7-0

This weekend we were back at home to finish out the first half of conference play. Friday night we faced Cleveland State and a huge shout out goes to Rachel. She had 20 kills on the match to aid in our .339 combined hitting percentage and also making this the third time Rachel has had 20+ kills in the a match in her career. And Rachel was named Horizon League Offensive Player of the Week! Way to go Rach!

In addition to the outstanding offense Maisey and Taylor also collected over 10 digs each in the back row. We won the first and third game with little problem, the second game got off to a rocky start but the Panthers showed their incredible work ethic and motivation to win with a great comeback.

After a solid win on Friday night we were all ready to go in our pink to take on the Youngstown State Penguins. Although some of the Penguins got a good laugh from my pain before the game it wasn't enough to take down the Panthers. I was excited to wear the boots I had just bought but I had yet another wardrobe malfunction; though this time it didn't have to do with a book getting thrown at my feet but it was definitely in that ballpark. Being the terrible shopper I am I really didn't try on the boots before I bought them; just found my size and left. Well the boots were pretty tight around my calves and entire legs for that matter and by the time I got to the gym I had already lost any and all circulation in my legs. I was walking down the back stairs by Youngstown’s locker room and much to my surprise the team was just hanging out in the hallway. I'm going to let you in on a little secret, if you can't feel your legs and are going to try and go down a set of stairs, save yourself the embarrassment and find the closest elevator. I fell, and I mean fell..hard, so there's that.

After my graceful fall, Julie and Sammi came out swinging each getting 12 kills on the match and contributing to the .381 hitting percentage, Rachel collected 5 blocks and Taylor digging up 17 hits for the defense. Two nice wins this weekend helps us advance to 7-0 in conference and 11-8 for the season.

This means we are done with the first half of conference play and ready to take on everyone one more time. We start the second half of the conference by taking quite the road trip as we travel to Wright State and Oakland! The quote this week is always a favorite of every female athlete, or every female sports fan out there. Great job this weekend Panthers!

Until next time…

"Somewhere behind the athlete you've become and the hours of practice and the coaches who have pushed you is a little girl who fell in love with the game and never looked back...play for her." -Mia Hamm

Ice Box, Sweat Box, Two Bigs Wins

Greetings fellow readers, I hope the week treated you well! It is officially fall, volleyball is in full swing, the leaves are changing colors, and every other Twitter or Facebook post you see is someone trash talking their most hated NFC North team. In unrelated news, did anyone catch that Packer game Sunday? Ouch, tough day to be a Lion fan, am I right?

This weekend was one of the quicker road trips we have in the conference. We started out leaving Friday early afternoon and headed down to the traffic-filled city and made our way to UIC. As we walked into the gym, we all found ourselves immediately looking for one another's dead eye contact to make sure everyone was feeling the same thing we were. It was negative four in the gym, okay, maybe not that cold, but it was pretty cold! I’ll tell you, it was nothing short of being at the Frozen Tundra for a Packer game, minus the snow.

Despite the cold the Panthers played an outstanding game. The highlight of the game, for me, was in game three when we went on a nine-point run. Four of those points were epic blocks and the entire Milwaukee side of the gym was on their feet. We froze the Flames in three and got the heck out of that ice box.

We hit the road right away after getting some food ordered to the gym. We open the bags and start handing out the team’s food boxes when we realize there is an abundance of chips! The PCC clearly thought we deserved extra chips after that big cold win. Thanks PCC!

We made it to the hotel to find out that there was no set time for breakfast and that we just needed to be ready a little before noon on Saturday. Hearing the great news of being able to sleep in, my wonderful roommate Renee and I raced to our room to go to bed. We opened the door to find only one bed in front of us. I thought a nice game of rock-paper-scissors would suffice to find out who got the bed, but Renee thought it was better to take no prisoners and violently wrestled me to the ground for the bed. Don't believe me? Good, because that is obviously not true. I actually secretly love pull-out couches, no joke, so I took it without any hesitation.

We get to the Valpo gym, where we find it is a sweat box. Really? We all came prepared wearing layers still trying to thaw out from UIC and now it’s a million degrees? Cool. While we are waiting for the team to get ready and come out to serve and pass, whoever was DJing decided to put on the heaviest metal music ever. Much to our dislike, I guess I never really imagined Valparaiso being a “head-banging” metal school. "Party on Wayne."

With no hesitation we picked up where we left off the night before and beat Valparaiso in three. Taylor Golabowski collected 24 digs in the back row, and earned herself Horizon League Defenseive Player of the Week! Way to go Tay Tay! After the big win we were all ready to get back on the bus and head back to good ‘ole Milwaukee. Friday we take on our in state rival Green Bay at home! I better see you all there! Until next time...

"Show class, have pride and display character. And if you do, winning will take care of itself." - Coaching great Paul "Bear" Bryant.

Sail

The Packers are 1-2 and had a bye this weekend, Brewers didn’t even have a glimmering hope of getting into the playoffs and between the ASU crap call and the Badgers losing to Ohio State, I found myself starting to slip into some sort of a Wisconsin sports fanatic depression. But that didn’t last long because the Panthers went 2-0 to kick of conference play this past weekend!

The weekend started Friday night when we took on the newbies to the conference, Oakland. The fearless Grizzles came into the K ready for a challenge, but little did they know they were going to be playing against the Panthers and also the student crowd! The Milwaukee Swim and Dive team came and started a cheering section for the game, and they did a stand up job. Not only did they come in their “uniforms” but also with some sweet body paint displaying Panther prints and claw marks for some serious Panther Pride. They made a great and hilarious use out of the song Sail by AWOLNATION. All you need to know about the song is that it is pretty catchy, there are some lyrics you can’t really understand and then you hear a guy yell “SAIL”. Every time they would play the song (which was often) the cheering section would time it perfectly and scream out “sail” regardless if the song was still on or not. A huge shout out to all of you that came out and saw Myanna, Rachel, Julie and Nicole tear up the court offensively.

We sailed through Saturday as we took on Wright State, and I am happy to tell you there was never a moment when I thought a pen, book or 10-pound necklace was going to get thrown at me. We shut the Raiders out, putting up over 13 blocks allowing them to only hit a mere .047, and a huge shout-out goes to sophomore Nicole Latzig for collecting seven of those blocks!

Rachel was the queen of smashing overpasses this weekend, which brought back a painful memory for me. Rachel and I were seniors playing in a tournament, her repping Muskego and myself repping Kenosha Tremper; it didn’t end well for the Trojans let me tell you. Tremper had an overpass and Rachel, fearlessly, went to take care of it. The Trojans weren’t known for their blocking my senior year, so I’m sitting on the 10-foot line on the right side as the ball gets pounded in my face. Unfortunately my mom had the video camera rolling so the play is on record lingering somewhere in my parents basement. Nice job Rache, as for myself…hashtag embarrassing.

Susie’s metaphor this weekend was great as usual; we have been “studying” all preseason and this first week of conference it was time to take the “test.” We have been working very hard in the gym and all preseason as a result we are ready to take on the Horizon League full force. For all you Yankee fans out there, the quote this week comes from Derek Jeter on hard work, because we truly displayed hard work paying off this weekend. “There may be people that have more talent than you, but there’s no excuse for anyone to work harder than you do”

This weekend we head down to UIC and then make our way over to Valparaiso for another battle in conference play. For those of you who are making the drive down, I’ll see ya then; for the rest of you, until next time.