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Kalyn's Digs: An Inside Look At URI Women's Volleyball

The 2008 season through the eyes of sophomore Kalyn Klaess

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11/14/08

Blog #7

Last week's road trip to Pittsburgh started off getting delayed in T.F. Green's airport in Providence, R.I. for 6 hours due to bad weather. When it rains in Philadelphia they shut down the whole airport; which is exactly where we were headed. Philadelphia cancelled all flights coming in that night besides one, and that was ours.

After we found out we would be 6 hours late to Philadelphia to catch our connector to Pittsburgh, we started to prepare for the worst. If we missed our connector, it meant that we would not get out of Philadelphia until the next morning or possibly the next afternoon, which meant we could have possibly missed our flight and would have had to reschedule for a mid week match.

Luckily, the delayed flight we were waiting on landed. And from the second it landed we only had thirty minutes to board and take off before they stopped all air traffic. We made it into Philadelphia extremely late and still had one more long flight to go. The flight attendant announced that our connector flight would be boarding in an hour so we all thought we had time to get off, get something to eat, and mingle our way to our next gate.

We were wrong. The second we stepped off the plane, a lady across the way was yelling, "Last call for flight number 1690 to Pittsburgh, now boarding all zones, LAST CALL!!!" We all glanced at each other with wide eyes and started sprinting down to our catch our plane.

You know those annoying people, who hold the plane up by a good 20 minutes, yea that was that flight. We felt bad, but we had to make it to Pittsburgh just as bas as everyone else on that plane. Sorry about that!

Just getting the team to Pittsburgh was a mess in itself, and getting all of our baggage that was carrying all of our shoes, jerseys, knee pads, socks, etc., was another mess. We made it to Pittsburgh around 1:30 am, but our bags did not.

We went through the entire baggage claim tracking process and prayed that night that our bags would show up when we awoke the next morning. Surely, they were not there at breakfast. Fortunately, they did show up right before we were scheduled to leave the hotel to face off against Duquesne.

Despite everything that happened, we beat Duquesne 3-1 on their home court. It was a great victory and took a lot of focus and patience from all of us. Luckily for us our coach and assistant coach, held us together in the messiest of times, pep-talking us, and keeping our minds on the court and in the game.

It was a great day on Saturday because we came away with a win, and we all traveled happily from Pittsburgh to St. Louis. We got to play in St. Louis' new gym, where the Atlantic 10 Championship match will be held.

I don't mean to jump ahead, but it was a taste of what the tournament might feel like if beat Fordham this upcoming Saturday at 4 p.m. in Keaney gym.

Ungracefully we lost to St. Louis in three sets and we didn't come away very happy. I hope we will get a chance to get back at them in the tournament.

All we have to do now is beat Fordham on Saturday and we go to St. Louis again to compete in the Atlantic 10 Championship! We have been working hard all week to prepare for this match, because of the importance of this match.

In between all of our preparation for Fordham, we played Providence College on Wednesday night. We raised our confidence back up and took it to them as we won in three sets.

Our match against Providence was a lot of fun because both teams had a lot of fans and it was on television.

This Saturday, I hope that everyone will come out and watch us beat Fordham to go to the Atlantic Ten Championship tournament.

This match means so much to us and we have been waiting for this opportunity for years and with the support of all our fans I know we will win.

--KK