Follow Billy Hoelck and the Water Polo Team at the NCAA Championships

Day two is coming to a close. I just want to start this one off with a moment of clarification. Turns out Patrick Beemer has officially protested last night's call of who won the race back to the hotel. We heard from an impartial judge (Alex's little brother Joey all the way in Pennsylvania) early this morning and after reviewing the film, he's decided that the ruling on the field stands. Our van won. End of debate.

We woke up pretty early this morning, our bodies still on east coast time. Round one of breakfast was alright- no Chartwells, that's for sure. But round two was stellar. Yvette's mama made us authentic breakfast burritos- pollo, chorrizo and bean and cheese. Felt good to eat real mexican. After breakfast I went back to bed, because in New York it would be around noon, definitely time for a nap. The rest of the team took advantage of the Golden State's sunshine and layed out by the pool.

We headed to the pool around twelvish for another walk through practice. When we got on deck we were showered with presents. Clearly the hosts at Long Beach State were ecstatic to have us here. They couldn't help treating us like celebrities. We received black Speedo backpacks embroidered with the NCAA decal and inside were tampons and a squishy pillow with the same logo.

Pretty stoked with the goodies we jumped in the pool feeling much better than yesterday. With the long flight out of our systems and no lunch weighing us down we were moving much swifter. Today we only had an hour to play around so we moved through drills pretty quickly. As we wrapped up practice, Stanford, our competition arrived. Those girls are tan.

We left the pool and headed for lunch. I got a mango iced tea drink thing from the coffee bean. It was pretty good. Some of the girls were kinda bummed cause we had a trip to the beach planned, but it just wasn't feasible to get there, hang out and get to the banquet all in a few hours. So Beemer made the executive decision and the girls made due with the Marriot poolside. I took another nap. After putting in a couple more good hours in the sun everyone started getting ready for the big night. We had our NCAA banquet to attend at the Long Beach Yacht Club. The venue was nice. We got there and were greeted with more goodies. Little make-up bags with nail polish, chapstick, eyeshadow and more!

Anyway, we didn't feel so bad in our dresses; everyone had gnarly tanlines and HUGE shoulders.

The guest speaker of the night was Olympian, and pioneer for women's water polo- Maureen O'Toole. She was seriously inspirational. She talked about her trip to the Olympics, where women's water polo had its debut. It was great to hear her talk about her accomplishments. At the age of thirty nine she competed with and against girls half her age and flew back to the US from Sydney with a silver medal. Pretty sick.

Dinner was pretty scrumptious. I had a nice little salad, some stuffing, fruit, cheese tortellinis and a roll. The roll was good enough to headline. Hard on the outside but not so hard that you looked like less of a lady when you ate it. Soft and warm in the middle, the butter melted on contact. The line to dessert was nuts but worth the wait. There was a plethora to choose from, but only 9 sugar cookies. Each colored like a polo ball with a team's name on it. Katie had already taken the only Wagner one, and though USC and UCLA remained, I thought it was best to leave theirs be, and take the initiative to snag the generic "NCAA" one. Nice move on my part.

The NCAA put together a compilation video of all the teams in attendance. It was incredible to be featured on the same screen as some of the best competitors in the country.

We finished up the banquet with individual speeches from a representative from each team. Natasha was first up and she put Wagner on the map. Referencing MTV's True Life: I'm a Staten Island Girl, she let the west coast teams know what it really meant to be a Stat rat.

The banquet closed nicely. We went back to the hotel. And that brings me to now. With quite possibly the most challenging game of my life less than 24 hours away I'm excited. I know the girls are all anxious to jump in tomorrow and play the best of the best, and I just feel lucky to be here with them. We're playing in a National Championship against the best girls in the United States. Win or lose, I'm just happy to be here. But don't get it twisted- I'm not going back to NY without a W.


Day 1--May 9

So we arrived at LAX (airport) around 10 am pacific standard time and Greg 'Gary' Mescall presented me with the opportunity to write a blog, a diary of sorts, to portray the events of the tourney to our friends and family at home. I happily obliged- mainly because Ian Gallagher of the men's lacrosse team has one, so I wanted one too. Sorry about my run on sentences, I'm excited.

The journey to claim a national title began early this morning. After the majority of the team pulled an all nighter, we met at the oval around 4:30 and piled into an Academy bus. That's right, no 15 passenger white vans for us, this time we were riding in style. We had an actual chauffeur take us to the United Airlines terminal at JFK.

Oscar winner Cate Blanchett was on our flight (See Babel, The Aviator, LTOR and more). That was kind of exciting. I give Camille the assist as she was the one who identified her first. She warned me of what Ms. Blanchett was wearing so that I could recognize her once we boarded. I walked through the first class section and saw Blanchett dressed elegantly in black. I stared. And her man friend sitting next to me totally saw. Oh well, she's famous, I had no shame.

After the awe escaped me I found my seat in 19F and put my pillow against the window. No one sat in the middle seat, but it made no difference to me. I passed out before we even taxied away from the gate and didn't wake up until we prepared for our final descent into LAX. It was the shortest 6 hour flight I'd ever taken.

Once on the ground we got our luggage and headed to the hotel. We're staying at the Courtyard Marriot, for the third time this year. And it turns out they all have the same design on the comforters.

We dropped everything off and headed to lunch. Half hit up the "Mexican" food at Baja Fresh (Rubios is so much better) and the rest of us went to Red Robin (where we celebrated the birthday of Andrew Schwartz).

In a comatose from lunch we headed to the pool for a walk through practice. Immediately after walking on deck Gary was called out and told that he'd better put sunscreen on. It was obvious we've been playing in an indoor pool all season. On Friday, we are going to play Stanford, the number one team in the country. Luckily, today we shared the pool and practice time with the USA national team so the Cardinal is no longer as intimidating.

Full from lunch and stiff from a long plane ride we didn't look as sharp as usual. We have a couple days to work it out of our system and by Friday game faces will be on and we'll be ready to do what we came to southern California to do.

After practice we headed to Seal Beach. Alex, Anne, Yvette, Gary and Coach ran around playing Frisbee while Amber stared in awe at the pacific and Mirco got her first official, non machine induced tan of the season. It was glorious.

Dinner time was approaching so we left the beach and headed to Anne's aunt's house. This is the third time I've had the pleasure of visiting their Anaheim Hills estate, and every time is a delicious as the previous. Her grandpa is notorious for his succulent Tri tip sandwiches (and for those of you on the East Coast who've never heard of tri tip, it's a bomb.com/flanksteak like meat). At dinner entertainment was in full effect. Gary read to us his sequel poem to Wagner Water Polo 2007. If you haven't heard the first one, I recommend it. The second is equally as amazing. The nights festivities were wrapped up with Schwartz dropping his rendition of Rapper's Delight with Amber bringin it home "Say Whaaaat?".

Tired and in desperate need of a good night's sleep we all loaded into our 3 mini vans and raced back to the hotel. Literally. Beemer's van started with the unfair advantage out of the driveway, followed by Schwartz who never stood a chance. Bringing up the rear was my van, driven by Sara Leadfoot Kramer. We maneuvered the lead a couple miles into the 91 heading west and thought we lost Beemer a safe distance back. Socal native, Yvette suggested we seal the deal with a sneaky shortcut right through town. We went with her instincts and exited the freeway.

As we pulled up to the first light our van was shocked. Beemer, also native to the area, had the same idea! He was just as surprised to see us, and once again, the race was on. One light before our final turn my van slipped in front. The home stretch was ours. Just as we were about to turn, we look in the mirrors and Beemer had made a hasty decision- he pulled into a driveway leading to the backside of the hotel. Typical. We peeled out around the corners, slipped into a parking space and bolted out of the car. Certain we'd won we walked briskly and proud into the hotel only to find...CHEATERS! They had pulled up to the back of the hotel, parked illegally, sprinted into the lobby and took a seat as if they'd been sitting there for hours, waiting for us. Unfortunately for Beemer's van, they had already been DQed for they had not parked in a legitimate space. We won, fair and square.

Day one is coming to a close. Although our first game is not until Friday evening (against Stanford, stay tuned), there are six elite women shutting their eyes with a win already under their belts. Congratulations Sara Kramer, Janelle the Athletic Trainer, Seniors Katie, Anne, my buddy Yvette and of course, me. No matter what happens this weekend, we are already champions. Good night Staten Island, wish you were here.