Kim Spinardi is a freshman guard on the 2006-07 Aztec women's basketball squad. Spinardi, a native of Merced, Calif., signed a national letter of intent with SDSU in mid-April and enrolled in the second session of summer school in early July. Each week she will provide a glimpse inside her new life at San Diego State, writing about everything from school to basketball to her new teammates.
July 27, 2006
The Spinner is back for another round. I just finished up my second week of college last week and already will be half way done with summer school at the end of this week.
Classes and workouts have been going great. My first class, women's studies, starts at 8 a.m. and goes until 9:40 a.m. Then my second class, Econ 101, begins at 10 a.m. and goes until 11:40 a.m. We are coming up on midterms here in the next week, so I have to keep the studying up! After my classes I usually come back to the dorms, get some lunch and get some rest before workouts. We have (voluntary) workouts every Monday, Tuesday and Thursday at 2 p.m., along with every Friday at noon, since we do not have classes on Friday. Workouts were great this week, as we are becoming more efficient with our weights, routines and activities. We are going to be throwing some weight around (soon), according to coach (Wendell) Richards. Along with class and workouts we have open gym every Tuesday and Thursday from 5 until 7 p.m. Open gym is great because many different players from various colleges come and we all play games continuously for two hours. It will only make us better to compete against players with great ability that play at the highest level. All the work in the off-season is what will determine our success during season.
This last weekend five of us teammates, Q (Quenese Davis), Lauren (Hoisington), J-lay (Jennifer Layton), Tamika (Lipford) and myself all went on a road trip to Las Vegas. We decided to go there because it was my 18th birthday on Sat., July 22, and we decided it would be fun to experience something different. Lauren is from Las Vegas, so we stayed at her house. Her family was nice enough to take all of us in and show us a fun time. On Saturday, my birthday, we BBQ'd, swam and played basketball in the pool. It was nice to get a good meal, instead of that cafeteria food. I'm sure everyone has been there, done that. Saturday night we walked The Strip and rode the roller coaster at New York, New York. I'm just glad we all made it off the ride safe. That roller coaster can get pretty scary at night time but it was definitely worth it.
During this last week SDSU Women's Basketball has been putting on a basketball camp for future basketball stars ranging from 3rd to 8th grade. Coach J (Jimenez) and (Director of Basketball Operations) Tammy Stephens, along with the other coaches, have definitely put in plenty of time to put on a successful camp and represent for Aztec basketball. All of the campers are really fun to be around and definitely keep us entertained. I know it means a lot to us players when these campers look up to us. I know it definitely means a lot to me, because I remember when I was the little one at camp, including the Stanford camp which Coach Burns happened to be at. I looked up to all of the players as I dreamed of being in their position. "DREAM BIG", as Coach Burns would say.
Being an Aztec is going great, I couldn't ask for anything more. All of the returning players have been great and welcoming, especially with many of us being new incoming players this year. I can only imagine the success we are going to have come October and all the way through March, the most important time of the year.
Until next time...