Over this spring break, I went to Nashville, TN in order to do football kicking lessons in person with my phenomenal coach, Obi Egekeze. I spent four days there, and each day, from 8:00 to 9:30 or 9:45, I went to a public football field and met with him to practice. I was very excited for this trip, and I remained excited throughout my time in Nashville. The first day, I performed well and I was excited to see that my starting point for the trip was already so good. I took a tour of Vanderbilt afterwards and was able to meet up with my second cousin, who attends the school. After that, my mom and I went out to line dance. The second day, my leg was tired from the previous day of kicking and fun line dancing, so we took just a few less kicks, but I got much better and made many more than the day before. I was 100% successful on extra points.
That second day, I may have overdone my schedule. After the kicking lesson, I went to meet with my online class’s teacher and my classmate from the class, and walked around the large campus in high heeled boots. Right after, I went to a hot yoga class nearby to see what the difference was between CT yoga and Nashville yoga. It turns out they’re very similar, and I could imagine the same instruction there happening in a CT class. I enjoyed it and sweat a lot. Then, I went back to the Airbnb, showered, got ready, and went out with my mom to go line dancing and exploring the lively/overwhelming downtown area of Nashville. We shopped, danced, and walked for three hours. Then, we walked ten minutes to a restaurant where we met my dad and had a fabulous dinner.
On the third day, I was exhausted and I was slightly under the weather. The temperatures during our trip had been uncharacteristically cold and I had a violently runny nose. I made significantly less kicks than the days before, and I was quite discouraged. There was a lot of activity in the area as flag football games were getting set up on the same field. I felt rushed and annoyed that I wasn’t performing very well. Still, a man who came for the flag football with his son made kind comments about my kicking and my courage, and how there are many girls now on the area’s flag football teams and middle school football teams. That was comforting. For the rest of the day, I realized I wanted to focus on rest and only doing what I felt up to doing. We went back to the hotel and I laid down on the couch and watched Lilo and Stitch all the way through. Then we went to a famous Nashville restaurant called Hattie B’s hot chicken, and we ordered food which we brought back to our room because the line to get in was far too long. It was delicious. After a bit more resting, we went out in the rental car and visited a trendy area of Nashville called the Gulch. It had great shops and murals. Then we returned to downtown Nashville with hopes of doing some line dancing one last time, and getting my dad out on the floor. Unfortunately, as we approached the doors of the Wild Horse Saloon, we saw signs that said it was closed until 10 PM for a private event. We were heartbroken. We went across the street to get ice cream, which was homemade and delicious. Afterward, we walked the Pedestrian Bridge and got some cowboy boots for my mom. We had a nice dinner made of leftovers.
The fourth day, we were set with our bags packed ready to leave to the airport soon after the kicking lesson. I wasn’t feeling very well due to the dry conditions and the cold I caught, and my parents asked me a few times if I really wanted to go. They said I could always stay back and choose to rest, but I was really eager to get as much kicking practice with my coach as possible, so I decided to go. It may have been the coldest morning of them all, at 36 degrees. My leg was sore and my nose stuffed, but I tried my best and listened to all of Obi’s instructions. Thankfully there were no flag football fans at the field like the day before. I improved where I hoped to improve, and though my numbers didn’t show it, I got a lot better than the day before, and I crushed my very last kick of the trip. On the previous three days, we had reviewed the film of my kicks outside, but that fourth day we drove to a Starbucks to watch it there and get out of the cold. The film was promising as it showed a lot of improvement in my technique where Obi had coached me to tweak different things. We compared the videos from that day to the days before and saw that I had gotten much better with my form, and just needed one or two more adjustments to get to where I wanted to be. I was very happy with this, and as I said goodbye to my coach and started the journey home, I could only think of how much more I’d get to improve before the next season.
Comments