekend. Today we will get back into the swing of things with a light work out. I am excited to get this week of training done so we can start focusing more on the Championship race next weekend.

The Regional Championships is an incredibly important race. It is what qualifies us for Nationals. Villanova, Georgetown and West Virginia are all nationally ranked ahead of us at the moment. We currently sit in 22^nd in the National Rankings, moving up after Big Tens. It is going to be a difficult race and we are going to have to race harder than we have all season. We need to try and solidify our spot and punch a ticket to nationals.

I am so proud of my teammates and what we have accomplished this season. However, there is still more racing to do. We need to recover and get fired up to show what we are made of next weekend at Maryland Eastern Shores.

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