Checking Back In with Laura Tomes

NORMAN, Okla. - Senior volleyball player Laura Tomes led the Sooners to their best season in school history in 2006 as they advanced to the NCAA Sweet 16 and finished with a final ranking of No. 12 in the country.

Now that Tomes has finished her collegiate career, she has begun a new journey with the U.S. Women's National Volleyball Training Team. Tomes was one of 11 members that were selected for the squad and has been training with the team since March 9. The team is training in the impressive Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs, Colo.

The Sioux City, Iowa native will periodically write a journal for SoonerSports.com describing her experiences in Colorado Springs. Below is Journal Entry No. 2.
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Hello, Hello again!

It's been another amazing week at the Olympic Training Center. During gym time this week, we worked mostly on our serve receive offense. Things are a little different here, so I'm learning more and getting better every day! We kept pretty much the same schedule as last week: Monday through Friday, 9AM to noon and 3-5PM practices with weights and conditioning following. Then we were able to have Saturday and Sunday off. I love being in the gym so much, but it was good for our legs (and state of minds probably) to have the weekend off. We will start being more heavily evaluated with statistics this week in preparation for cuts and summer teams, so it was a good little break.

Volleyball Begins Spring Season | Tomes Added to USA Roster

One really special thing about being here is all of the different athletes that are around, either temporarily or as residents, as I am. Last week, there were a lot of figure skaters here, which really took me through a time warp. I once trained here for an extended summer when I was 12. It was for figure skating, so seeing all of them here reminded me of that. I got to talk with some of them, and it seems as if they were all pairs' skaters (I was much too tall for that, I competed individually). However, it brought me back in time anyway.

It's so much fun to be able to make friends with so many different athletes of this caliber. There are a few Sooners out here and we like to brag a lot about our school when we get around each other. We tell everyone that OU is much better than other schools, but I've been able to meet a lot of different athletes. I really enjoy learning about where they are from and how they got here. Everyone is here for the same purpose; it's awesome to be surrounded by so many focused, talented athletes. We all have a lot of fun together. In fact, we (the volleyball team) have been challenged by the women weightlifters to a jump-off. We will, of course, win if it ever really goes down. I don't know what they were thinking by challenging us to this, we are clearly the better jumpers, but it's all in good fun regardless.

Outside of the Training Center, there are some really cool things to do in Colorado Springs. As you all know, we're right next to the mountains I wrote about The Incline last week. On our Saturday off, some of us decided to venture into the mountains again. Allison Anderson of Boston College, Kelly Bowman of Minnesota, Sheila Shaw of Wisconsin, and I went down to a place called Seven Falls. It's just outside of Colorado Springs's downtown; it was absolutely beautiful. There are around 250 stairs that lead up the seven falls of the waterfall, so we walked up those first. It was my first time seeing any waterfall, so it was amazing to walk up alongside it. Afterward, we hiked through a lot of different trails, and took pictures while enjoying the beauty of our surroundings. It was a great way to spend a day off!

As I wrote earlier, we're doing a lot of game-like situations and scrimmaging amongst ourselves for evaluations this week. Then, on Saturday, we are traveling to Fort Collins in order to scrimmage against Colorado State University and the University of Colorado. It will be interesting because we only have one outside hitter and no right-side hitter, but I'm looking forward to it! I'll let you know how it goes next time. Until then, Go Sooners and Team USA!

Journal History
No. 1 (March 22)
No. 2 (April 3)

University of Oklahoma Athletics

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