Oct. 17, 2012

Get an inside look at the Stanford women's volleyball team each week. In this edition, senior Jessica Walker talks about last week's wins over USC and UCLA.

Hey Cardinal Family,

It's JWalk delivering your recap from another fantastic week of Cardinal volleyball. After coming off last weekend's victories over Oregon and Oregon Sate, it was a quick turn around to get our attention turned to USC and UCLA. We geared up in practice pretty early in the week to key on both teams. I'm glad to report the hard work paid off.

Let me just say you guys have always been an amazing crowd, but this week you took it to new levels at both matches. I glad you're our home crowd! The atmosphere in Maples on Wednesday and Friday nights was nuts. It was so loud the coaches had to mouth out a few of instructions of our game plan during timeouts. On behalf of the team, keep it coming!

On Saturday morning the team got to hang out with Stanford's first Final Four team! They're an awesome group of role models, and getting a first-hand account of how far women's and Stanford athletics has come in that time gave us all a newfound appreciation for the program... not that we considered The Farm normal to begin with. Cross your fingers, but I hope some of their Final Four mojo rubbed off on us.

The volleyball gods granted us a little mercy with some nice R&R Saturday and Sunday, and I definitely got some much appreciated naptime in. I spent time hanging out with my mom who was in town for the weekend. It was also Carly's birthday on Saturday. She turned the big 2-0 and the team celebrated outdoors, in typical California gorgeous weather fashion, at a local park. Besides the ridiculous hats that we each got to wear I would have to say the taquitos that Karissa's mom (a.k.a. Mamma Rizz) made for the affair were my favorite addition. Although, I think Carly's "iCarly" hat coupled with a tiara for the birthday girl was spot on.

See you guys back at Maples next week,
Jess