Another Road Trip

Hello fellow readers-

Another road trip friends. This time it wasn’t eight hours away, it was just a hop, skip, and a jump over to Madison. As much as we love going there, we really don’t like them. So it was a win-lose situation. The journey started with a filling meal of Jimmy Johns. WE LOVE JIMMY JOHNS, and we must say they have the best pickles in town. Maisey insisted on grabbing “Massie’s” sub, and realized it wasn’t hers because of the lack of hot peppers. A couple bites later, she realized that “Massie’s” sub was really Maggie’s sub, and Maggie was stuck with half a sub.

To our surprise, they re-did the field house floor. Lucky for us, we didn’t have to play with spiders, flies, and cockroaches. One of our opponents this weekend was Bowling Orange… well they should have been Bowling Orange. They were actually Bowling Green, but wore hunting orange colored jerseys. Confusing right? We didn’t let that stop us, we stuck to the ‘game plan’ (don’t ask us what it is because we can’t reveal our secrets) and swept them in three. Wait, don’t let me forget. Maisey punched Taylor on the court, in the middle of a play. Let me explain… There was a chaos play, and Maisey and Taylor were going for the same ball. A little miscommunication if you ask me. Before either of them touched the ball, Maisey threw a fist at Taylor and continued to dig the ball. Good for Maisey for getting the ball up, sad for Taylor because she thought she lost all her teeth. A little blood and a couple fat lips later, we were back in action.

We always play in Madison around Juicy J’s (Julie’s) birthday. Amber volunteered as tribute and continued the birthday dance tradition. Sadly, we don’t have pictures to tell the story this time, lets just say there was a lot of ‘pop, lock and drop it’ moves.

We also played Iowa on Tuesday night for our first home game. The fans were AMAZING! The atmosphere was crazy and we can’t thank you enough. While this game didn’t go as planned, Coach Susie was able to show off her ‘stomping’ skills. If we aren’t playing to our potential, Susie expresses her frustration by stomping her feet. She doesn’t wear any old shoes; she’s always wears very fashionable heels. The next day at practice we asked her why she wasn’t wearing any shoes. She said, “My feet hurt too bad”. Sorry Coach, we’ll play better next time.

Victory Ice Cream

Well, we headed back to another city that ended in some kind of ‘oooo.’ Last weekend, Kalamazoo. This weekend it was home of the ‘Roos.’ Interesting places they send us I tell ya.

Our linebacker of a bus driver, Derek, awaited us on Coach express. Susie asked if he wanted to put on a uniform and play with us due to his intimidating size. He politely declined. To occupy ourselves from the colorful cornfields that sat outside our window, the team decided to watch a scary movie. Half couldn’t watch due to the horrific scenes on the film and half were totally into it Bad idea because some of us could not fall asleep that night. Next time, we’ll choose a lighter film (Little Rascals??).

We took a pit stop at Schlotzsky’s Deli, where the entire staff (about two people) could have cried when they saw the bus pull up. We tend to have that effect on people. One hour and some skimpy sandwiches later, we rolled out again with our boy Derek and headed to the land of Lebron.

Friday, we played two teams that rocked purple Barney-looking jerseys. Thank goodness we wear black and gold because those jerseys weren’t too flattering. We defeated the Purple Eagles (do those animals exist?) in three, and also the Golden Eagles (which wore purple not gold) in four. Don’t let me forget about our pre-game ritual. Miss Amber enlightens us with a good solo of Treasure by Bruno Mars and struts some pretty sick dance moves. I think a picture is necessary.

It was such a successful day, our coaches treated us to the very healthy McDonald’s, for a rewarding ice cream treat. We rolled up and we were drooling everywhere. It had been such a long time that we have had ‘victory ice cream’ due to the insignificant amount of wins last season, if you know what I mean. Ice cream always tastes better when you win.

After the sweet ice cream, our conversation went to the next level. It was a heated argument about how short girls are able to date men of any height, but tall girls are able to reach the peanut butter jar on the top shelf. You decide what’s better.

Saturday we sealed the deal. We took on the Akron Zips. For all of you that don’t know what a ‘Zip’ is, it’s a kangaroo. While their plan must have been to jump on us like a roo, we turned that around in their own gym. Our blocking and defense turned it up, which ultimately helped win our first tournament championship of the season. We couldn’t have done it without Hannah and her motivational phrases, such as ‘swiiiiiiiing for the hills’ and ‘Guys, side out. Side out guys’. We won in four and got out of there as fast as possible. Akron gratefully treated us to a nifty coffee mug that we will so desperately need due to the early AM workouts.

A huge shout out to Taylor Gruber for stepping in for our concussed friend KP5 (Kayla) and playing flawlessly. Congratulations to Taylor Golabowski and Nicole Latzig for making the All-Tournament Team, and also Rachel Neuberger for clinching MVP of the tournament. Get ready for next weekend when we take on our in-state rivals Madison, where we also play Bowling Green and Kansas.

Catch you on the flip side,
Han, May & Tay

The Blondtourage Takes Over In 2013

Hello fans-

You have yourselves new authors for the volley blog! The Blondtourage (aka the blonde version of Entourage) is here to enlighten you with some exciting events from our first road trip of our 2013 campaign.

It all started with looms. We love looming. Let us explain. It’s a little something along the lines of rubber bands intertwined with other rubber bands to magically create a bracelet. Some think that we’re too old for this, but hey, it keeps us entertained. Kayla, Maisey, Maddie, and Myanna (who chooses not to loom publicly for fear of not seeming ‘cool’) are all master loomers. Call them if you wish to pursue your dream of becoming a master loomer.

On the way to the Zoo, Kalamazoo that is, we watched a very inspirational movie, some shed a couple tears (Hannah). It’s actually called “Survive and Advance” if y’all need something to watch, we highly recommend it. Lets get to the food part, because as competitive volleyballers, we are professional eaters. We stopped at Buffalo Wild Wings, where it was $.60 wings, BINGO! Despite having to wait what seemed like decades because all of us could have eaten a cow (really hungry), it was definitely worth the wait. Another highly-recommended area to explore. After we wiped our faces and washed our paws, we all undid one button and got back to our wonderful bus, thank god for the bathroom in the back.

Now the serious part - a very rowdy game of catch phrase. Seniors and juniors vs. the little squirts (sophomores and freshmen). It’s basically charades (for you old folks out there). You are able to describe the word without saying the actual word. Our bus driver must have hated us, because we could have shattered the windows with how loud we were screaming. We might be a little too competitive, if there is such a thing.

Here’s a prime example of a freshman mistake. Our freshman middle, Kaisa, may I add she is from Minnesota (say a prayer for her), had the word cheese. Anyone from Wisconsin would be honored to describe such a perfect word. The way our Minnesota friend described cheese was ‘spoiled milk, and also curdled milk”. Sammi thought it was sour cream (Birthplace: Illinois) Sad to say, we didn’t guess cheese. Better luck next time.

As we arrived at the hotel, our crib-size beds awaited us. But really, Taylor’s feet were hanging off the bed and she is one of the shortest people on the team. But hey, some great cuddling went on, team bonding right? From there we had a pretty intense pool workout - we could have been mistaken for a college synchronized swimming team. Once we got out, the hotel supplied us with what seemed like face towels to dry off our bodies - they must have been on a budget.

Big Apple Bagels awaited us in the AM, a delicious supercharged energy food for our first preseason game of the year. While we didn’t perform as well as we wanted to against Oklahoma, we finally got all the jitters out for our matches against Western Michigan and Northwestern on Saturday. While those matches didn’t go as planed either, we put up a big fight taking both teams to five. A big shout-out to the three freshmen who took on big roles, but didn’t seem like rookies. Another huge shout-out to our fellow friend KP5 (Kayla) for doing wonders once again and making the all-tournament team.

Despite the losses, it was great weekend. We improved a lot and can’t wait to get back into the gym. We will miss the team meals, and will have to fend for ourselves again. We’re excited for next weekend at Akron!

Stay tuned folks,
Han, May & Tay

Duke Weekend

Before we start from the beginning, let us start before the beginning. (The most important part of this blog). If you haven’t seen our senior picture that is on the website and in the media guide, it is highly recommended that you look at it. It is one of those pictures that you just never want to stop looking at. Feel free to print it and carry it around with you everyday. If you are really feeling crazy, put it by your mirror, so you can strive to be that good-looking. It makes us wonder if there is anything more to life than being “really, really ridiculously good looking?”(Derek Zoolander)

Now we can start from the beginning - where it all starts. We have been in preseason for the last three weeks, so it has been interesting for all of us to try and get our skills back to their peaks. This Thursday, we departed Milwaukee to go to North Carolina to play at Duke for a tournament. When we got on our plane, we realized quickly that our duffle bags (that could fit large children) weren’t all going to fit inside of the overhead compartments. Because of this, some of us gave our bags to the flight attendants for them to check, which caused Susie to freak out for the remainder of the day that they would be lost. Turns out they made it safe and sound to North Carolina and Susie was fully dressed all weekend 

When we got to the hotel we had to do a pool “work-out” with trainer Will. Will has never previously worked with a group of girls. He realized quickly that we weren’t just any girls, but we are obnoxious girls who also struggle with bodily functions and listening during pool “work-outs.” The pool was cold and lots of the girls were being little wussies. Rachel and Biz did not like this and proceeded to canon ball into the pool giving the coaches a splash. Biz then saw an opportunity, and splashed everyone until they stopped crying like babies. Kayla and Amber FREAKED out. Apparently it is “frowned upon” to splash someone before they have a shower cap on their hair…. Who knew? The rest of the work out seemed to be going according to plan, though it took a while for Will to get us to stop blabbing on about nothing and listen up. For our last part of the work out we were supposed to race each other (sprinting in the water, not swimming) from the 3-foot area to the 5-foot area. Well we all participated, but there was plenty of hair pulling and pushing over in the process. Turns out that the 5-foot area was just a little bit too deep for some people and there was a near death experience this day. Amber started yelling and flailing her arms like she was about to die, but most of us were too busy laughing at her thinking that she was joking. She wasn’t. She cannot swim. Anna had to carry her into the shallow end again (I’m a hero). Sammi, a freshman, asked Amber while being extremely concerned “Can you not swim?” and Amber responded by yelling back, “NO I CANT SWIM! I’M BLACK.” She can be so stereotypical.

The next day we had our pregame meal at Champs, because last time we ate there we won, so we decided to be champs again. Superstition. No we aren’t superstitious at all. Well, sometimes… The food was delicious and they were playing great music, so Biz responded to this by yell-singing the song. Yell-singing is a form of singing that takes place while you are yelling. Apparently yelling in a restaurant classifies us as “obnoxious.” Typical.

That night we played Fairfield and won in 4!

The next day we played William and Mary and won in 4!

The night after our second win, we lost in 3 to Duke. We played absolutely terrible our first two games of it, but came back and really did well the third game. In our defense …. these girls could easily have been mistaken as the Incredible Hulk (except not green) or a forest (except in spandex … and not brown ...)

All in all it was a great first weekend!

RIIIIIIIIIIIGHT. The poison. The poison especially designed to kill Kuzko. Kuzko’s poison. That poison?

Biz and Anna aka Aniz aka Banna

WAIIIITTTTTTT don’t stop reading! We aren’t quite finished… Well we thought we finished this blog on the plane, but it turns out layovers can have a lot of action happen. As we were hustling to concourse D, we caught a train over from concourse C. All of us got onto it and there was still plenty of time, but low and behold outside the doors stood Maisey. Nervous and thinking the closing doors would close on her, she remained outside, paralyzed with fear. As we zoomed away, we watched as Maisey disappeared into the darkness, convinced we would never see her again. As we all hussled out of the train at our stop at concourse D, almost the whole team began to call and text Maisey. After not seeing her get out at the next stop a few minutes later, panic trickled into everyone’s eyes. We clearly didn’t have much confidence in her problem-solving skills … she (almost) proved us wrong! Minutes later we saw her walking toward us from the opposite direction. Apparently she had found Kevin, and they both made it to the gate. It was a happy ending.

They Are Back

Now-seniors Elizabeth "Biz" Egerer and Anna Bartz have agreed to return and be your very own inside correspondents for this year's edition of the VolleyBlog.

The pair says they're working on something for either the preseason or after the first weekend of the regular season.

In the mean time, we did stop up and interview them on camera for the Black and Gold Network. You can see the feature on the start of practice by clicking here.

16 And 0

On the road again yee-haw.

This was our last weekend of conference play and we were off to Valpo to take care of some unresolved issues. After being off for a whole weekend, we wanted to make sure we could still take prisoners.

We won the first set with our intensely good looks. We won the next game as well. However, in the third set we took a turn for the worse. We walked to the bench for the fourth set, and you could see the anger in our eyes. (Popeye face.) We were down 23-16. And we came back and won with an amazing (yet ridiculous) block and we won the game. (She says she only got that block because our incentive to win was ice cream and she loves ice cream and was done messing around.)

We can’t remember the final score, but the important thing is we won. Everybody knows close only counts in horseshoes and hand-grenades. We were rewarded with ice cream at Culver’s and it was delicious.

The next day we were off to UIC to see if we could pull off the unspeakable. Our locker room was actually a conference room. Sam tried to turn on and off the lights several times, but actually just put up and down the projector screen before she could figure it out.

We lost the first set of the game. Which is crazy! It had not happened in conference yet. None of us were worried, though. We ended up winning the next three games. Then we all knew, we had done something that hadn’t been done since 1994. We were the second team ever in the Horizon League to go UNDEFEATED for the entire conference season. 16 and 0 WAY TO GO!

Special congratulations to Morgan Potter, Elizabeth Egerer, Rachel Neuberger and Kerri Schuh for making the All League Team. Congrats to Kayla Price for being Newcomer of the Year (and being on the All Newcomer Team)!!! Also congrats to Kerri Schuh for being Player of the Year (for the second year in a row)!!!! Congrats also to Susie Johnson for being Coach of the Year!!!

So proud of our team for having too many awards to count.

Come watch us this weekend at the conference tournament!

-Anna and Biz aka Banna aka Aniz

On The Road Again Jiggity Jig

Just over a week ago we made our way down to Wright State in Ohio. That’s an 8-hour bus ride - talk about uncomfortable. We all slept for a good amount of time before Susie woke us all up to go eat at an Applebee’s. A bunch of us did the 2 for $20 deal they have there. If you do not know about this deal, you should - it’s basically amazing. You get your choice of two entrées and one appetizer for only 20 dollars!!! Talk about sweet.

Since most of us did this deal, we all pretended to be on dates with each other. This is normal behavior. And if you know our team, you know that A) we have no manners (aka talking with food in our mouths causing us to spit food across the table) and B) that most of us suffer from voice immodulation (aka screaming aka using an outside voice when we should be using an inside voice) when we are together. There were a couple people in the restaurant that didn’t look like they cared much for our disease and basically applauded when we left the building.

We got back on the bus and played a round of charades. For this game we made teams the upper class versus the younger class. To put it blatantly, the younger class was just…bad. They got a couple of words, but we basically kicked their butts. Aside from a couple of times that our bus driver almost got into an accident, we arrived safely at the Fairfield Inn in Ohio where we got greeted with warm chocolate chip cookies that were gone in about two seconds because we are fat.

We then proceeded to our rooms to get changed into clothes for our pool workout. We all got in the pool and cranked out that workout like it was nobody’s business. Then we got the heck out of that contaminated pool that gave many people rashes.

The next day we had some study time and then made our way to Wright State where we did amazing and beat them in three. We tried to stick around to see some of the Disney characters (they were hosting the Disney on Ice musical that weekend). The only people lucky enough to see any characters were the coaches. They saw Minnie. and Mickey. So ticked that we missed out.

(Editor’s note – the authors used another word for ticked and the fuddy-duddy editor decided it wasn’t for our younger audience. Not sure why other things are let to slide and that was not, but the editor gets the final say and he’s just in one of those do-good moods tonight.)

Saturday morning we drove to Butler University. We ate somewhere and it was yummy. It was something like Moe and Larry’s ... or it might not have been named after the stooges … either way, it was pretty delicious. We all made our way back to the bus and Morgan told Lindsey that Sam and Mary Beth had stopped into a store so they could use the restroom quick. Lindsey forgot and told the bus driver that we were ‘good to go’ and as we started driving we all looked out the windows and saw both Sam and Mary Beth sprinting after the bus, wailing their arms. Too bad the bus is basically sound proof so we couldn’t hear them yelling. We did end up stopping for them though.

When we got to Butler there were many, many people there tailgating for their football game since it was homecoming weekend. People must have been drunk because most sober people don’t just walk into a ginormous bus going five miles per hour. Anyway, we ended up beating Butler in three games, got the heck out of there and got home.

12-0!

Ladies and gentlemen, can I please have your attention. I've just been handed an urgent and horrifying news story. I need all of you to stop what you're doing and listen.

Watch this video. If you like the blog you’ll love the video.

GO KITTENS!

Go Panthers!

Biz and Anna aka Aniz aka Banna