Duke Weekend

Before we start from the beginning, let us start before the beginning. (The most important part of this blog). If you haven’t seen our senior picture that is on the website and in the media guide, it is highly recommended that you look at it. It is one of those pictures that you just never want to stop looking at. Feel free to print it and carry it around with you everyday. If you are really feeling crazy, put it by your mirror, so you can strive to be that good-looking. It makes us wonder if there is anything more to life than being “really, really ridiculously good looking?”(Derek Zoolander)

Now we can start from the beginning - where it all starts. We have been in preseason for the last three weeks, so it has been interesting for all of us to try and get our skills back to their peaks. This Thursday, we departed Milwaukee to go to North Carolina to play at Duke for a tournament. When we got on our plane, we realized quickly that our duffle bags (that could fit large children) weren’t all going to fit inside of the overhead compartments. Because of this, some of us gave our bags to the flight attendants for them to check, which caused Susie to freak out for the remainder of the day that they would be lost. Turns out they made it safe and sound to North Carolina and Susie was fully dressed all weekend 

When we got to the hotel we had to do a pool “work-out” with trainer Will. Will has never previously worked with a group of girls. He realized quickly that we weren’t just any girls, but we are obnoxious girls who also struggle with bodily functions and listening during pool “work-outs.” The pool was cold and lots of the girls were being little wussies. Rachel and Biz did not like this and proceeded to canon ball into the pool giving the coaches a splash. Biz then saw an opportunity, and splashed everyone until they stopped crying like babies. Kayla and Amber FREAKED out. Apparently it is “frowned upon” to splash someone before they have a shower cap on their hair…. Who knew? The rest of the work out seemed to be going according to plan, though it took a while for Will to get us to stop blabbing on about nothing and listen up. For our last part of the work out we were supposed to race each other (sprinting in the water, not swimming) from the 3-foot area to the 5-foot area. Well we all participated, but there was plenty of hair pulling and pushing over in the process. Turns out that the 5-foot area was just a little bit too deep for some people and there was a near death experience this day. Amber started yelling and flailing her arms like she was about to die, but most of us were too busy laughing at her thinking that she was joking. She wasn’t. She cannot swim. Anna had to carry her into the shallow end again (I’m a hero). Sammi, a freshman, asked Amber while being extremely concerned “Can you not swim?” and Amber responded by yelling back, “NO I CANT SWIM! I’M BLACK.” She can be so stereotypical.

The next day we had our pregame meal at Champs, because last time we ate there we won, so we decided to be champs again. Superstition. No we aren’t superstitious at all. Well, sometimes… The food was delicious and they were playing great music, so Biz responded to this by yell-singing the song. Yell-singing is a form of singing that takes place while you are yelling. Apparently yelling in a restaurant classifies us as “obnoxious.” Typical.

That night we played Fairfield and won in 4!

The next day we played William and Mary and won in 4!

The night after our second win, we lost in 3 to Duke. We played absolutely terrible our first two games of it, but came back and really did well the third game. In our defense …. these girls could easily have been mistaken as the Incredible Hulk (except not green) or a forest (except in spandex … and not brown ...)

All in all it was a great first weekend!

RIIIIIIIIIIIGHT. The poison. The poison especially designed to kill Kuzko. Kuzko’s poison. That poison?

Biz and Anna aka Aniz aka Banna

WAIIIITTTTTTT don’t stop reading! We aren’t quite finished… Well we thought we finished this blog on the plane, but it turns out layovers can have a lot of action happen. As we were hustling to concourse D, we caught a train over from concourse C. All of us got onto it and there was still plenty of time, but low and behold outside the doors stood Maisey. Nervous and thinking the closing doors would close on her, she remained outside, paralyzed with fear. As we zoomed away, we watched as Maisey disappeared into the darkness, convinced we would never see her again. As we all hussled out of the train at our stop at concourse D, almost the whole team began to call and text Maisey. After not seeing her get out at the next stop a few minutes later, panic trickled into everyone’s eyes. We clearly didn’t have much confidence in her problem-solving skills … she (almost) proved us wrong! Minutes later we saw her walking toward us from the opposite direction. Apparently she had found Kevin, and they both made it to the gate. It was a happy ending.

They Are Back

Now-seniors Elizabeth "Biz" Egerer and Anna Bartz have agreed to return and be your very own inside correspondents for this year's edition of the VolleyBlog.

The pair says they're working on something for either the preseason or after the first weekend of the regular season.

In the mean time, we did stop up and interview them on camera for the Black and Gold Network. You can see the feature on the start of practice by clicking here.

16 And 0

On the road again yee-haw.

This was our last weekend of conference play and we were off to Valpo to take care of some unresolved issues. After being off for a whole weekend, we wanted to make sure we could still take prisoners.

We won the first set with our intensely good looks. We won the next game as well. However, in the third set we took a turn for the worse. We walked to the bench for the fourth set, and you could see the anger in our eyes. (Popeye face.) We were down 23-16. And we came back and won with an amazing (yet ridiculous) block and we won the game. (She says she only got that block because our incentive to win was ice cream and she loves ice cream and was done messing around.)

We can’t remember the final score, but the important thing is we won. Everybody knows close only counts in horseshoes and hand-grenades. We were rewarded with ice cream at Culver’s and it was delicious.

The next day we were off to UIC to see if we could pull off the unspeakable. Our locker room was actually a conference room. Sam tried to turn on and off the lights several times, but actually just put up and down the projector screen before she could figure it out.

We lost the first set of the game. Which is crazy! It had not happened in conference yet. None of us were worried, though. We ended up winning the next three games. Then we all knew, we had done something that hadn’t been done since 1994. We were the second team ever in the Horizon League to go UNDEFEATED for the entire conference season. 16 and 0 WAY TO GO!

Special congratulations to Morgan Potter, Elizabeth Egerer, Rachel Neuberger and Kerri Schuh for making the All League Team. Congrats to Kayla Price for being Newcomer of the Year (and being on the All Newcomer Team)!!! Also congrats to Kerri Schuh for being Player of the Year (for the second year in a row)!!!! Congrats also to Susie Johnson for being Coach of the Year!!!

So proud of our team for having too many awards to count.

Come watch us this weekend at the conference tournament!

-Anna and Biz aka Banna aka Aniz

On The Road Again Jiggity Jig

Just over a week ago we made our way down to Wright State in Ohio. That’s an 8-hour bus ride - talk about uncomfortable. We all slept for a good amount of time before Susie woke us all up to go eat at an Applebee’s. A bunch of us did the 2 for $20 deal they have there. If you do not know about this deal, you should - it’s basically amazing. You get your choice of two entrées and one appetizer for only 20 dollars!!! Talk about sweet.

Since most of us did this deal, we all pretended to be on dates with each other. This is normal behavior. And if you know our team, you know that A) we have no manners (aka talking with food in our mouths causing us to spit food across the table) and B) that most of us suffer from voice immodulation (aka screaming aka using an outside voice when we should be using an inside voice) when we are together. There were a couple people in the restaurant that didn’t look like they cared much for our disease and basically applauded when we left the building.

We got back on the bus and played a round of charades. For this game we made teams the upper class versus the younger class. To put it blatantly, the younger class was just…bad. They got a couple of words, but we basically kicked their butts. Aside from a couple of times that our bus driver almost got into an accident, we arrived safely at the Fairfield Inn in Ohio where we got greeted with warm chocolate chip cookies that were gone in about two seconds because we are fat.

We then proceeded to our rooms to get changed into clothes for our pool workout. We all got in the pool and cranked out that workout like it was nobody’s business. Then we got the heck out of that contaminated pool that gave many people rashes.

The next day we had some study time and then made our way to Wright State where we did amazing and beat them in three. We tried to stick around to see some of the Disney characters (they were hosting the Disney on Ice musical that weekend). The only people lucky enough to see any characters were the coaches. They saw Minnie. and Mickey. So ticked that we missed out.

(Editor’s note – the authors used another word for ticked and the fuddy-duddy editor decided it wasn’t for our younger audience. Not sure why other things are let to slide and that was not, but the editor gets the final say and he’s just in one of those do-good moods tonight.)

Saturday morning we drove to Butler University. We ate somewhere and it was yummy. It was something like Moe and Larry’s ... or it might not have been named after the stooges … either way, it was pretty delicious. We all made our way back to the bus and Morgan told Lindsey that Sam and Mary Beth had stopped into a store so they could use the restroom quick. Lindsey forgot and told the bus driver that we were ‘good to go’ and as we started driving we all looked out the windows and saw both Sam and Mary Beth sprinting after the bus, wailing their arms. Too bad the bus is basically sound proof so we couldn’t hear them yelling. We did end up stopping for them though.

When we got to Butler there were many, many people there tailgating for their football game since it was homecoming weekend. People must have been drunk because most sober people don’t just walk into a ginormous bus going five miles per hour. Anyway, we ended up beating Butler in three games, got the heck out of there and got home.

12-0!

Ladies and gentlemen, can I please have your attention. I've just been handed an urgent and horrifying news story. I need all of you to stop what you're doing and listen.

Watch this video. If you like the blog you’ll love the video.

GO KITTENS!

Go Panthers!

Biz and Anna aka Aniz aka Banna

Splinters And Comebacks

After finishing the first half of the season 8-0, we had a full week of practice before heading to Loyola on Friday to start our second round through conference.

Where do we even begin?!?! We arrived and walked around for a while in confusion. They are under construction for their new gym, so our locker room and the training room was in the building that was undergoing construction, yet we had to play in a completely different building, and it was Loyola’s Recreational Gym. There was no locker room for us there, so we held our team meetings (before, during, and after the game) in the gym’s closet, which held most of the equipment (talk about hospitality). Evan even got a picture of us during our ‘focus time’ before the match, check it out.



We used the recreational facility's public bathroom to change into our uniforms for the game and then headed up the stairs to see what the gym was like. For some reason it took us by surprise. We had a while before serve and pass so we sat on their wooded bleachers trying to keep the splinters out of our butts. “The same carpenter that built Cleveland’s locker room must have put together these appalling, splinter threatening bleachers.” (Quoted by Lori Price—thanks!).

In these pictures you can see Morgan holding a ginormous splinter, and these horrifying bleachers. Why do people think that leaving wood like that is ok? At least sand or stain it!







While we were waiting to warm up there were many hard-working men trying to get the ‘gym’ suitable for a match. They were rolling up dividers and somehow a ginormous cooler of ice had clasped onto the bottom of one and dropped all over the floor. Thank goodness for towels and the custodian, not that we’d be surprised if they just left it there for the game. We ended up winning in four (yikes) and got the heck out of there.

The next morning we were supposed to get on the bus to go to Green Bay by 10:30. All of us were ready and waiting by 10:25 … then 10:30 rolled around … then 10:40 … finally by 10:50 the bus decided to show up. That 20 minutes of uncertainty definitely put Susie and Evan on edge, and nobody wanted to get in the way after that.

We made our way to Boston Market (aka thanksgiving feast fast food style) and got our food to go so that we could head to Green Bay without any more delays. We were all on the bus waiting for Susie and Evan to finish getting their food when out of nowhere, the bus shut off. Most people wouldn’t think this was a big deal but all we heard was the bus driver say “you’ve got to be kidding me,” and all of our faces dropped. What else could go wrong? She got it started up and it shut off again. Susie got onto the bus, counted us, and told the bus driver we were ready. All of us crossed our fingers as she turned the ignition, and the bus started right up and off we went.

We arrived in Green Bay and started off ... let’s just say bad. We were down 2 games to 0. Somehow we found ourselves within the third game and came back and won the match in 5.

Although the win wasn’t pretty and Susie was definitely a little off-kilter without her wing-woman Lindsey to calm her down, we are relieved to have Lindsey back with us. All our prayers are with her family during this time.

10 AND 0 WAY TO GO!!!!!

See ya’ll soooooon.

Biz and Anna aka Banna aka Aniz

A Weekend In Ohio

The VolleyBlog returns with insights from Anna Bartz and Elizabeth Egerer after a weekend road trip to Ohio

This past weekend the Panthers had matches against Cleveland and Youngstown State in Ohio. That’s an 8-10-hour drive - talk about horrible. Lucky for us we got to skip out on the whole long, annoying bus ride together and hop two 9-passenger baby planes for a traveling time of one and a half hours one-way. If that doesn’t scream spoiled, I do not know what does. The flight to Cleveland was nothing out of the ordinary as Susie was close to tossing her cookies and a couple of laughing attacks that ended in tears (happy tears of course because what other kind is there?)

Anywho, when we arrived to Cleveland’s mini-airport it was raining, as it would for the entire rest of the weekend. Inside the airport we ate the entire large bowl of lifesavers in the lobby while we waited for a shuttle. Numzers. We took a shuttle over to the Hilton Garden Inn (what a lovely place). On the shuttle ride, the driver told Susie and some of the girls about how many famous people had sat in that same passenger seat… including Justin Beaver and Justin Timberland just to name a few.

When we arrived to the hotel we immediately walked over to Subway to have a “snack,” aka dinner, aka a meal an hour before the pregame meal. Don’t worry, nobody was hurt in overstuffing their faces. After we ate at subway we had about an hour to jump on the beds and have a couple of pillow fights before we were on our way to the Winking Lizard restaurant for our pregame meal. There is actually a ginormous real live lizard in there, however the winking part was up for debate. Talk about false advertisement.

It wasn’t long before we were on our way to Cleveland’s gymnasium. Since it was raining out, Susie thought it would best to sprint up several stairs to get inside (skipping quite a few here and there to increase her PR). Turns out that was actually a horrible decision compared to just walking into the gym because she wiped out halfway up those concrete stairs, leaving her with a raspberry and a wet pair of jeans. Lucky for her, she saved herself from a broken wrist with the ability to roll out of the tumble like only a true volleyball player could.

Once we were all inside a nice man took us downstairs to our dungeon-like locker room, filled with plywood lockers that were only there just to give you slivers (they could have at least sanded or stained them). It didn’t matter that they tried to hold us hostage and injure our silky smooth hands because we came out and killed the Vikings (aka mid-evil hairy men aka definitely not volleyball-ers) in 3.

The next morning we woke up to a delicious Hilton breakfast. Man, they have EVERTYHING. The lady even split a waffle in half so you could eat a half stack of French Toast with it (that way we weren’t limited to choosing just one). After that we crammed into a 12-seat van like a bunch of clowns in a clown car and went to Youngstown to take care of some business. We looked kind of like slugs out on the court but managed to pack up the game in three and get out of there.

Before we headed to the airport we stopped at the classiest Taco Bell. Across the street there was a puppy store (AWESOME!!!!!) Apparently some of us were being a little too loud for the people in Taco Bell trying to have intimate, candle-lit conversations along with their dinner. Unfortunately for them, we don’t understand the whole intimate thing, so the older lady had to tell us “keep it down” three times. Apparently it is “frowned upon” to scream in public places. Who knew? Not us.

After we ate, we piled into the van and drove to the airport. A member of the team forgot what Taco Bell does to her digestion system and let one loose. We thought we would lose a few due to suffocation, but the driver and passenger were on it and had those windows down within seconds.

We finally got to the airport and some of us were lucky enough to use the GOVERNORS PLANE!!!!!!! AMAZING!!! Aside from some leftover peanuts, the plane was super clean. Well done Gov-na!

That’s all folks.

Ta-ta for now.

See ya Tuesday and Wednesday at our matches against UIC and Valpo.

-Biz and Anna, aka Banna aka Aniz

On The Road And Then Into The League

Juniors Anna Bartz and Elizabeth Egerer check in with the latest always-surprising and never dull edition of the VolleyBlog

The Panthers departed for Western Michigan last Monday night to prepare for their Tuesday game against the WMU Broncos.

After going down a road with about seven different hotels we arrived at the Clarion. It seemed like it wouldn’t be a bad hotel, but let’s just say it was definitely no Sheraton Inn. When we got to our rooms we found out that the Clarion’s pillows didn’t come close to the cloud-like pillows we had experienced so many times before at the Sheraton. It felt more like pillow cases stuffed full of cotton balls, basically something we’ve all made in our high school home economics classes. The beds from the Sheraton made you feel like you were sleeping on air, whereas the Clarion’s made you feel like you were sleeping on hard springs. It was hard not to shed a tear when you opened up the curtains and saw that the Holiday Inn was only a parking lot away.

We had practice at the gym the next afternoon. We wanted to get there early to get our gear on and get ready, but that campus was ginormous and finding the gym was like trying to find a four-leafed clover. We did finally find it and had about 10 minutes to get ready before practice. Then we made our way back to the hotel, packed up our stuff and got the heck out of there. It wasn’t long before we were preparing to play. We were trying a different lineup because of a couple of ankle injuries and a concussion caused by falling off a bed. We must have all had something wrong with our heads that night because the result wasn’t pretty and the Broncos beat us in three, leaving us running for the hills.

Then Friday and Saturday we had our first conference matches against Green Bay and then Loyola. We were lucky enough to be home again and have our own beds to sleep in. Plus the less contact we had with each other the better. Half the team finally figured out what the heck a Phoenix is - aka the magical bird from Harry Potter? They came thinking that they could ‘Wingardium Leviosa’ us, but that spell was the wrong one. We fought back with the ‘EXPECTO PATRONUM’ and took the Phoenix down in four.

The next day we were fed a Hogwarts type pre-game meal to get us witches ready to take down the Loyola Ramblers aka wolves aka moon-howlers. They weren’t a match for the Panthers and they crumbled in our teeth in our three (for the first win in three of the year).

We are preparing for our upcoming matches that everybody should be at this Friday at 7 and Saturday at 4.

I’m Ron Burgundy - Stay Classy Milwaukee

Special Thanks to Morgan Potter (aka Porgan Motter aka MoPo aka PP aka best libero ever) for helping us with this weeks blog!

-Anna and Biz aka Aniz aka Banna