2013 Along the Chisum Trail2012 Along the Chisum Trail2011 Along the Chisum Trail2010 Along the Chisum Trail2009 Along the Chisum Trail2008 Along the Chisum Trail2009 Along the Chisum TrailWelcome to Along the Chisum Trail the 2009 Edition!!! Throughout the season you the fans will be hearing from head coach Karen Chisum and members of the Bobcat Volleyball team. They will give you a behind the scenes look into practices, matches and road trips.
Aug.18,2009 - Head Coach Karen Chisum
I told my SID that I'd start the "Along the Chisum Trail" blog this season and then turn it over to my seniors. I'm sure most of you would prefer to hear from the players and not me.
The "kids" are here and the season is near, to say the least. Along with the Bobcat soccer and football players, cheerleaders and strutters the areas around the athletic department is in full buzz!
Sixteen players are with us now after the first 3 days. It's been the usual physical testing and position training along with alot of ball control drills. Initial praises go out to Ashley Emanuel, senior middle blocker and a newcomer, Matti Schumacher. Both have led us on the "Claw Credit" chart. "Claw Credits" are earned through the results of physical tests. Although we lack a couple of tests to date, they will be the leaders for "The Mauler" specialty shirts.
The preseason polls have the Bobcats picked to repeat as SLC champions. The respect is nice, but we all know that the polls are for the media and the fans. They mean absolutely nothing.....what matters is where you finish at the end of the season. I would say, however, that my staff and I enter this season "cautiously optimistic". Replacing the three four-year senior letterwinners off the 2008 squad will not be an easy task. The talent is here; it's the experience that is missing.
Our focus as we move forward is on Nov 20-22, the SLC Champoinships. Some of the learning that has to occur is match play....real time expereince. And, of course, there will be ample opportunity for that to occur!
Our annual "Meet the Cats" is Monday, Aug 24th. We will have a full intersquad scrimmage from 5:30-7:00pm with player and coaches' introductions to follow. Refreshments will be served and the public is invited. That weekend, Aug 28-29, we will open up the season at the U of Missouri Classic with matches against Ole Miss, BYU, and the host Tigers. Our first home match will be Tuesday, Sept 2, vs Texas Tech.
I look forward to seeing you in the stands on the 24th and throughout the season. We finished 46th nationally in attendance last year and hope to surprass that in 2009. Join us for exciting action on the vollebyall court!
 August 31, 2009 - Ashley Emanuel
After many weeks of intense two-a-day training, sore bodies and increasing excitement for our first match, game day finally approached us. This past weekend we headed to Columbia, Missouri for the Tiger Invitational. During the weekend we faced off against the Ole Miss Rebels, Missouri Tigers and BYU Cougars. We fought hard against all three teams, but among the most exciting was our match against MIzzou.
Sets 1, 2 and 3 were played with a lot of intensity going point for point each set. The crowd roared each time Mizzou came back at us with a kill or a block but the animosity of the crowd and the trash talking of the sideline fans fueled our motivation to earn the next point. After many close calls by the ref and intense celebrations, Mizzou ended up taking the match.
We left Missouri Saturday night looking ahead to our next match with clenched fist yearning to take care of business with our next opponent. We take on Texas Tech on Wednesday at 6:30pm. Our minds are ready for battle and our hearts are ready for a win, but most importantly were ready to rip the Red Raiders!
September 9, 2009 - Jessica Weynand
Determined for our first win, we knew Wednesday night would be an exciting and successful night for us. With the help of 2,400 awesome fans and the fact of "being home," we defeated Texas Tech in three games. With heart and determination, we played great volleyball and the outcome was successful. Thank you to everyone who came out to support us and we hope to see you back!!
Our next goal was to prepare for the weekend in Wisconsin. Unfortunately, the weekend did not fall in our favor. The five-game thriller against Marquette was very competitive and exciting, but left us with an upset in the end. We went another five games with Austin Peay, but a slow start hurt us and left us unsuccessful. The last match against Butler did not go as planned and we fell to them in three. Despite going 0-3 in the tournament, Coach Chisum still wanted us to see the beautiful city of Chicago. On Sunday, we went downtown, walked the Navy Pier, shopped down Michigan street and enjoyed the "Windy City". After a day of sightseeing and relaxation, we came home Sunday night with the goal of working hard and preparing to win the upcoming games this week.
September 15, 2009 - Brittany Collins
Tuesday, September 8, was a quick trip up to Waco to play against the Baylor Bears. As we were getting ourselves ready for the match, we were impressed with the nice facility they had. We sat in our cramped locker room preparing for the match and the team decided no matter what we were going to fight until the end. We were going to "hold the rope" for every teammate. The match went fairly quickly with only three sets.
The loss on our record was another fire under our butts, as we came into practice through out last week. We were working harder than ever to get wins during the weekend. After a good practice on Wednesday and Thursday we were ready to face Texas Southern University and Hofstra on Friday.
The match versus TSU went well. We worked on a lot of things and won in three. Then that night we defeated Hofstra in four, while working hard on a quick offense and good defense.
On Saturday it was now time to play Texas A&M a much bigger rival for the Bobcats. We didn't play so well while A&M played very well, which led to our defeat in three sets. Our next opponent will be the University of Houston on Tuesday, Sept. 15. Let's claw the Cougars, as well as make the Cave family feud fall in favor of the Bobcats!
September 21, 2009 - Ashley Emanuel
This week was a weekend full of good wins. We faced off against Houston, Tuesday night with contagious winning attitudes. Among the most pumped for the match was Melinda due to a good ole sibling rivarly matchup against her sister Kinsey Cave who was the other outside on Houston. We battled it out point for point and won in four games and left the gym with our shoulders high, the taste of victory in our mouths, and texas state pride on our minds.
This weekened we headed to SMU for the SMU invitational against SMU, William and Mary, and Syracuse. We started the weekend off with a pre practice in the gym Thursday evening, and I unfortunatly had to go and sprain my stupid ankle, yup sprain.. not rolled. Who sprains their ankle senior year? I guess me ofcourse :( But anyways, Friday afternoon we opened up with SMU. We played hard point for point and took SMU to 4 games. We almost pulled a win but couldnt seem to finish the job as they came back and won the match. Later on that evening we faced up against William and Mary and beat their butts in three. Another loss would have just been unacceptable and if there is one thing we hate more than anything, its losing. Sat morning we woke up hungry for breakfast and another win. We matched up against Syracuse and took advantage of our strenghts and beat them in 4 games. Overall we got 2nd in the tournament which was something we havent done in a while so it was a good feeling.
Later that night we headed to Fort Worth to see our boys face off against TCU. We scored three touchdowns overall against the #1 defense in the nation! I heard from a little birdie that TCU has not let anyone score that many points on them at home since 2007, so TEXAS STATE is well on its way to domination! Conference time is finally here and I cant believe it , but time is flying. Southland Conference watch out because here we come!!! GO STATE!!
September 28, 2009 - Jessica Weynand
We had another exciting and successful weekend at home while opening up conference with Corpus Christi and UTSA. After all the pre-conference jitters and kinks were out, we beat Corpus 3-1 (20-25, 25-6, 25-20, 25-18). We came out very slow the first set which unfortunately, cost us set one. After we regrouped, it ended up being a great night .
Saturday was a very busy day for us. We hosted a free clinic to the public from 9-11 and roughly had about 50 kids. We had a great time working with the eager kids and every one of them received a free ticket to our match against UTSA that afternoon. Saturday was known as Legacy Weekend and was a big day for Coach Chisum. Past players, coaches, officials and alumni all joined us for lunch and supported us against UTSA. I think everyone had a blast reminiscing on the past and honoring Coach Chisum for her 30 years. Of course at 2pm, we played UTSA in the I-35 Rivalry match and won in three (25-23, 25-19, 31-29). The crowd was amazing and we focused in and put on a show for all our fans. With two conference wins under our belt, we are excited but not satisfied. We have a tough weekend ahead of us with Sam Houston on Thursday and Lamar on Saturday. Go Cats!
 October 6, 2009 Brittany Collins
This past weekend was a rough one for the Bobcats. Coming out of a road trip 0-2 is never something a team wants to happen. Thursday night versus Sam Houston was a tough match. Five games... game two going to a score of 30-32 in favor of Sam Houston and then game five 14-16 as well. The whole time we never thought we would lose the match and we felt in control most of the time. As Melinda was the hot hitter we gave every ball we could to her and she did her job. AJ was the other factor in the match as well, passing balls, playing defense, and putting the ball on the ground on their side really helped us. It just wasn't enough in the end; with the last point being hit into the block there was nothing the team could do to recover it. Final point and it was over. After the game on the ride home we all sat quietly and thought about the match and how we weren't going to let it happen again and what we needed to do on Saturday.
Then Saturday came and we were ready, or at least we thought we were. Normal pre-game meal, normal pre-game rituals in the locker room, and even pre-game warm up was great. We were ready, until that first whistle. It was like that whistle transformed us into a group of volleyball players that just couldn't play the game of volleyball. Nothing was going right for us, we passed balls over, served out, let balls just hit us, we were not completely there. Let's just say Saturday was not pretty, being swept by Lamar was not fun. The Texas State Bobcats are ready to work this week and figure out how to win in our Dig Pink game this Friday against UTA.
October 12, 2009 Jessica Weynand
After a great week of practice, we were more than ready to play UT Arlington on Friday night. We came in full of energy and pride and swept UTA in three games (25-23,25-18,31-29). It was also our Dig Pink night so we were decked out in our pink to support breast cancer research. Everyone had on pink ribbons, pink sweatbands, pink shoelaces and even pink fingernails. Our crowd was great as usual, and it was great to see them in pink as well. Before the game, we held a silent auction with a bunch of great prizes to also donate to the Central Medical Treatment Center. Overall, it was an amazing night, but now it's time to focus on defeating Central Arkansas and Northwestern next.Â
October 19, 2009 - Head Coach Karen Chisum
It was an interesting week last week. With UCA rolling into town, I thought we were ready to go. We'd had a couple of good practices and I "felt good" going in to Wednesday night's match. Well, if you were there, you know what I'm about to say....we were totally out of sync the first two sets. NO one was clicking! It looked as though we had never played together at all. The third set began very similar....we were all but dead, had both feet in the grave....down 13-8. However, Matti Schumacher, freshman who has played sparingly, went in and really gave us a spark and along with setter Shelbi Irvin, we battled back to win both sets 3 and 4. The fifth and deciding set was close, but it didn't go our way. We dropped that set 15-12 and UCA remained undefeated in SLC play. It's one of those things that "I wish we could play them again" but that's the last time we will see UCA this season.. (They are still ineligible for post season play so they cannot participate in the conference tournament.)
We had a short practice on Friday afternoon and then loaded Star Shuttle's executive coach and were off to Natchitoches, La. We stopped in College Station for an early dinner, hoping to visit with President Obama but he never showed!!! :) After 3 movies on the bus, a nap, some reading, we arrived around 10:00 to check into the hotel. We had a good breakfast and watched video of our upcoming opponents and scurried off to the "airplane hanger" converted into a coliseum at Northwestern State. We won our first true road match of the season 3-1 and then back to San Marvelous we headed. The victory felt good (dang, I hate losing!!!!!) so the ride home was fun. Found out that the Bobcats won in Thiboduax so we were excited for them. And, of course, soccer won Friday night to extend their winning streak and remain undefeated in conference play. (Go Soccer!) ....Back to the bus and on to San Marvelous! We had satellite TV on the bus so it was college football all the way home!
This week we have Nicholls State in Strahan Coliseum at 6:30 on Thursday and Southeastern La Saturday afternoon at 2:00. If you can believe it, we are down to our last two homestands so please come out and support your Bobcats! See ya Thursday night.
2008 Along the Chisum Trail
Welcome Bobcat Volleyball Fans!!! To your delight, this year's volleyball blog will be done by all three Texas State seniors... Emily Jones Wilkes... Amy Weigle ...and Lawrencia Brown! Make sure to check the blogs often as a different Bobcat will be giving you an insight to the wonderful world of Bobcat Volleyball!!
Emily Jones Wilkes- Senior - Middle Blocker
The first month of Bobcat Volleyball has been very exciting!
We reported on August 11th and have been going non-stop ever since. We started off with a pretty hardcore first day of running. We ran our F&G's, tested some weights, did a rough ab circuit, and then ran a mile... all in one day, which has never been done before. Another thing that was brand new to all of us was THREE-a-days! We'd leave the dorm at 7 in the morning and not get back until about 10:30 at night for the first week. It was pretty strange to be counting down the days to TWO-a-days this year. It was pretty intense, but we somehow all made it through like we always do.
When school finally started on the 27th, we were counting down the seconds until our first game! Our home tournament was a success as we beat Lousiana-Monroe, Sacramento State, and UT Pan Am. We lost to Miami, but we played hard and we still came out 3-1 overall, which I think is the best start to a season we've had since I got here three years ago.
Then we faced Baylor. I was pretty stoked to play them, like I always get before Baylor, but things just didn't go our way that night. We lost in 4 and should have made a much better showing.
We came back and practiced well on Wednesday, then headed home for a few hours of sleep before we flew out to Phoenix at the crack of dawn Thursday morning. We made it to Tucson around noon on Thursday and went straight to eat at the Rincon Market, which became VERY familiar to us over the weekend. The people in Arizona were so nice, especially the owners of Rincon.
Friday morning, we played the University of Arizona pretty well but just couldn't take a game off of them. We were still confident going into our second game against Texas Tech though and we pulled out a win in just 3 games! It was very exciting to play/beat a Big 12 team and we just seemed to have so much fun out there. It was as if there was no pressure on us whatsoever.
The last game of the weekend was Saturday morning against Santa Clara. They were HUGE! Their setter was 6'3 and was the shortest one at the net and their libero was even 6'0! It was another great opportunity to play a big school, and we did well, but again, we couldn't take a game from them.
After the game, we went back to the hotel and finally got to catch up on sleep! Then we got some pretty delicious, but expensive, ice cream and we got to go shopping later that night.
We bonded really well as a team this weekend, especially with the games in the van, which had us visualizing ourselves in some disgusting situations and laughing about how to get out of them.
Overall, I think it was a successful weekend. We learned a lot about each other and also figured out how to play some big schools and stay with them point for point. I think it will be very helpful going into our games this week.
We play A&M in College Station on Tuesday and then come back for a tournament at UT on Thursday and Friday where we'll face UT, Georgia and Houston.
Sept. 18, 2008
Lawrencia Brown - Senior - Outside Hitter
We headed over to College Station to play Texas A&M, with the loudest crowd I have ever played in front of, yea little intimidating! We had a chance to beat another Big 12 team; we honestly had a lot going for us. Instead the score board said otherwise, we loss in three and headed back to San Marcos to prepare for a fight.
September 11th we traveled north on I-35 about 30 minutes to play in the Texas Time Warner Cable Invitational!! I was so excited to travel up the road and play in Austin, my hometown!! It's always nice to go back home and play in front of your "home crowd". Yeah not exactly my home crowd, but hey I had my fans cheering for me. With all that aside we had a big match, yup against the Longhorns. To top it off it was their first home game of the season. I'm not going to lie to you I was a tad bit nervous. Its always fun to play in front of a big crowd all the cheering all the " hellraisers" screaming in your ear...haha! But everyone knows Texas is a pretty big team, with us coming in as the underdog's people never expected us to win a single game!! Instead we proved them wrong. We went in the gym and played our hearts out taking a game off Texas. We ended up losing the match, but man the energy and confidence in the locker room afterwards was great. It was a boost of confidence, but sad to say it didn't last very long.
The next day did not go so well. We lost to Georgia in three and loss to Houston in five. Just a couple mistakes is all it takes with the scoring now ending at 25 with less room to make a mistakes and more room to give it all you got!! We went home that night pretty upset and bitter! One good thing, we will meet Houston again in October and show them what we're really made of.
Now we have to prepare for our double header against Prairie View A&M, Wednesday September 17th.
Sept. 26, 2008
 Amy Weigle - Senior - Middle Blocker
Our match against Prairie View A&M turned into a double header, playing at 5 and 7. I honestly don't know if I have ever played a team twice in a row like that, but I will say that I enjoyed it a lot! After a rough weekend in Austin, coming back and playing two games at home proved to be just what we needed. We won both matches in three games, and had a blast doing it. It was a definite morale booster for the team.
Two days later, we had our first match in MALIBU, CALIFORNIA!! We played a very exciting, very fun game versus Cal State Northridge. We were very high energy, and our game was on. The momentum from the Prairie View game definitely carried over. We won the game in the fifth game... wanted to make it exciting for the fans!
The next day, however, didn't pan out as well as planned, as we lost to UC Santa Barbara and Pepperdine... but we won't focus on that.
The Sunday following the tournament, we had a great time being tourists in California. We started the day at Santa Monica Beach. We walked on the beach and looked in all the little shops and whatnot that were set up. Jessica (Weynand) and AJ (Watlington) even went roller blading for an hour!!! Our day off, and these girls were still being physically active! Nice! After Santa Monica, we headed over to Venice Beach. Wow... that was an experience. There were people out there doing all sorts of crazy things. Some of us even went into a "freak show" that was set up. All I have to say about that is, if you go to Venice Beach, don't go to the freak show. It was a rip off to say the least. On a positive note, a few of us did eat lunch next to ROSEANNE BARR!!! She was very nice and very laid back. She and her mom ate lunch literally eight inches away from us and talked to us through most of the meal. It wasn't until they were getting ready to leave that we figured out who she was.
All in all, it was a fun trip. I, along with the team am sure, wish we could have come home with some more "W's," but playing the teams that we did only makes us better volleyball players. Next stop... CONFERENCE!!!!
Oct. 2, 2008
Emily Jones Wilkes
Well we finally started conference!! This is what we've been waiting and preparing for all season.
We started off playing Corpus Christi on Friday. We came out really strong, especially game one, and beat them in just three games. It felt good to win again. We definitely needed the confidence after the majority of our preseason outcomes.
Then we headed home for the night and woke up the next day to watch some film and head to San Antonio to play UTSA.
The match against UTSA was all-around a disappointment. We just couldn't get it together enough to pull out the win that we should've easily been able to do. Our defense struggled most of the night and our offense just became too predictable. The coaches were certainly disappointed, but we were more so disappointed in ourselves. This was not how we wanted to start conference, and now we just hope that we can forget about this game and move on to the winning season we all want!
We've had a great week in practice and I think we're all ready to start winning again! We play Sam Houston on Thursday and Lamar on Saturday. Both games are at home so I hope to see all of you there!! :)
 Oct. 8, 2008
Lawrencia Brown
Sam Houston State was a good game for us! After a tough conference loss to UTSA we needed to play well and get a win, and we did just that!! We had a bit of a lapse in the third game, but we were able to pull out of it and play a very efficient fourth set! That was one of the first matches in a while where we had a complete team effort and everyone did their part! Everything felt right and I know it will carry on to our following games!!
Lamar was a crucial victory for us, because they are the defending regular season Southland Conference champions and at this point they're still undefeated in the conference. The first two games we could do no wrong, we came out strong and had the Cardinals on their heels, but after the intermission, they made some line up changes and we didn't adjust as quickly as we would have liked, causing us to lose a tight third set by two points. But we were not defeated. We came out hard once again in the fourth set and never looked back, giving Lamar their first conference loss of the year!! I can't wait to go to their gym and repay them for the loss last year!!
Next week we have Houston again and we travel to play UTA!! I'm so excited for dinner with the Weigles and the Jones!
Oct. 14, 2008
Amy Weigle
We traveled to U of Houston last week for our last non-conference game of the season... until we travel to the NCAA tournament, of course. We knew going into the game that it was going to be a fight. Houston is a good team that we lost to in five games earlier in the season. So if that wasn't enough to get us going, it also helps that Melinda Cave's older sister plays for Houston, making for a fun little family rivalry.
After playing hard, we ended up losing to U of H in five, again.
The following Friday, we traveled to Arlington. Traffic was awful on our way up, due to the UT/OU football game. When we finally got to Arlington, the bus took us straight to my parents' house. My family and Emily's family were kind enough to cook dinner for all of us. It was great to go home... I was starting to miss my puppy!!
Saturday afternoon we played on the stage at UTA. For those of you who haven't been there, UTA's gym floor is literally on a stage. On one side of the court, there are bleachers, where most of the fans sit. On the other side, the stage ends and the auditorium seats begin. There is a nice little drop off of about five feet at that side of the stage. I think it was our freshman year, we saw a girl go after a ball and fall straight off the side of the stage. Luckily, that didn't happen Saturday. UTA put up a good fight and we, again, went to five games. We came out victorious to make our conference record 4-1.
Next on the schedule, Central Arkansas and Northwestern State.
October 21, 2008
Emily Jones WilkesÂ
Another great week for Bobcat Volleyball!
We started off the week with a 10 hour drive Tuesday afternoon to Conway, Arkansas. We watched about 18 movies on the way so it didn't seem so awful. The rest of the trip was nice because the whole team was singing along with Tracy Turnblack from Hairspray for the next 48 hours.
When we got to the hotel, we went straight to bed and then got up for breakfast and a morning practice. We went to lunch and then got back on the court for hit-around and warmup Wednesday afternoon. Luckily, we didn't have enough time to hide from the coaches in the lockers this year. Then, it was finally time for the legendary light show during the announcement of the teams. Whenever they introduce Central Arkansas, the gym goes pitch black except for the light of about 200 purple glow sticks and a dim strobe light to light up the team, run by the assistant coach. I must say, as funny as it was, I'm a little jealous. Those glow sticks were so pretty and the darkness gave us the perfect opportunity to go CRAZY on our side of the court. No one had the slightest idea, but we were screaming, running in circles, rolling on the floor, and everything else you can imagine over there on our side in the darkness.
Maybe Central Arkansas should reconsider the light show because for us, it somehow was the absolute best inspiration for us to come out and play out of our minds! That game was the best I've every seen us play in all four years that I've been at Texas State. EVERYone was on fire! We won in three games and actually got done before 10 so our 10-hour drive got started a little early. This was a fun game for me because of the 12 Texas State fans at the game, nine of them were my family and friends who live close by.
We got home at 6:30 Thursday morning -- perfect timing to go home and sleep for 12 minutes before heading to class. Thankfully, we had Thursday off from practice to catch up on sleep, or for me, to make up a test that I missed the night before.
We had a short practice Friday and then got ready to play Northwestern. I accidently went to Austin that night to just look at some puppies and somehow came home with the CUTEST little 5 1/2 week old great dane puppy in the world! He's already 14 pounds and loves me very much. :)
Saturday was a looooong day for us. We started by giving a free volleyball clinic to kids that morning. Then we starved through video and a short morning practice. A couple hours later we had a team lunch and then headed to the gym to start our 3-hour pregame ritual of training room, hit-around, warm-up, game time! After such an eventful day, we finally got to play Northwestern at 7:00 that evening. We won again in three and put ourselves exactly where we want to be in conference!
We're now in a 3-way tie for first place in the conference and it feels great! We just have to take care of business this coming weekend as we take another looooong trip to Louisiana to play Nicholls and Southeastern Louisiana. Then, we have an exciting week of 3 BIG home games after that!
Well it's been fun! Next time you hear from me, it'll be almost conference tournament time!!
October 28, 2008
Lawrencia Brown
We went down to Thibodaux, La., the long bus ride that was full of fun!! When you have a bus full of bored human beings you will always find something to do! Movie after movie, game after game we finally got to the hotel and rested up!
We went to Louisiana and never took one thing for granted! Last year we went to Nicholls and learned that they were up for a fight, with the will to win! Nicholls has one of the conferences hardest working defense! Six rolled around and we were loose. We were confident and were ready to play. The first set we won 25 to 15 and it gave us the upper hand for the next set, beating them 25 to 14. The third set we made a couple changes and got shaken a little!! I think it was just a couple miscommunications and a few mistakes that we sometimes make that cost us this game. We knew it was time to pick it up and win the fourth set, but still the same thing with the same silly mistakes. We finally got it together but it was a little too late with Nicholls winning 26 to 24. Wait a minute we just destroyed them and they just took two sets from us. I sat on the bench totally confused. The fifth game still the same little mistakes, but with a couple nice serves from Shelbi and some kills from Jessica we went home the winners!!
A very unexpected game but I have to say, Nicholls did not let up. The one thing they had over us was the fight!! Don't get me wrong we have fight, but it was missing during this game.
The next day we headed over to play Southeastern Louisiana. We started immediately and got ready to play Southeastern with the outcome of Nicholls we knew we couldn't take them too lightly. We jammed to music and got pumped up, we went over the players ran out to the court. The crowd had about 20 people most of them our fans; the hardest thing was to keep the intensity. But we got through it and went home 2-0 for the weekend.
With two wins we are ready to get on the court and practice one of the most important weeks of the season. Three games, UTA, SFA, and McNeese! Bring it on cause we're ready!!
November 4, 2008
Amy Weigle
On Tuesday, we got our second shot against UTA. Tuesday night was our annual Dig for the Cure match for breast cancer awareness. The team wore pink hair ties and shoelaces in honor of the event. We beat UTA at their house a few weeks back, but it was a five game battle. This time around, we came out more than ready to play. Our energy was through the roof and it gave us what we needed to beat the Mavs in three games. It gave us the confidence we needed going into Thursday's game against SFA.
As most of our fans know, SFA has always been one of the "teams to beat." And this year, the story was just the same. We only play SFA once this year, due to them moving to the other side of the conference. They needed to beat us in order to truly stay in the running for the ring. They came out very strong and we came out very stiff. SFA took the lead winning games one and two. After the intermission, we came out strong in game three... and game four... and game five. After being down 2-0, we came back and BEAT SFA IN FIVE!!! It was one of the most exciting games of my career and just what we needed to keep our streak alive.
Saturday we played at home again, this time versus McNeese. Coming off our win versus SFA, we were still flying high and came out ready to play. We won the game in three, keeping our eye on the prize.
We have crucial games this weekend at Lamar and Sam Houston. Wish us luck as we continue on our road to winning conference!!!
November 12, 2008
Emily Jones Wilkes
Another week and two more games down. Just two to go now!
We got Tuesday off from practice since we played so well against SFA last week, which I used to sleep in a little bit and then I went to work late. Then we headed to Baytown on Thursday night. We stayed in Baytown, rather than Beaumont, due to some hurricane repairs that were still going on with the hotel in Beaumont. Then we got up and had an hour long practice at a high school in Baytown Friday morning.
Friday afternoon, we finally got to Beaumont and started getting ready to play Lamar, who was in 2nd place, only behind us by one loss. We were really fired up to play and the first game went our way, but was very close. We made way too many errors in the second game, but we were still confident going into the third. We played well but ended up losing the third and fourth games, each by two points. It was definitely heartbreaking! We were now tied for first again, and the pressure was back on us to win all the rest of our games this season just to keep that tie. We made plenty of errors in the match, but the officials did not help. I really don't know if the linesmen had ever BEEN to a volleyball game, much less called a match. We can't blame it on them, but it stinks knowing the games were decided by just 2 points a piece.
We recovered quickly, though. We headed to Huntsville and got to our reeeeeeeally nice hotel late Friday night. We woke up to nice hotel breakfast (much nicer than the previous morning where we each had 2 pieces of bread for breakfast). Then we went for a little stroll around Huntsville to "get our blood flowing." We saw a bowling alley and a cute dog on a chain. We had a nice lunch at Chili's and then headed to the gym.
We all hurried to get dressed so we could play our annual Sam Houston pregame fun games! This year we played Jimmy Jimmy Posh about 17 times and Down by the Banks of the Hanky Panky about 5 (which sadly, I was dethroned as champion this year).
By the time hit-around started, we were more than warmed up. Sam Houston is a gym more like the one that we're used to at home... Very big and not so noisy. Their inflatable Bearkat mascot provided lots of entertainment for the fans, our bench, and secretly me on the court. We were determined to win to make up for the night before and that's what we did. The Cats beat the Kats in 4 games!
Overall, it was a good week. Even though we lost to Lamar, we're still in first place, even if that means we'd be co-champions at this point.
This week, we try to get revenge against UTSA and then finish up with Corpus Christi on Saturday for Senior Night!! I can't believe this is my last week of home games EVER!!
News Flash: Sam Houston beat Lamar in 5 games Tuesday night! That means we're back in sole possession of first place and now we just have to win out to keep it!!! Thanks Bearkats!!! -What is a bearkat anyways? Is that even a real animal?
