Two weekends ago, the Panther volleyball team finished the regular season with a sweep at the conference tournament. This outcome was unbelievable for our team, which started the season off with way more losses than wins.
With the wins at the conference tournament against Green Bay, Valparaiso, and Cleveland State, you would think we would be shocked and surprised to have won it all. But no, our team was completely composed the whole time, knowing we were going to win and advance on to the NCAA tournament. We are all so thankful for each other for the support that we give and receive from each teammate every day to make this conference tournament possible.
Another thing that every person on our team is thankful for is that our coaches let us have three days off for the Thanksgiving holiday. You will not find many other coaches that are as compassionate and caring as ours. To let us have those days with our families and to let our bodies recover was awesome. Thank you from the whole team!
Lastly, we are thankful that we are still playing. For the second year in a row, we’re the only Division 1 team from Wisconsin that is advancing to the NCAA tournament. As other teams are finished practicing, we still get the opportunity to compete with the top teams in the country.
The team, coaches and lovely people that support us all went to Fratellos restaurant on Sunday to watch the NCAA selection show for the upcoming tournament. We got a more respectful seed than ever before and will be playing Dayton Thursday at 4:30 pm. Thankfully, we did not get seeded against No. 1 ranked Penn State!
Tuesday, December 1, 2009
Tuesday, November 17, 2009
Off To The League Tournament ...
These past two weeks have been quite a ride for the Panther volleyball team.
With four wins against the Horizon League’s top teams, our team is truly on fire. The team went from 8th in the league to 3rd in just four short weeks - quite a feat. Everyone is happy that we have finally gotten into our groove and are now the top team to beat.
Off the court we have been busy preparing for senior night, which was last Saturday, and our upcoming trip to Cleveland for the conference tournament.
The senior banquet went well, even though a lot of tears were shed. Both Lauren and Kellye have helped to lead our team this year to get back up to the top, and we are all so thankful for that. Our team gift to both of them included picture collages and personalized scrapbooks.
As for preparing for the conference tourney, our team has a tradition of doing “secret buddies”. Everyone on the team picks someone’s name and keeps it secret who they have. For the week leading up to the conference tournament, you get your secret buddy a little present or write them an encouraging note. Once we get to the tournament, we go out to dinner and reveal who our secret buddy is and give them one nice gift. This is a really fun thing that our teams does and it always brings us closer. I am excited to see what everyone’s gifts are this year.
Cheer for the Panther volleyball team this upcoming weekend as we play in the conference tournament to get to the first round of the NCAA. Our team wants nothing less than to bring back home the golden volleyball trophy for UWM!
With four wins against the Horizon League’s top teams, our team is truly on fire. The team went from 8th in the league to 3rd in just four short weeks - quite a feat. Everyone is happy that we have finally gotten into our groove and are now the top team to beat.
Off the court we have been busy preparing for senior night, which was last Saturday, and our upcoming trip to Cleveland for the conference tournament.
The senior banquet went well, even though a lot of tears were shed. Both Lauren and Kellye have helped to lead our team this year to get back up to the top, and we are all so thankful for that. Our team gift to both of them included picture collages and personalized scrapbooks.
As for preparing for the conference tourney, our team has a tradition of doing “secret buddies”. Everyone on the team picks someone’s name and keeps it secret who they have. For the week leading up to the conference tournament, you get your secret buddy a little present or write them an encouraging note. Once we get to the tournament, we go out to dinner and reveal who our secret buddy is and give them one nice gift. This is a really fun thing that our teams does and it always brings us closer. I am excited to see what everyone’s gifts are this year.
Cheer for the Panther volleyball team this upcoming weekend as we play in the conference tournament to get to the first round of the NCAA. Our team wants nothing less than to bring back home the golden volleyball trophy for UWM!
Monday, October 26, 2009
Plenty To Smile (And Dance) About
These past two weeks have been victorious for the Panthers. With three wins in a row, there has been a lot to celebrate. It’s nice to see everyone smiling and truly believing in ourselves. We know we can still do well in conference, and with these three wins in a row, everyone else better watch out!
One thing that has changed at the Klotsche Center this season is that we now have the Panther tunnel at our games. Our starters stand in the tunnel before the game and dance and get crazy before their names are called.
It’s funny to see Kerri bounce around off of everyone and Natalie Schmitting doing her signature karate dance moves in the tunnel.
Along with dancing before games, some of the team had fun dancing in the locker room after practice on a rainy day.
Lauren Hintze, Jena, Morgan, Anna and I all took our umbrellas and tried to do a synchronized routine in the middle of the locker room. It was short and sweet, but nowhere near as good as the synchronized swimming routine during preseason.
With almost all our future matches coming up at home, there will be more pregame dancing, along with more winning. Go Panthers!
One thing that has changed at the Klotsche Center this season is that we now have the Panther tunnel at our games. Our starters stand in the tunnel before the game and dance and get crazy before their names are called.
It’s funny to see Kerri bounce around off of everyone and Natalie Schmitting doing her signature karate dance moves in the tunnel.
Along with dancing before games, some of the team had fun dancing in the locker room after practice on a rainy day.
Lauren Hintze, Jena, Morgan, Anna and I all took our umbrellas and tried to do a synchronized routine in the middle of the locker room. It was short and sweet, but nowhere near as good as the synchronized swimming routine during preseason.
With almost all our future matches coming up at home, there will be more pregame dancing, along with more winning. Go Panthers!
Monday, October 5, 2009
Entry #4 - Hot Potato
This past week involved a lot of practicing and preparation for our team as we geared up to play Youngstown State Friday.
Along with a week of practice and lifting came a little bit of soreness and a few weird injuries. Mel Jansen had one injury that was serious at first, but comical to talk about now.
Mel decided to make one of her favorite foods, mashed potatoes, on a Wednesday afternoon after practice was over, and we’ll just say her cooking experience was too hot to handle. After cooking the taters on the stove, Mel decided she had to eat them right away and burned her mouth and throat pretty bad.
According to Mary Beth, who was home with her at the time, Mel looked like she was in pain and was making weird faces. Apparently the mashed potatoes were really, really hot because Mel fell to floor after taking her first couple bites. Mary Beth, who was looking on, could not believe what she saw - Mel hitting her head on the stove and passing out because of the heat of the potatoes.
Mary Beth ran to MacKenzie’s room for help (because her lifeguard training only permitted her to save people who passed out in water, not dry land). By that time, Mel had woken back up with a burning throat and unaware of what happened to her. This story may sound serious to some, but when it was retold to our team the next day at practice, it was very entertaining.
The rest of the team made it through the week unharmed, other than a few colds here and there. To make sure that Mel stays safe, her roommates Mary Beth and MacKenzie will now take turns watching her eat.
This upcoming week we play four matches on the road. Our team is very excited to show people that Panther volleyball is about coming back, fighting and proving to people how good we truly are.
Along with a week of practice and lifting came a little bit of soreness and a few weird injuries. Mel Jansen had one injury that was serious at first, but comical to talk about now.
Mel decided to make one of her favorite foods, mashed potatoes, on a Wednesday afternoon after practice was over, and we’ll just say her cooking experience was too hot to handle. After cooking the taters on the stove, Mel decided she had to eat them right away and burned her mouth and throat pretty bad.
According to Mary Beth, who was home with her at the time, Mel looked like she was in pain and was making weird faces. Apparently the mashed potatoes were really, really hot because Mel fell to floor after taking her first couple bites. Mary Beth, who was looking on, could not believe what she saw - Mel hitting her head on the stove and passing out because of the heat of the potatoes.
Mary Beth ran to MacKenzie’s room for help (because her lifeguard training only permitted her to save people who passed out in water, not dry land). By that time, Mel had woken back up with a burning throat and unaware of what happened to her. This story may sound serious to some, but when it was retold to our team the next day at practice, it was very entertaining.
The rest of the team made it through the week unharmed, other than a few colds here and there. To make sure that Mel stays safe, her roommates Mary Beth and MacKenzie will now take turns watching her eat.
This upcoming week we play four matches on the road. Our team is very excited to show people that Panther volleyball is about coming back, fighting and proving to people how good we truly are.
Thursday, September 17, 2009
Entry #3 - Wrapping Up The Non-League Season
This past week has been filled for the Panther volleyball team. First off, last Thursday the majority of the team met up at Jena, Lo, Maddie, and Kellye’s house to watch our guilty pleasure, Project Runway. I personally am a HUGE fan of this show and have to watch it every week.
Not only did we all watch the show together, but Jena decided to get out her nail polish and redo her nails. This turned into everyone wanting to paint their nails, which turned into Natalie and Kellye giving people makeovers. All of this taking place during the commercials of course.
Next, we had to prepare for our tough weekend tournament at home. We hosted South Dakota, Western Michigan, Marquette, and Ohio State (or as they like to say “THE Ohio State). We won our first match against South Dakota, but couldn’t finish to beat the other teams. We fought very hard over the weekend and every match was close, but we ended up 1-3 in the tournament.
So, naturally, we were excited to play NIU on Tuesday because of the tough losses of the past weekend, but we were a bit down on ourselves. Once again Natalie Chery came through.
When we got on the bus to travel to DeKalb to play NIU, Nat gave everyone on the team the lyrics to song for our team a’ capella group. Everyone kind of chuckled, but not Natalie, she told us what part we would be singing and told us that we would be practicing the song on the bus. We mastered the intro to the song and sang it loud and proud. Susie even said it sounded good.
With our spirits up, we were very ready to play Northern Illinois. When match time came, we took care of business. It took a little longer than we hoped, as we went to five with the team, but we pulled out the much needed ‘W’.
This preseason flew by, but it’s in the past and our team is ready to take over the Horizon League.
Not only did we all watch the show together, but Jena decided to get out her nail polish and redo her nails. This turned into everyone wanting to paint their nails, which turned into Natalie and Kellye giving people makeovers. All of this taking place during the commercials of course.
Next, we had to prepare for our tough weekend tournament at home. We hosted South Dakota, Western Michigan, Marquette, and Ohio State (or as they like to say “THE Ohio State). We won our first match against South Dakota, but couldn’t finish to beat the other teams. We fought very hard over the weekend and every match was close, but we ended up 1-3 in the tournament.
So, naturally, we were excited to play NIU on Tuesday because of the tough losses of the past weekend, but we were a bit down on ourselves. Once again Natalie Chery came through.
When we got on the bus to travel to DeKalb to play NIU, Nat gave everyone on the team the lyrics to song for our team a’ capella group. Everyone kind of chuckled, but not Natalie, she told us what part we would be singing and told us that we would be practicing the song on the bus. We mastered the intro to the song and sang it loud and proud. Susie even said it sounded good.
With our spirits up, we were very ready to play Northern Illinois. When match time came, we took care of business. It took a little longer than we hoped, as we went to five with the team, but we pulled out the much needed ‘W’.
This preseason flew by, but it’s in the past and our team is ready to take over the Horizon League.
Tuesday, September 8, 2009
Entry #2 - On The Road In Mississippi
This past weekend our team got the opportunity to play some very tough competition at the University of Mississippi aka “Ole Miss”. We fought hard every match taking three teams (Akron, UAB, and Ole Miss) to five sets, but luck and the volleyball gods were not on our side as we went 1-3 on the weekend.
Our morale was low because of the losses and uncharacteristic start to our season, but off the court there were a lot of things in Mississippi that had us smiling.
For starters, the fact that our team got to fly on small planes that only fit nine people and were chartered especially for us was awesome. No waiting in lines at the airport, no baggage claim, and no delays - we felt like superstars.
When we arrived in Oxford, Mississippi, all us girls hopped in a 15-passenger van and drove downtown to find a place to eat. Our coaches wanted us to get the full “Southern experience” so we went to a place called Ajax. The menu had every favorite southern food you could think of from cornbread to red beans and rice (which was my favorite).
While we were eating someone had noticed that the entire ceiling of Ajax was covered in colored toothpicks. We tried to figure out how they all got up there, but the waitress finally helped us out and told us to blow through our straws and shoot our toothpicks up to the ceiling and they would stick. Everyone had to try, some people multiple times, before their toothpick stayed, but our team left our mark by adding 13+ colored toothpicks to the ceiling of Ajax.
After the first day of competition, we were a bit down on ourselves, but Natalie Chery came to the rescue to boost our spirits. Natalie is musically gifted and for some reason she thinks that the rest of our team has musical potential. Nat found an old school song by Boys II Men that she wanted us to do an a’capella version of.
She took the a’capella very seriously - everything had to perfect. Because Natalie named herself director of our a’capella group, she held tryouts in her hotel room to see who on our team had what it takes to make the song sound perfect. Everyone on the team had a different part of the song that they had to audition for that Natalie had preassigned to them. The next day at breakfast Natalie posted her results for who made our a’capella group and what part they would sing.
Almost everyone on our volleyball team made the singing group except for Mel Jansen (she was pretty upset with Natalie), and it was funny to see that the director (Nat) had got assigned to the majority of the solos. There will be more to come with our a’capella group once we record the song we auditioned for.
Our trip was rounded out by eating more soulful southern food and squeezing our team with our sweaty, smelly luggage into our 15-passenger van to drive off to the university airport. We got back onto our chartered planes and flew back to Milwaukee not looking back, but only to the future.
Our morale was low because of the losses and uncharacteristic start to our season, but off the court there were a lot of things in Mississippi that had us smiling.
For starters, the fact that our team got to fly on small planes that only fit nine people and were chartered especially for us was awesome. No waiting in lines at the airport, no baggage claim, and no delays - we felt like superstars.
When we arrived in Oxford, Mississippi, all us girls hopped in a 15-passenger van and drove downtown to find a place to eat. Our coaches wanted us to get the full “Southern experience” so we went to a place called Ajax. The menu had every favorite southern food you could think of from cornbread to red beans and rice (which was my favorite).
While we were eating someone had noticed that the entire ceiling of Ajax was covered in colored toothpicks. We tried to figure out how they all got up there, but the waitress finally helped us out and told us to blow through our straws and shoot our toothpicks up to the ceiling and they would stick. Everyone had to try, some people multiple times, before their toothpick stayed, but our team left our mark by adding 13+ colored toothpicks to the ceiling of Ajax.
After the first day of competition, we were a bit down on ourselves, but Natalie Chery came to the rescue to boost our spirits. Natalie is musically gifted and for some reason she thinks that the rest of our team has musical potential. Nat found an old school song by Boys II Men that she wanted us to do an a’capella version of.
She took the a’capella very seriously - everything had to perfect. Because Natalie named herself director of our a’capella group, she held tryouts in her hotel room to see who on our team had what it takes to make the song sound perfect. Everyone on the team had a different part of the song that they had to audition for that Natalie had preassigned to them. The next day at breakfast Natalie posted her results for who made our a’capella group and what part they would sing.
Almost everyone on our volleyball team made the singing group except for Mel Jansen (she was pretty upset with Natalie), and it was funny to see that the director (Nat) had got assigned to the majority of the solos. There will be more to come with our a’capella group once we record the song we auditioned for.
Our trip was rounded out by eating more soulful southern food and squeezing our team with our sweaty, smelly luggage into our 15-passenger van to drive off to the university airport. We got back onto our chartered planes and flew back to Milwaukee not looking back, but only to the future.
Tuesday, September 1, 2009
Entry #1 - Preseason and More
UWM sophomore Sam Trawitzke will be blogging throughout the 2009 season. Her first entry recaps the preseason.
Preseason started Monday, August 11. During preseason our team had one long practice for 4 hours, then a 45 minute break (where we religiously watched “Full House”), followed by an hour strength and conditioning.
Steve Felde was out of town the first week of preseason so Travis took over his duties. We thought that we would have it easy with Travis, but boy we were wrong. On our first day of conditioning we walked into the weight room and saw 20 pound weight vests to wear while doing our lifting regimen. All Travis had to say was, “Don’t worry ladies, this will be easy.”
After we lifted we then ran 8 ladders (suicides), which Travis assured us would be easy. Travis rounded out the first week with a cone agility drill, which proved to not only be tiring, but dangerous. While shuffling around the cones, Lauren Felsing tripped and face-planted on the gym floor. Only moments after Lauren’s accident, Mary Beth also tripped over a cone and rolled her ankle. So, all in all, Travis pushed us hard during the first week of conditioning and 12 out of the 14 of us made it through unharmed.
The first two weeks of preseason were filled with more than just volleyball and working out. We are lucky because every person on our team genuinely likes being around each other. After practice during preseason, one or two girls would have the whole team over for dinner at their house so that we could all eat and bond together. Some of the dinners we had were: soup and grilled cheese, baked potatoes, tacos and sloppy joes. But my favorite dinner was Lauren Hintze’s homemade lasagna and garlic bread. I think the rest of the team liked it too because 14 girls went through two pans like it was nothing.
Another activity we did in the first two weeks was for a charity called Empty Bowls. We went to a pottery shop and painted and glazed bowls that will be sold at the event Empty Bowls which fights against hunger in Milwaukee. It was a really fun activity that allowed our team to bond as well as help the community.
Our coach, Susie, surprised us at the end of our preseason practices by having off of conditioning for a day and by inviting us to her country club to go swimming. While half the team was relaxing alongside the pool, the other half of our team was working hard for two hours on a synchronized swimming routine. Jena, Lauren, Maddie, Morgan, Mary Beth, Anna, Natalie, and Natalie organized a perfect routine that landed them on You Tube and has an impressive 55 hits to the date.
Preseason has been a quick two and a half weeks and it excites me to see what the future will hold this season.
Preseason started Monday, August 11. During preseason our team had one long practice for 4 hours, then a 45 minute break (where we religiously watched “Full House”), followed by an hour strength and conditioning.
Steve Felde was out of town the first week of preseason so Travis took over his duties. We thought that we would have it easy with Travis, but boy we were wrong. On our first day of conditioning we walked into the weight room and saw 20 pound weight vests to wear while doing our lifting regimen. All Travis had to say was, “Don’t worry ladies, this will be easy.”
After we lifted we then ran 8 ladders (suicides), which Travis assured us would be easy. Travis rounded out the first week with a cone agility drill, which proved to not only be tiring, but dangerous. While shuffling around the cones, Lauren Felsing tripped and face-planted on the gym floor. Only moments after Lauren’s accident, Mary Beth also tripped over a cone and rolled her ankle. So, all in all, Travis pushed us hard during the first week of conditioning and 12 out of the 14 of us made it through unharmed.
The first two weeks of preseason were filled with more than just volleyball and working out. We are lucky because every person on our team genuinely likes being around each other. After practice during preseason, one or two girls would have the whole team over for dinner at their house so that we could all eat and bond together. Some of the dinners we had were: soup and grilled cheese, baked potatoes, tacos and sloppy joes. But my favorite dinner was Lauren Hintze’s homemade lasagna and garlic bread. I think the rest of the team liked it too because 14 girls went through two pans like it was nothing.
Another activity we did in the first two weeks was for a charity called Empty Bowls. We went to a pottery shop and painted and glazed bowls that will be sold at the event Empty Bowls which fights against hunger in Milwaukee. It was a really fun activity that allowed our team to bond as well as help the community.
Our coach, Susie, surprised us at the end of our preseason practices by having off of conditioning for a day and by inviting us to her country club to go swimming. While half the team was relaxing alongside the pool, the other half of our team was working hard for two hours on a synchronized swimming routine. Jena, Lauren, Maddie, Morgan, Mary Beth, Anna, Natalie, and Natalie organized a perfect routine that landed them on You Tube and has an impressive 55 hits to the date.
Preseason has been a quick two and a half weeks and it excites me to see what the future will hold this season.
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