Entry #1
Monday, Aug. 12, 2013

To all of you Pilot lovers out there —

I don't know how to start this other than just saying that the day has come, the sun is shining and the tank is clean. The day I am referring to is our first official practice as your 2013 Portland Pilots Women's Soccer Team. In continuing the tradition of the blog, we are also continuing the tradition of the past two years in the writer being blonde. That being said I, Lorielle McCluskie, also known as Lo, will be updating you with how the season is going and how weird our team actually is. I am a junior defender from…. well Jim lives in California, Heather lives in Arizona, I was actually born in Canada but I spend most of my year in Portland, so you can take your pick on where I'm from. A couple fun facts about me are that I love country music, cleaning, the Pittsburgh Penguins and How I Met Your Mother.

Lo officially accepts the position of
women's soccer blogger
 
The past six weeks before this point were dedicated to our teams' fitness and getting to know our freshmen and helping them to adjust to the college lifestyle and game. I'm not just saying this because I am biased or anything but what we have seen so far has been very impressive and makes us all very eager for the season to start. We are welcoming a whopping number of eight new faces to the team, giving us a solid roster of 23. Our new additions include: Mikayla Elmer, Alyssa Edenstrom, Parkes Kendrick, Ellie Boon, Danica Evans, Madi Hall, Ariel Viera and Allison Wetherington!

 
Last Wednesday we took the field as a team for the first time on the Ronaldo field at the Nike World Headquarters. We played the annual purple and white game giving everyone the opportunity to play and show their talents. That is definitely something we will not be lacking this year, the amount of talent we have on the team is immense. The next day we took no time going into a defensive mode and worked on 1v1s and 2v2s. We have continued to work on defense and built up the numbers to 3v3s and 4v4s. We also had our first day off, and we aren't exactly used to having so much free time in a day so who knows what we will do. All I can tell you is that we are all very excited and pumped for this season to start and to get on the filed and play the game we love. Those first steps on Merlo will be this Saturday night for our pre-season game against Portland State at 7 p.m.
 
Until next time Pilots fans (aka the best fans), 
-Lo