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
