Aug. 28, 2006

It was a busy week for the ISU Volleyball team. Most of you know that we started school this past week, so along with the stress of being a college volleyball player we are also enjoying the stress of college education. So far no one has died, but I think it's been close; No, not close at all. We are all loving school and we especially love volleyball.

We just recently returned from Central Michigan University in Mt. Pleasant, Michigan. We really enjoyed our trip, besides the fact that we came home one game short of a Tournament Championship. We are still working out some kinks, but I believe we showed great improvements and I look forward to the improvements this week also. Mt. Pleasant was an interesting place for a bunch of girls already acclimated to Idaho's dry climate. Your clothes never dried there. If you don't sweat here I can guarantee you will there, and finally the biggest challenge was that the floor would get wet every time someone dove on it, causing for many floor cleaning delays in the game. I guess this just makes us all appreciate the dry climate we came home to in Pocatello.

In our first game at Michigan, we played Wisconsin-Green Bay. We beat them in five games. The following day we played Indiana State, followed by Central Michigan University. It was a great learning experience for our entire team; I felt we did a lot of growing up this weekend. For three of us it was our first college road trip and what a trip it was. Our freshman setter, Christine Collette, made the all tournament team, along with sophomore middle blocker Jessica Gurney. Our team received runner-up over all. We were all disappointed in our loss to Central Michigan, and this made us even more anxious to get home to practice on Monday.

One thing I really love about our team is the desire to get better. No one is ever content to be the way they were yesterday or the day before, and I know good things will happen because of the continuing desire of everyone on our team to improve.

I said previously that I would be starting a player spotlight once we got into season. I am looking forward to highlighting our freshman outside hitter, Emily Waldron, this upcoming week and helping you all to get to know her a little better. I'll do my behind the scene homework on Emily to help you get to her.

Well, that's it for this week's diary. I hope to see you all at our game on Tuesday night against Montana-Western. Our complete schedule is posted on this web page and I hope you each received a poster in the Idaho State Journal this past Sunday with our schedule.