Houston Express 99G Navy

Wednesday, August 5, 2015

Uniforms, Scrimmage, Travel, and Tournaments.

Tonight we are scrimmaging the ’01 girls at the West U Rec Center. Mark said 7:40, but if you come 10 minutes early, I’ll give you your new kits to wear tonight We are wearing navy—white—navy , but that should be easy to plan for since I’ll have all of your stuff.

We are going to order the 3^rd kit. I have a record of the sizes that everyone already ordered. After you get a chance to try on your kit tonight, let me know if you want me to order a different size for the 3^rd kit. If the size is good, no response is necessary.

We have our SRPL games this weekend. Please arrive at least 45 minutes before game time.

Saturday is 1:45pm at Veterans Park (#6) in College Station. We will wear our green/white kit.

3101 Harvey Rd.
College Station, TX 77845

Link to a field map.

Sunday we are at the same complex, but field #11, at 9:45am This time we will wear navy.

Y’all have the information about the hotel in Plano. Go ahead and make those reservations.

For the Little Rock trip, I have some rooms blocked off for us. They only have about 10 doubles. There are some king rooms and a few jr. suites available as well. They have really nice rollaway beds that can be used in the rooms if you need them. Rooms are $159/night. Jr. suites are $210. Call 1-877-637-0037 and mention “Houston Express 00G” to get those rates. They are saving the block of rooms for us until Aug 14.

Lastly, we need to talk about tournaments and expenses. Right now we are tentatively planning on the Disney Tournament at the end of the year and the D’feeters tournament in Dallas the Friday-Sunday immediately after Thanksgiving. Maybe we can spend a couple minutes after tonight’s game talking about this. There are other options, it just depends on how much travel we want to endure.

See you tonight.

Friday, July 31, 2015

Logistics

Y'all already know that the scrimmage is now Wednesday at 7:30.

College Station next weekend. No hotels needed.

Plano, Aug 22-23. We are staying at:

The Westin Stonebriar Hotel & Golf Club
1549 Legacy Drive
Frisco TX 75034 United States
Phone:(1)(972) 668-8000

The link to book your room is here. The rooms are held for us until August 7, so don't procrastinate as much as I normally do.

Little Rock, September 5-7. We can stay at the Capital Hotel for $159 a night. I realize that is a little more expensive than what we usually shoot for, but it is Labor Day weekend, and it is a nice hotel (#1 in LR according to Trip Advisor). They have set aside the rooms for us, but I'm not sure it's in the system yet to book them that at that price. Hopefully on Monday we'll be able to do that. I'll let you know and pass along the link or phone number.

Also, tentatively put the ESPN/Disney tournament on your schedule. It's December 31 - January 3. There's another tournament December 4-6 we are considering as well. Try to keep those dates open for now. I will coordinate a team meeting soon to go over all this stuff.

On a personal note: ~~If you have time~~ Make time to watch the movie Whiplash. Watch it with your daughters. I will go on record as saying it might be my favorite movie. It's rated "R", and there is some brutally harsh language and adult situations, but no sex or nudity. The movie is about jazz drumming, but it could just as easily be about soccer players. It's actually not about jazz drumming. It's about being the best, pushing yourself, being pushed, success, failure, relationships, balancing priorities, family...I could go on and on. Just go watch it. It's not on Netflix, but it is on other on-demand services if you look around.

Enjoy the weekend off. It may be the last one for a while.

Tuesday, July 28, 2015

Travel, and more!

A couple of updates to share…Please respond to the things in RED.

We have a friendly against the ‘01 girls this Saturday (August 1) at 9:30am at McGovern. I know a few of you will be out. If you can’t make it and haven’t let me know yet, please do so ASAP. It’s going to be tight and we may have to borrow a few players.
I’m working on getting our new uniforms ASAP. I’m not 100% sure we will have them by our August 8-9 games. Stay tuned. For our two new players, fear not! I’m working on getting something for you in case.
Speaking of our new kits, if you haven’t seen them, check them out here. I think we should get the alternate kit as well. As much as we play and travel, having a long sleeve option is nice, and they look great too. We will need to order them as a team. It’s an extra $100. I’ll assume that silence = consent, so if you object, let me know.

Travel

Our August 8-9 games are in College Station. I’m going to assume that we are all driving up and back for both games and that I don’t need to coordinate a hotel. I hope that’s ok. The games are at 1:45pm on Saturday and 9:45am on Sunday.
August 22-23 we will be playing in Plano. Obviously, we will need a hotel for this one. The Saturday game is at 3:30pm, which means that driving up on Saturday morning is a reasonable option. Sunday’s game is at 9:45am. I’ve got us some rooms set aside at the Westin Stonebriar. It’s very close to Sunday’s fields. It’s right next to the place we stayed last time. There’s plenty of good restaurant options nearby, and the pool is very nice, golf course too. I got a block of rooms at $119/night, which is a heck of a deal for such a nice hotel. That price includes free breakfast for two people. If you register extra people in your room, it’s an additional $5 per person, but that gets them the breakfast too (which is a full buffet and omelet station and all the goodies). I need a head count for rooms. Please let me know if you need a room, and how many. The rooms will also be available at the same rate on Friday night too, for those of you that don’t want the stress of driving up Saturday morning. If you need someone to host your daughter, let me know.
Labor Day Weekend. We have the unique pleasure of going to Little Rock, Arkansas for Labor Day. We will have games all three days – Saturday at 3:30pm, Sunday at 10:45am, and Monday at 9:45am. In case you don’t know, Mark lived in Little Rock for a while, so he’s looking forward to this trip. I have a Little Rock connection as well. My boss owns a great hotel downtown, walking distance from the riverwalk, and only about 10-15 minute from the fields. I’m working to get us the friends and family rate now.
With an afternoon game on Saturday, one could conceivably fly up Saturday morning (United has a 7:15 flight that gets in at 8:38 and Southwest has a 7:00am that gets in at 10:20am after stopping in Dallas). Once again, I will need to know ASAP if you will need a room, which nights, and how many people. I will let you know on rates as soon as I hear something.
If you need someone to host your daughter, let me know.

That’s all I can think of for now. I’m sure there’s more.

Let me know if I can help with anything.

-Ryan

Sunday, July 26, 2015

A healthy start...

It seems like at the beginning of each season we see an increase in the number of stress related injuries - pulled hamstrings, strained quads, tender hip flexors and so on. As we are getting this season kicked off, I thought it might be helpful to pass this along. Please have your daughters look at this.

I came across this recently, and I've found it to be a robust routine to warm-up or cool-down or to work on flexibility. All you need is a foam roller and a lacrosse ball (or alpha ball) and about 15 minutes.

Here's a youtube video that walks you through the whole routine. It's called the "Limber 11."

If you don't feel like sitting through the whole youtube video (it's 20 minutes), then here's a page that shows all 11 movements in .gifs.

While we are ramping up the work load over the next few weeks, try to work in the Limber 11 before or after training. There's no reason why you can't do this every day.

Friday, July 24, 2015

Pre season training

Tonight 23rd on L2 8pm

Sunday 26th on L2 3pm

Monday 27th on L2 8pm

Thurs 30th on Futsal 8pm

Sat August 1st - 9:30am at McGovern vs 01G Navy

Monday, July 20, 2015

Back to reality...

I hope you've been enjoying your summer. Mine has been flying by.

Schedule
Believe it or not, we will get back to training this week. Our participation in Premier League means an earlier start and a different schedule. We begin the weekend of August 8-9 in College Station. We will be traveling for all of our games. We will play every other weekend, both Saturday and Sunday. Take a look at the schedule here. Note that Labor Day weekend we will be in Little Rock for all three days.

I'm assuming the College Station is not an overnight trip for us, but everything else will be. I'll be back in touch with y'all about hotels and travel arrangements.

Training
Our normal training sessions will be Tuesday and Thursday at South Campus (1S) from 8:10-9:30pm. Our 3rd session will be at the futsal courts on Wednesday at the same time, 8:10-9:30pm.

As you know, HESC is implementing TRX training as well. We will be working that into the mix. We are still undecided on whether or not we'll add some extra time with Roz this season. Stay tuned.

Mark gets back into town this week and would like to start training this Wednesday!

Tournaments
This is an important year for the girls in terms of getting in front of college coaches, so we'll definitely be looking into some big tournaments this season. We are still researching this, but the easiest option at this point looks like returning to Disney. Stay tuned for more on this. And a big thanks to Rick Schachter for looking into all of our options here.

Other
I'm sure there's more to this season, but I don't have all the details yet. There are some new acronyms floating around that I don't fully understand. Don't assume that this is all there is for the fall season. We should know more this week.

If you can't make our first games (or any of our games for that matter), let me know ASAP.

Uniforms should be here fairly soon, I think.

And last, but not least, is our roster. As you may have noticed there are a couple of changes to the team this fall. We want to welcome Hannah and Amber to the team. You parents may not know them, but your daughters surely will. This is quite an impressive lineup in my humble opinion.

For the 2015 Fall season, the 00G Navy team looks like this:

Madeline Beavers
Makenzie Bell
Hannah Bodron
McKenzie Borchers
Lauren Cerda
Katerina Coggeshall
Claire Crane
Mary Dade
Natalie Festa
Trinity Hernandez
Eleanor Hewell
Mackenzie Johnson
Emma Kallmeyer
Julia Roberts
Amber Ruiz
Paola Sagel
Allison Schachter
Norma Trejo

Questions? Comments? Complaints? Call me or email me! I probably won't know the answer, but I'm happy to talk!

Ryan