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It's time for the 2003 edition of What's Up With Women's Soccer. This year's journal will be written by sophomore Danielle Malagari with help from her teammates. Here's the first entry from the team's trip to Seattle.

By Danielle Malagari

SEATTLE -- It's 5 a.m., and the bus rolls out of the team house parking lot. The team is excited but not sure of what to expect of the weekend in Seattle. After a long preseason of intense practices, we are ready to get the season underway. We made our way from Baltimore to Philadelphia safely with only a rough landing.

On our way to the next gate during the layover in Philly, Carly Viher and Valerie Lawrence stopped by a steak shop. Together they demolished a stromboli and separately, they ordered chicken cheese steaks. Might I add, it was only 8:30 in the morning. I think I should pass the nickname of "Chunk" on to those two.

After that quick trip to Philly, the trip to Seattle would be another story. I sat on the U.S. Airways flight awaiting departure along with 40 other airplanes. There is a mass of storms ahead of us and we were much happier to be on the ground - but not able to fall asleep because we were scrunched into a HOT 2-foor cubicle with screaming babies and luke warm water provided by the friendly airline. Mallory Mahar said to me, "I think we should be that brave plane that goes" while she stuffs her face with Swedish Fish.....

Now its, 11:39 in the morning and we should be one-quarter of the way to Washington, but we are still on the runway. The captain of the plane, came over the loud speaker and announced a contest for the person on the flight who had the oldest penny. "1984, 1973, '69 .... '60" the numbers kept coming. The one who called out '60 was Jennifer Lovecchio, but soon after an elder woman yelled out "1956." Oh well! We still kept on checking our change. Then - "1945!" Yelled Jen again. "Going once, going twice, the prize goes to the holder of the 1945 penny." The 21-year old Jen won a bottle of cabernet wine from U.S. Air. Of course our coaches took it and made sure it was kept safe away from the team. But, yet again, we are setting our minds to do something and we are winning!

Guest paragraph from Audra Poulin
Hello, this is Audra, I just wanted to report two things to all of our readers. No. 1: We have been on a plane for 10 hours today. No. 2: We all have cankles and we're starting to get restless. I glanced at Carly Viher's watch and it read 2:07, I thought that makes sense, we went back three hours going west. But, Valerie Lawrence pointed out, that it was actually 5:07 eastern and we were really on the plane for 10 hours since we left BWI at 7 a.m. for Philadelphia. But we did finally arrive around 2:30 PT (5:30 eastern time) over 10 hours on a plane for the Terps, whoa! Now back to Danielle Malagari for What's Up With Women's Soccer. That's all for me today....

It's Danielle again ... as we touched down in Seattle the real excitement started to kick in. Of course we had to stop for our team dinner at - where else - Outback Steakhouse - at 4 p.m. PT (7 p.m. ET). It was very satisfying to finally eat.

Then we headed over to our hotel in downtown Seattle. The city was so pretty. We saw the buildings, the Space Needle, the new Mariners and Seahawks stadiums.

Once we checked in, we had the first of our many tours of the city. We started out on the main strip, which is Pike Street. On Pike, there were many marvelous stores such as FAO Schwarz Toy Store, Niketown and the Adidas Store, which we went into. There were amazing restaurants. We just can't wait for tomorrow when we can spend our parents' well earned money.

The clock now reads 8:25 p.m., west coast time, which means it has been a long day for the Terps. Off to watch "Finding Nemo" with the team.

This is Danielle Malagari signing off the Emerald City. I'll be back to update you tomorrow.