Coach James Boot Camp

I mentioned earlier this week about my "tennis injury". I'm on the mend and thanks for the concern. ha ha. I blame tennis as my sport injury of choice because it was the only organized sport I ever participated in. Participate is saying it loosely.

I was suckered in to playing tennis by a good friend in high school. Yeah I'm looking at you S. :)
I was never ever good and yet somehow I finally began to really enjoy playing until the year of coach James' boot camp.
Tennis coaches came and went through out high school. Obviously there was not a great desire to coach tennis among the coaches. Jr. year we ended up with coach James the math teacher/ tri athlete/ drill sergeant. Coach James knew absolutely nothing about how to play or coach tennis but by golly she knew how to whip your butt in shape.

Our typical practice involved the following:
Stretch
Run the track for a good 4-5 miles. I can't remember how many laps 16 maybe?
Stadiums
Suicides
Weight Lifting
Push Ups and Sit Ups
Swimming
Somewhere in there she'd attempt to have us practice some tennis.
In case your not familiar with the beloved work out routine of stadiums let me enlighten you, as they will forever be ingrained in my memory. My pain is your pain friends.
Picture a high school football stadium one of the best in the state at the time. A pretty good size one in other words. Now, you know the stairs in between the bleachers? There is usually a good 4 sets of stairs between each section of bleachers. I'd say each set of stairs is probably 50 steps..maybe more. I could really exaggerate and say there were a hundred but that would probably be stretching it to much.
We were required to run up and down each section of stairs to complete a full stadium. I believe 10-15 stadiums depending on her mood. It was not a work out for the faint of heart..in fact I think it was the same practice routine as the football players. By a certain point we were buff enough to play football.
If stadiums were not bad enough, the swimming was almost the hardest. We were required twice a week to go to the Y for practice to swim laps and tread water with the girls soccer team. This was almost he** in itself as one if you didn't swim great it was kind of embarrassing and two treading water for 5 minutes or more is torture in itself. Especially after hard days of weight lifting and running. Your body is complete jello. There were days I could barely drive because my arms were ready to just fall off my body.
If you ditched swim practice you had to run even more laps or stadiums. Some days running extra was way worth the pain than swimming. Not that I would know anything about ditching practice..ahem.
The worst part of swim practice was "ego boy". I wish I could remember what we called him back then. He wasn't more than a year or two older than us and he got his jollies off of bossing us girls around. Since I was the type of person who could not stand egotistical boys of authority who were barely older than me. I would take his commands with a grain of salt. I always made sure to get in the back of the group...you know, where the wall of the pool is. While treading water when he wasn't looking, I would lean back against the wall to brace myself..or really prevent myself from drowning as my legs could only tread for so long before wanting to collapse. Sure he caught me a gazillion times. Sure he'd call me out on it. I didn't give a riff. What could ego boy do to me?
At the end of the semester we were probably in the best shape of our life ever. We all looked dayam good. Admit it S, you looked good to. I wish I had pics
Although we cursed and cried about coach James most of the season, by the end we loved her. We I may not have been the best tennis player(s) ever. She really tried. She did break us down and made us men..I mean women. I only wish I could be in half the shape I was then.