Spikes to the face and rolling on the ground.

Once again I update far too late at night.
Tonight, I attended the volleyball home opener against Xavier with Alton "The Wandering Canonical Helmsman" James Benjamen Luder III. I guess I have a few simple thoughts.
First, let us discuss our opponents. Xavier has some cool things going on with their uniforms. Any team that can put "X" all over their uniforms has something going for them. Their school name is on their backs right above the letters. At first, it looked like the whole team was comprised of one family. They were extremely excitable and shrieked a lot, especially when number 9 was on the floor. Her spikes were predictable, but she was loud, fast on defense, and not shaken by balls to the face. She gets the crazy spirit award. Also she gets the, "Oh my goodness, you look like a kid," award. If she is a freshman , then she has a lot of potential.

Now, our team. We have some monsters, that is to say the least. our spikes are scary. Admittedly, not know much about the game it appeared that we relied quite a bit on our sheer power to win points. Xavier was much faster to the ball on defense than we were. However, our power lowered their success rate significantly. Well, there is always room for improvement. I did appreciate one of our players scoring with her face. Back in high school gym class I would try to score with my head. That may have worked once.

Now, the student section, aka "The Zone."  That is right, we have a crazy student section with matching t-shirts. How many schools have that? Seriously, how many? They are noisy, and creative, shouting something about wanting Cheetos for no good reason, and yelling at the Xavier assistant on the laptop to "Get off Facebook." Altogether they were good they often shouted things which were intangible to me. One of their habits was to make noise while Xavier had the ball. This kind of behavior can be deafening in some sports, but for volleyball, its kind of pointless, because the ball is over the net before we get ramped up. You know, unless there is a series of really high bumps, or gravity and air viscosity get messed up somehow. Some standard but good chants were: "We still love you," after a mistake by us, "Face Ball," after "The Shrieking  9" took a spike to the face, and "There's a net there," after a failed serve by Xavier.

One final though: net serves. Why do these exist? I think my friends would agree with me that a net serve warrants a benching. I mean, even I can get it over the net consistently, and they practice this every day. Fundimentals first people. I don't care how hard you can hit it if you keep on hitting the net. No, going through the net will not cut it because, it still counts as a service fault.

Anyway, we won the set in four games. It was definitely a good time, and I may go tomorrow night as well. We will see. I may attend the field hockey game tomorrow morning, but I will definitely attend the foootball game.

As for football. Let's face it. EMU should be easy pickin's. That being said I admire that our coaching staff, is warning everyone that we expect Eastern to bring their best, and they have some talent on that team and some good coaches. Most people see this as a much needed practice.