I woke up early and headed down to the hotel restaurant for their breakfast buffet. Unfortunately they didn’t have a Belgium waffle machine that I became custom too with travelling at SLU, but the food was good itself. I had a piece of toast, some sort of fried or poached egg, some little sausages and a potato pancake-type thing that tasted like the Lithuanian specialty kugeli. I was also relieved to find that the milk here tastes pretty normal.
After finishing up, Migle came to pick me up for our morning “weight training” session. I use quotations here because this is not the type of weight training I am used to. Let’s just say that this was definitely not a Coach Schork-type workout- No up-downs, no power lifting and no yelling :). After the strength coach rambled instructions in Lithuanian for about 2 minutes, the captain (who is usually the best about letting me know what’s going on) came over and told me what to do. This was definitely more of a fitness/toning type program and wasn’t too bad overall.
That night, my second practice was a little tougher than the first. Most of the things were similar, and again we progressed from drills, to play break downs, to going 5-on-5. I again felt like I held my own, but it was still usually hard to tell unless the girls clapped or gave me a high five or if the coach told me directly. The highlight probably came when I made a hook shot over our 6’9” center and coach said “Amanda” and then gave me a thumbs up- a sure fire way to know I was doing ok I guess. Practice ended with another pressure free throw situation (I barely rimmed out this time unfortunately) and I learned another similarity between US and Lithuanian teams- they too think it’s hilarious to have the trainer get involved! We all laughed and cheered when Migle came out and shot her two-handed push shot free throw. I couldn’t help but think of good ole Theresa Hummel and her glorious (2!) half court buzzer beater shots!
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