Northern Michigan Hockey Part 1

I began my weekend of insanity with a hockey game against Northern Michigan. The crowd was great. However, my regular seating group was strangely absent, and only two of the four tickets were given away. That kind of miffed me because I could have easily found takers for the free seats. Blarg. Also, the trash-talking euphonium player was wearing last year's uniform. What is up with that? Also, why do they change the uniforms every year? The are very similar but not quite the same. I, personally, like the yellow ones with the word "Michigan" diagonally across the torso.
Anyway, Northern Michigan started off the game by sliding all over themselves on the ice. I was wondering what was up with them. I've never seen a team fall that much before. I suppose that they were trying to beat us with speed, and just kept losing control. Do they just not have good ice in the UP? Yeah, well, you are not going to beat us with speed. We actually managed to capitalize on some power plays. So, I am happy.
In the end we scored three embarrassing goals on them while giving up one.
It was a good one-sided thumping. I was kind of hoping for a little more competitive game, which I will discuss at a later time. My next entry will discuss men's tennis against Notre Dame.

Miami Part 2

OK, so what would you do as an official after a rather chippy game where you missed some obvious calls, crack down on the physicality and tow the hard line on penalties? Apparently not. The Saturday nigh game against Miami was something of a spectacle for all of the wrong reasons. Maybe it was the back check from Miami that sent our player to the ground and caused us to get a penalty. Maybe it was the continued failure to call goaltender interference. Maybe it was a series of questionable off-sides calls that really got us not trusting them. Maybe Miami just needed to learn to control their emotions (something I need to do myself on the ice), but it all started going downhill about the time the students began chanting, "The refs have lost control," and refusing to acknowledge them when they returned after the intermission. It ended at the the last minute of play with the third and fourth ejections of the game and enough Miami players in the penalty box to where the band had to start playing to cover up the derogatory chants the student section was creating for the occasion. To be fair, there were two Michigan players in the box at that time as well. Actually, they had to play over quite a few chants this game. It got to the point where they ran out of music.

Other than the excessive penalties and fighting on both sides, I'd say we did a bang-up job. Posting a three nothing shutout was pretty awesome, especially when one of those goals is short-handed. I love few things more than short-handed goals. Hunwick was on fire this weekend.

Altogether, it was a great experience. I do enjoy a ridiculous time out.

This weekend will see me with the last two home hockey games of the year along with a men's gymnastics match.

Men's Tennis

On the 4th, I attended the Men's tennis meet against LSU. I stayed for the doubles before heading off to the Hockey game. The double's had one of those classic situations where two of the matches were quickly finished resulting in one for each school. The last match consisted of a relatively evenly matched with dominant serves. Thankfully, that was the one by which I decided to sit. It went long and intense, but eventually LSU broke Michigan's serve resulting in eventual victory. Honestly though, Michigan came within a point several times of breaking LSUs serve. The style of play differed greatly between the men and women. The Men relied much more on power serves and close slams to score points. Because of that they tended to be much more erratic. The women relied more on keeping it under control and making the opponent chase it.
Tennis is honestly one of those sports I would want to play, but I feel as though my hand eye-coordination is so bad that the majority of my time would be spent chasing the balls. As much as I love running, I don't think that is what I really need. I gave up the idea of playing tennis a long time ago. Racquetball, however, is different since it involves predicting rebounds and projectile motion. Tennis just involves watching things fly by you.
The crowd was definitely full of tennis enthusiast. I sat next to an older couple who discussed their tennis playing friends, San Lee, and cryptography. Altogether, it was a fun time, and I my return because I was given a little punch card that I can redeem for rewards when I attended meets. I will at least consider going when the weather gets nice and they start doing outdoor matches.

Next up, Miami part II: "The refs have lost control."

Miami part 1

Ont eh 3rd of February, I returned to my true winter sport love, Ice Hockey. Supposedly, Miami (OH) was a good team.A goal in the opening minutes and three in the first period proved otherwise. After that it seemed like we stopped trying to score. The only time we scored for the rest of the game was in response to Miami's only goal of the weekend. (It was an odd shot that bounced off Hunwick's glove.) Actually, I hope we were not trying to run up the score and just practice defense, because we were doing some awesome defense. The game in itself was rather chippy and physical. I like a good physical game, but I don't appreciate it when our goaly gets flattened three times in a game and nothing gets called. Yeah, you can imagine how a team might not forget about that. I will discuss the results of that on Sunday. Other things that will be discussed are netminder's on fire, trash talking, a curious sort of offense, and a total breakdown.

To be continued.

Women's Tennis

On the 28th, I attended the Women's tennis match against Maryland. I think Tennis may be my new secondary sport for the spring.
First off, the facility is very nice, both indoor and outdoor. I could refer to it as the house that football built, but that isn't very specific at this school. It was very well attended for a Saturday morning but mostly by parents.
I'm not sure if I have anything really amusing to say about the match. Only one girl from Maryland grunted when she swung, and when she did she started winning. So, thankfully she grunted infrequently. Also, for some reason, the three doubles matches were worth a combined one meet point, while each of the six single matches were worth a point each? The doubles was best two out of three where three matches are running synonymously. I have an idea though. Why not make it a speed run? Whomever wins first completed match gets the point. It would certainly change the strategy. Those who are loosing woudl try to prolong the home, while those who are winning would try to push it. Of course different players naturally prefer different speeds. It woudl also encourage coaches to setup mismatches.  I think I am onto something.
Tennis is a very simple game. However, the terminology is just plain odd. Love, 15, 30, 40, game Why not 0,1,2,3,4? (Yes, I know from where it came.) Additionally, it gets annoying to have to keep track of points, games, sets, and matches within a meet. There are far too many numbers to track and terminology to mess up.
 Anyway, when It was getting time for me to go and freeze my butt off in Frankenmuth, the matches were still going. It looked like we had the meet int he bag, but the Maryland players kept dragging it out. I had to leave assuming that we would win but not being certain. We won 5-2.

Next, I shall talk about Ice Hockey.

Women's Gymnastics

On the 27 I attended a Women's Gymnastics match against Illinois.
This is one of those odd events where I did not know what to expect. The first thing I noticed was that there were four standard events: vault, beam, uneven bars, and the floor. The next was the crowd. Sadly, there was no student section. Why was that? Additionally, the demographic breakdown was a lot more even for both gender and age than I expected. I've come to expect women's sports to be frequented by little girls. I guess this is where gymnastics enthusiasts get there fix
What I find as odd with women's gymnastics is that it is the one sport I can name where the college people are at or beyond their peak. It seems strange that if they had not made it by the time they enter, then they never will. I did not see an Olympic worthy performance or anyone who is gunning for bigger things, which is something I usually see at all Michigan sports. Still it was very entertaining.
At the match, Michigan took an early lead after the first two events and manager to hang on for the win despite some pretty rough performances on the beam. However, Illinois lost a bit on the beam as well. I appreciated how the team and event was simply "I Beam" on the scoreboard. (I would not want to fall on one of those.) In the end, it wasn't the fact that we didn't mess up as much as Illinois that lead to our victory. We actually messed up more, including a heart breaker during our last routine where the girl suffered a season ending ankle injury and had to be carried off the floor. It was the fact that what we tried was technically harder and we looked a lot more natural in the execution, except when we fell. I tended to appreciate our aggression more than anything. That and our shiny uniforms. I just have two complaints. The first is that black is not a school color. The second is that tight warm-up pants are a bit distracting. OK, I'm not really complaining about that.

Tomorrow, I will discuss Women's tennis against Maryland.

Reminder

I need sleep. I will talk about the following tomorrow. Women's tennis, Men's tennis. Women's gymnastics, The roughest two college games I have seen against Miami Hockey.