Nail Polish!

Hello Friends!

The topic of my blog for this year is…. NAIL POLISH! As I talked about in my blog last year, getting your hair done and looking nice is one of the womanly habits that make us women feel good about ourselves. Getting your nails done fits perfectly into that category as well. Unfortunately for us basketball players, we don’t have all the time in the world to go have a day at the salon and get a nice mani and pedi. Although I must say, when we do have that occasional day off, the salon on the end of California Ave, “Central Nails”, does know most of our names and our favorite colors! They also cringe at first sight of our feet! Haha Just kidding…kind of.

Let me enlighten you…

Our team's recent nail polish craze has undoubtedly stemmed from one key person: Jeanette!!! Now I know what all of you are thinking… “but Jayne is the one that is known for wearing her bright pink nail polish during games!” Yes you are right! Jayne has had articles written and pictures taken about her cute nails and great fashion taste. But let me tell you a little about my friend Jeanette.

First, some background info: I’ll start with her lovely parents. Cindy and John Pohlen are in the salon equipment and baking business. Cindy bakes our team the most amazing treats we have ever tasted and John runs the family salon equipment business in Southern California. With that being said, Jeanette has grown up around salon stuff and has made some really useful family friends. One family friend happens to own nail polish company OPI. If you haven’t heard of them before, OPI has the BEST nail polish ever with over 300 colors or something ridiculous!!

So now that brings me to Jeanette’s personal collection of nail polish. With over 50 OPI colors of her own, Jeanette has dark colors, light colors, bright colors, neutral colors, etc. You name it; she probably has something pretty close to it. From “Pink-ing of You” to “No Room for the Blues” or “Paint my Moji-toes Red!”, she literally has a lot, and knows the names of all of them! Her collection doesn’t stop with colors though. Jeanette has nail strengtheners, ridge fillers, base coats, rapid dry top coats, cuticle oils, and of course nail polish removers. Jeanette is very loyal to her OPI friends and only wears their polish, which is the best so I don’t blame her.

Like I mentioned before, Jayne is normally the one noted for her pretty nails and the variety of her colors. But as you can probably guess by now, Jeanette has played a key part in Jayne’s nail repertoire. Jeanette has lived relatively unnoticed with her nail polish by the public. For us teammates however, we have enjoyed her sharing the creative names of the colors with us for the last couple of years. We have all known about her extensive collection and hobby for nail painting. We admire her beautifully painted nails on the regular, which she paints herself most of the time! But for the most part, the rest of us on the team have pretty much sat back and observed the painting and colors that Jayne and Jeanette go thru.

It wasn’t until this last Christmas that our team took nail polish to the next level! You have heard our team’s crazy Christmas stories in previous blogs from my teammates and how much we all love the Christmas spirit. But this year, Jeanette decided to go the extra mile and reach out to us teammates even more. She gave each teammate a gift bag filled with nail accessories. We each got 6 color polishes, a rapid dry top coat, nail strengthener, cuticle oil, nail polish remover and a bottle of hand lotion. I guess you can say this is where our craze started.

Since Christmas, there has been a fetish amongst our team with painting our nails, especially for games. Everyone has taken part! It’s like we all wanted to become a part of the Jayne and Jeanette nail painting party without even knowing it. With Jeanette’s generous gift, it was like an open invitation for everyone to join in. Lo and behold, nail painting has officially become an important part of our whole team.

I will be the first to admit that I had rarely painted my nails before this year. I think I have had one or two manicures in my whole life. Painting my nails has never been a priority, let alone a hobby of mine, and I am positive that some of my teammates are the same way. I don’t know what it is or what happened to us, but I find myself, like my teammates, making and planning out my time before games so I can be sure to paint my nails. My teammates and I are often talking about who is wearing what color and what colors we like better. It has actually been very enjoyable too! It makes me happy when I have a new color on my nails. When we put our hands in the huddle at the end of practice, it’s like a rainbow of colors on our fingers. How can that not bring a smile to your face?

Nail polish and painting nails has really become another entertaining thing that our team just seems to engulf. But let me reassure that painting our nails does not make our team any less tough or focused. It is merely a way to remind us that we are young women and we like looking nice and taking care of our bodies. And honestly, it is really fun to have a nail painting party!

The coaches joke that they think that Jayne plays well in pink and Jeanette has good games with purple or blue, but we don’t actually rank our color preferences on how we play with that color on. I think the coaches just might be a little jealous because they didn’t get an awesome gift from Jeanette like we all did.

So that’s the latest craze with our team. Keep your eyes peeled fans. Bring your binoculars if you need to. But I guarantee that there is an array of colors that you are missing out on the court! It’s the little things in life that keep our team staying pretty!

Go Card!!!

-LuLu