January 4, 2024: Bryant Park ( 12 hours)

Today I woke up at around 8:00 am because I had to be at the school by 9:45 for a 10:00 lift. We have weight trainers who come a few times a week to work with both the men's and women's teams. We like to watch most of the time to make sure our girls aren’t playing around and taking it seriously. After lift we all went to the cafeteria because the lunch ladies were making us tacos. Tacos are one of my favorite foods so I had to try some and they were delicious. They also had chocolate cake for lunch which was way too sweet, I was only able to take a couple bites. While everyone was finishing up lunch we had a surprise to tell them before we left the cafeteria. We told them we were taking them to Manhattan for a day of team bonding and activities. They were so excited that we were able to have some fun along with this long winter season. We let them head to their dorms and shower then we headed to the city. The city in the winter has such nice scenery along with many delicious food vendors. We ate some snacks walked around and did some karaoke. We were freezing so we ordered some hot chocolate. It worked for a moment but then the temperature started dropping more. We decided to head back to the school. It was dinner time and we were all able to create our own sandwiches. After dinner, we had an individual skills workout at 6:00 which we worked more on ball handling. Once that was over at 7:00 we started practice. We did lots of running and transition drills. The girls had a great practice, we realized that their mood from team bonding carried over onto the court. We knew that we needed to do this more often. Us coaches were drained, we headed out at around 10.