I Walk Down The Road And I'm Alone Again But I Will Sing A Song As I Go

I realized that my posts are super long. And most people don't want to take tons of time out of their day to read eight bazillion paragraphs. So i'll try to keep this one a little bit shorter. PS The title is the same song as the name of my blog, and I already posted the link in an earlier post :)


BYU Basketball camp. Approximately 8 hours of basketball a day for 4 days. Tired at the end? Try exhausted. BUT, it was worth it :) I had a lot of fun and so did Bezait. Congrats to her and her team (Compton Criminals, don't look at me, they picked their own name) on winning the 5v5 championship!


Every women's basketball fan should be familiar with the name Abbey Wilson (top row, second from right), she'll be on your Wheaties box before you know it. Same with Carly Stratton. Those girls know how to play some serious basketball. I met a lot of neat people and made some odd friendships. Sad thing is, I just restricted myself from FB and now I can't add them as friends! Oh well, more fuel to the flame of finishing the BOM! I've made quite a bit of progress actually, but the lack of facebook is harder than I thought.


Anyways, it was cool to get to meet some of the players and see the real side of college athletics. Big shout out to Coriann Wood (soon to be Fraughton) who was an awesome coach and one of the friendliest persons i've ever met. Congrats on getting engaged, Tucker is a lucky guy. Keep an eye out for #23, she's bound for greatness!

Okay besides the awesome friends and good basketball times, highlight of my week has to be having a wicked flashback of two years ago when I went to the same camp. I was sitting in the chairs waiting for camp to start on the first day as the "coaches" started to trickle in. The coaches were some womens bball players, some random dudes who had connections with the team, and some Cougar alum. I swore I recognized one of the huge polynesian guys shooting baskets but I couldn't quite put my finger on it. And then I saw another huge polynesian dude, even bigger than the first. And then it hit me. I was witnessing Harvey Unga and Fui Vakapuna in the flesh. If you don't know BYU football, that probably means nothing to you. But if you DO know BYU football, then you can probably imagine how incredibly excited I was to be seeing these guys in real life. And not just at a football game. Just shootin' hoops in bball clothes. They were real life human beings! For the uneducated folk, those two were some of the most amazing athletes and funnest to watch players to ever grace the field at LaVell Edwards stadium. At the time, Harvey had just broken the school record for most rushing yards by a freshman running back. I worked up the nerve to ask to get my picture taken with them, but by some dastardly turn of fate, I can't find the disposable camera that holds the proof.


Well, fast forward to this year, about 5 days ago. This time, there is this black guy that looks super familiar. But he looks too short to be a basketball player. And then I thought about the John Beck era of Cougar football and how short his running back looked from the stands. And I thought to myself, there is no freaking way that Curtis Brown came back to BYU for a girls basketball camp. He was a freaking stud when it came to football and he had graduated years ago. Why would one of the greatest running backs in BYU's history (he held the school record for rushing yards until Harvey came along and broke that record too) come to a fundamentals camp for high school girls for a sport that he didn't even play? Well I'm not really sure if that question ever got answered, but sure enough, it was the one and only Curtis Brown. This time, there was no messing with disposable cameras. I had my iPhone out and ready before they even introduced him.

It was a good learning experience and I got my fill of Cannon Center food and most importantly, the best fountain Red Cream Soda known to man. If I end up at BYU, Barq's RCS could be a large reason why. I did one of the scariest things i've ever done. I gave my friend a Book of Mormon with my testimony written in it. I had asked some of the other girls from our basketball team to put their testimonies in it too and i'm very grateful to them for being so willing. I can't really say much about the experience because I have no idea if she'll end up reading it or use it as a paperweight. But I know it's been a long time since i've been that nervous. It really was hard to share something so close to my heart and put it out there, vulnerable and open to rejection. But if there is any chance that she actually does read it and something clicks for her, it is worth all the nervousness in the world. I am looking forward to sleeping in my own bed for approximately the 7th time in the past 6 weeks. Gotta love summer eah?
PS Congrats to my good friend Tori Nye on getting engaged this week as well, I wish the best to you and Ryan!
PSS Here are some other pictures of me and my team (Y-Factor all the way! Its like the x-factor, BYU style) and others of me and some friends.
PSSS Don't mind how fabulous I look in these pictures. Basketball all day minus any makeup or hairstyling effort equals pure beauty, obviously.



Left to right...kind of...
Shell-butt, Daylene (yellow), Me, T-Payne, K-Dub, Soper (green), Cori, Tiff, Mel, Boozer, Whitters



L to R
E-money, Daylene, Me, Tiff, Cori, Soper, Rissa, Boozer, T-Payne, Shell-butt, Whitters, K-Dub



Sha-NayNay, me, the aforementioned C-Stratt



Sopes! n' Me
I still don't remember what her first name is, but with a last name like Soper, who needs a first name? She was probably one of my favorite people that I met here. She goes to Manti and guess what their mascot is. The Templars. Looks exceedingly similar to TEMPLES if you ask me...

"It is hard to fail, but worse to have never tried to succeed."