Self-described as "that girl who sits on the bench and catches scarves, books, pens and sometimes even heavy necklaces that Susie throws when she gets frustrated," she will be writing the blog every week for the team and the many endeavors they encounter.
Today is her first installment for 2014.
Due to some issues beyond our control, the start of the blog was delayed so we will catch up in one shot today.
The Panther Volleyball team underwent their first road trip of the season, a quick nine-hour bus ride to Springfield, Missouri for the Missouri State Tournament. Ok, so the ride wasn’t exactly quick, but it was a pretty good time if you ask me! The ride down was Snooze City, everyone kind of passed out the second we got out of Wisconsin until we stopped in Peru, Ill., for some lunch. Once we got back on the bus, everyone was basically up for the rest of the time either doing homework or watching movies. We got to St. Louis, we all leaned up against the window to take pictures of the beautiful Arch and then it was merely a hop, skip and a jump to Springfield. For those of you that don’t know (I was one of these people) Springfield, MO, in September is hot, like really hot. It got up to the 90’s while we were there, but luck for us we were in an air conditioned gym all weekend!
The weekend didn’t go exactly like we wanted it to. Our first match of the tournament we lost to the Summit League's, Oral Roberts from Tulsa, OK. We then came back to the gym Friday night with our game faces on and beat Southland Conference’s Incarnate Word, from San Antonio, TX in three. Saturday we suffered a tough loss to Conference USA standout Western Kentucky in four. Fear not, we will actually be seeing Western Kentucky again next week in Michigan so we will have another chance to take them on! Our last game of the weekend was against Missouri Valley hosting team Missouri State. We lost in three to conclude the tournament. Although we went 1-3 on the weekend a huge congratulations goes out to Julie Kolinski who made the All-Tournament Team, she played absolutely outstanding!
After the tournament we got food delivered to the hotel got ready to go to bed because we were leaving at 6 am Sunday to head back to Wisconsin. But we got a nice surprise at around 11:30 pm. The fire alarms start going off. Now, I’m not talking your run-of-the-mill school fire alarm drill, I’m talking ear-piercing sounds. All the coaches, our trainer and myself were in Susie and Lindsey’s room. Once the alarms went off we all stood up, finding our shoes and making our way (walking) towards the door. After we got into the hallway we were asking where Susie was, because she was literally right next to us. We turn the corner to get out of the building and Susie is sprinting down the hallway with some of the girls. Susie Johnson was not playing around with the fire drill. We all made it out, the firefighters came and checked it out and we were good to go back inside. We all made our way back in but not before we all took selfies with the truck and firefighters behind us. Sophomore outside hitter Myanna Ruiz took a selfie with Kayla with the firefighters in the background. Totally unplanned, the firefighters saw that they were in the picture and threw on a smile and a quick pose for the picture...it was priceless.
We got on the bus and headed on home Sunday morning. We slept, did homework, watched movies, the works. Then some of us played Catch Phrase, which seemed like a good idea but you could say the amount of competitiveness of absolutely through the roof. The teams were Seniors (Julie, Amber, Ari, Taylor, Hannah, and myself) against the rest (Nicole, Maddie, Maggie, Kaisa, and Jess). I am very proud to say the the Seniors steamrolled. Okay, maybe not steamrolled, I might be being a little bias because I was on the winning team, but we did win.
We are back in the gym on Monday and preparing for our next tournament, Minnesota! There we will play Iowa State, Tulsa, and Minnesota. Hope to see you out there! If not, until next time…
“It's not the size of the dog in the fight, but the size of the fight in the dog." -Archie Griffin
Welcome to the Milwaukee Women’s Volleyball Preseason 2014 and I’ve got to say sitting behind the media table watching Robert Morris play Miami-Ohio during our home tournament writing this blog brings the biggest smile to my face and maybe even a tear to my eye. I have a good reason for the tear, trust me, but we’ll get to that later.
We just ended our two week preseason and to say it went great would be an understatement. Everything went smoothly, the gym wasn’t 900 degrees, the alarms for the emergency exit doors that clearly state, “Alarm Will Sound If Opened” didn’t go off and there were no serious injuries.
If you came to the tournament this weekend you probably noticed that our bench of staff is just as large as the team that stands at the end of the bench. Joining us this year on staff is Sommer Hill, Jake Conrad, Rachel Neuberger and Maisy Mulvey. At practice we keep score and take stats, but mostly wait for Susie to come over by us and say something funny or sing a part of a song. The song is usually a throwback Destiny’s Child song, because let’s be honest, if you’re randomly going to break out into song it should be a DC song.
Here comes that tear again. This year we will be graduating 5 seniors. The seniors include Julie Kolinski, Hannah Blanchard, Amber Simonton, Arianna Wiersma and Taylor Golabowski. All the seniors were either freshmen or sophomores when I transferred here, so I have the most history with these girls and the friendships I’ve made with them I am truly grateful for...hashtag cheesy, but seriously. In addition to the 5 seniors it is also my senior year, I know, you all are running for the tissues. I’ve loved every second of being at this school and being apart of such an outstanding program. So thanks to all the players, coaches, parents and everyone that reads this, it’s going to be a great senior year!
My quote today comes from the roots of my hometown. Mike Yeager is the head football coach at Carthage College. Yeager has a goal list for his players when they come in the door. Like many coaches that have a goal list the first to are pretty traditional: first is to get an education and second is to win their conference. The third goal he sets for the team is to “Win the Day.” Susie encourages this a lot, did we get better as a team, did we individually improve, did we “Win the Day.” I like this quote a lot because it can not only be applied in sports but also in life. So this is me encouraging all of you to win the day, everyday; sports, school, relationships, life doesn’t matter.
We are off to a great start as we just won our home tournament going 3-0. We are headed on the road for a couple weeks now but don’t worry I will still be bloggin’! We leave Thursday morning for Missouri State for another tournament. Until next time…
”Win the Day.” -Mike Yager
