Growing Pains

Growing pains might be the theme for this year’s team. With so many new guys and so many roles to be defined, along with the natural progression of a team throughout the season has been more noticeable as expected with this Aggie team. The good thing is that we are learning and growing; without a doubt.
Last week we were on a five-day road trip to play two conference road games on a Thursday/Saturday deal. This trip happened to be one of the toughest road trips we take every year with New Mexico State followed by LA Tech. Thankfully to our generous boosters we were able to take a charter plane for the entire trip. With having our own plane we can leave whenever, and are also able to bypass the whole airport ordeal. With the charter and great support from our staff, especially our manager Jesse Parker, the trip went a lot smoother. Jesse really takes care of us with all of our gear and food, best manager in the nation!! So a big shout out to all those who made our trip a lot easier.
New Mexico State was huge at all positions; knowing that coming in we knew it would be a very physical game. Starting off the game, I think all of us were ready to bring some physicality, and caused us to get into some foul trouble. I think this also made us a little more tentative in the second half. These problems combined to make for an interesting game. With 14 minutes to go, we were up four, heading out of a media timeout. From there we completely collapsed and ended up getting beat by 20. We were pretty embarrassed to say the least, very uncharacteristic of this team to just give up. With only a day in-between games we had to learn and move on. We learned to never let that happen again and also to adjust to how the game is being called without taking ourselves out of the game.
Next day we arrived in Louisiana ready to get better and work on taking that next step forward. With a double header on the women’s schedule we needed to practice that night at eight o’ clock. I was slightly worried with the late start and so much travel we would have a sluggish practice. With a small team meeting between us players we actually had one of our better practices of the year. The next day it really showed in our game. Battling through a ton of adversity we fought all game, getting contributions from almost every eligible player, which was really awesome. The game was back and forth all night, but we managed to pull out a win down to the wire. Our second road win was very much earned and felt awesome. It’s amazing how much more fun traveling can be after a win, especially all of us hanging out on our private plane.
This week entails a similar schedule with two road games looking to complete a sweep after earning a split. It’s time for this team to make a mid-season run. It would be great to start with two road wins.
Go Aggies!!

--Morgan Grim