Monday, October 27, 2014

Second Half Starts

Katelyn Hegewald, the student-manager of the team, takes over the Milwaukee Volleyblog on a full-time basis in 2014.

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 eighth installment for 2014.

We went into the weekend tied for first with Oakland and Youngstown, with Valpo and UIC tied for second. We traveled to Valpo and Chicago for a weekend of wins.

We headed down to Valpo on Friday and, as usual, stopped at the always-amazing Portillos. I am thankful for about a million things since I started doing this four years ago, but getting introduced to Portillos might be be in the top ten. So after the quick drive and pit stop for food, we ended up getting to the gym a little bit early, maybe not a little bit, more like almost two hours. The weather was gorgeous so the team got off the bus and started playing some old schoolyard games, which was a sight to see.

We got into the gym and Susie had everyone line up on the end line, a relay race was coming. After a very entertaining relay race, we played against the Crusaders and won in four. We got out of dodge and then got to our super-awesome hotel that had a pool with a waterfall right when you walked in the door (sorry, I am still secretly a 7-year-old at heart). The hotel also had a Starbucks inside of it which is pretty dangerous for me, I promised myself I wouldn’t get any, so naturally you could find me in line Saturday morning before we left.

Saturday we drove from Valpo to UIC and again, was a little early, so we took advantage of the unbelievable nice weather and spent a little bit more time outside in the Windy City. Another relay race, and a three-set match later we were on our way home with another victory. This makes us now tied for first with Oakland going into a one-match weekend against Green Bay on Friday.

As Maisey and I were sitting on the UIC bench, I remember turning to her and saying “God, I love this program.” I am not entirely sure of the play, but I am pretty sure it was a hard serve that Taylor passed beautifully out of her body line, Kayla did that really cool thing where she slides on her knees while setting a perfect set and Julie was there to slam it home. I turned to Maisey with the biggest smile on my face and again told her how much I love Milwaukee Volleyball. It was an outstanding weekend and I loved being apart of every single second of it.