Juniors Anna Bartz and Elizabeth Egerer are providing special insights (and more) on this year's VolleyBlog
This past weekend, we were lucky enough to have a tournament that required zero traveling. It was a nice ‘break’ since the last thing that we wanted to do was be with each other for an extra two days on a bus.
We started the week off on Tuesday before our NIU match by recruiting people to come to our game. We split ourselves up into strategically-assigned groups according to personalities to reel people in to come to the games. A group of us were at Sandburg and lured aimlessly wandering freshmen by pawning off flyers onto them and other unsuspecting victims. It was always a treat to have someone say “yes, of course we will come to the game” as they crumpled up the flyers that we worked so hard on right in front of our faces (you know who you are).
Another group of girls were at the Klotsche, and may or may not have consisted of one of the writers of this blog. She decided to go the extra mile (literally) and hopped onto an open elliptical next to a guy taken slightly off-guard and proceeded to elliptical with him until he agreed to come to the match. Strangely enough, we couldn’t find the extremely fit Waldo in the crowd.
Another group was located on Downer Avenue, mostly because the least amount of people walk there. We were afraid to place some of these angry Panthers on a more populated street where they might possibly be denied. One poor fellow shook his head ‘no’ to a Panther handing out flyers, and it did not go over well.
It turns out the hard work and determination to get fans at the match paid off, with nearly 1000 fans there! (Quite a difference to the 10 we had in previous years). Unfortunately, they saw a terrorized Panther as the Huskies defeated them in three.
We started the tournament off on Friday against the Akron Zips. We just Googled what a ‘Zip’ is. Apparently it’s a kangaroo. Who knew? Well we didn’t, that’s for sure. Regardless, we ate some ‘Roos’ aka ‘Joey’s’ up in four.
After the match we dined by candlelight (aka sunlight) and flowers (aka weeds) and bees (aka real live stinging bees) in the park--how romantic. Our five-star lunch/supper (aka lupper) consisted of Sloppy Joe’s and chips and about 17 desserts. There’s nothing better than eating four pieces of every dessert (cookies, skotcharoos, caramel bars and cream puffs, just to name a few) until about 20 minutes later when our stomachs hated us. Because we had to play again in about an hour, using the facilities just was not an option. So we held our butt cheeks tight and actually appreciated that PantherFest stole most of our fans so they couldn’t smell the gas coming from the gym. We played the Southern Miss Golden Eagles and our pungent odor knocked ‘em out in four.
The next day we were all ready to play the Marquette Golden Eagles. Not to mention any names…but in preparation we played ‘horsey’ around the gym, minutes before serve and pass. Apparently that wasn’t the best idea because the Golden Eagles swooped down on us in three.
WELL GET EM NEXT TIME. I’m Veronica Corningstone and thanks for stopping by…. You stay classy MILWAUKEE.
-- Biz and Anna aka Banna aka Aniz
