Captain`s Corner
Wednesday, March 3, 2010
By Joh Curran

Hey everyone!
The countdown to the season is on! As I write this blog our first game of the ANZ season is a mere 18 days away!! And as you can probably tell by the excessive use of exclamation marks, I’m a little excited!
It is amazing to think that the 2010 season is almost upon us when it seems like the 2009 season just ended. But then I stop and realise just how long we’ve been in pre-season for. Training since October the Fever camp has been putting in six days a week running hills, running laps, running fast, running slow, running backwards and running sideways. In fact, if any of us could run on our hands, our fitness coach BK would probably make us do it. On top of this, we’ve also been working on our guns in the gym.
Gym sessions for our team are on Tuesday, Thursday and Friday mornings at the ripe old time of 6:30am and over the course of the pre-season, we’ve seen some great improvements in our strength with most lifting more than they’ve ever been able to in the past. And while this is great, there seems to be one exercise that our team puts above all others and pays more attention to.
More encouragement is given, more pats on the back are handed out if a personal best is achieved, and for some reason, when someone is doing this particular exercise, we find the urge to stop what we’re doing and watch the person like we’re watching them compete for a gold medal at the Olympics. What is this exercise you ask? The humble chin-up.
Sarah ‘Ebbott’ Ebbott is the current hero of the chin-up. If there were a town called ‘Chin-Up’ Ebbott would probably be the mayor, that’s how good she is. Just yesterday morning, after I had struggled through 2 chin-ups and my head resembled a giant Jaffa it was that red from the effort, I look across to see Ebbott pumping out chin-ups like she’s throwing herself a party and having the time of her life. She finishes her gigantic set, hops down off the bar as fresh as a daisy and decides that’s not hard enough. The next thing I know, she’s strapped a weight to her waist and is now pumping a few more out just for fun! -
Last Wednesday we celebrated Josie ‘Hose’ Janz’s 22nd birthday. Happy birthday Hose! Josie is the life of the gym in the morning providing us with never-ending amusement as she tries in vain to teach the more ‘dance challenged’ members of the group, such as myself, how to properly ‘bust a move’ out on the dance floor. While Hose shows us how the dance is supposed to look, she is always dumbfounded by how quickly we can turn a simple move into something that more closely resembles a baby giraffe taking its first steps.
Cbass and Maddog are also back from their tour to the UK with both having very successful hitouts against Scotland and England! It’s great to have them back! Mads performed exceptionally well while she was away earning player of the match for the second test against England. Congrats Mads!
The team is off to Sydney tomorrow to compete in the SOPA Cup. SOPA Cup is a pre-season tournament where we will get to play against six other ANZ Championship sides. It’s a great chance to see what other sides have to offer as well as a chance to test ourselves. Even more excitingly, it’s the first time that Ash Neal, Leah Shoard, Janelle Lawson and Sarah Ebbott will pull on the Fever dress. Good luck girls! As a group, we can’t wait to get out on court and improve on where we left off last year. I’ll let you know how we go!-GO FEVER!