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Monday, September 17, 2012

Curricular Activities


Besides my stint as the volleyball team’s “video coordinator”, I spend most of my days in my Sports Pedagogy classes, conveniently located in the Ramsey Center. I’ve managed to make a few friends, but have limited time to hang out due to my busy schedule. It’s nice that my program here is relatively compact, and most of my classes are made up of the same students. My professors aren’t too intense, but exams and papers are starting to pile up, so I’m sure it’s only a matter of time. 

Since my undergraduate degree was in Exercise Science instead of Education department, I have a few undergrad level courses I have to take to fulfill my teacher certificate degree needs. Hence, my classmates are split between undergrads in my Teaching Net/Wall Activities and Foundations of Sports Pedagogy classes and graduate/doctoral students in my Instructional Planning and Analysis of Pedagogy in Sport classes. There are a few people who I am in every class with, making our subgroup a little bit closer. I'm lucky to have a good core group of peers who are all (obviously) interested in the same things as I am (sports). 

I was able to go to an art studio called Pints and Paints with two girls (Erin and Meg) from my classes to celebrate Meg's birthday. As I'm sure you were able to get from the name, you drink pints while painting...it's a fantastic combination attempting to distract you from your atrocious painting skills (or in my case, lack thereof) through consumption of alcohol. It obviously worked:
Just made a little bit of a mess 
Everyone's final masterpiece
My finished painting - hanging proudly in my apartment
Some of my undergrad classmates came by our first home tournament at the start of the season, and rumor has it that they are planning something interesting for this upcoming weekend vs Alabama and Arkansas. Stay tuned for more curricular happenings......

Life as a Georgia Peach


I have now been a pseudo-resident in the state of Georgia for almost two months. Most of my time has been spent wearing Nike shorts, one of my many “Georgia volleyball” team-issued t-shirts and sneakers – nothing of which is too out of my character. Incorporating red and black into my wardrobe required no real effort, due to my previous college volleyball experience at University of Tampa (also red and black). Since many of you are as new to Georgia volleyball as I was, I have provided a “cast of characters” to try to help you, my faithful readers, sort out who’s who.

Name - Description
Lizzy Stemke - Head coach; She’s my boss; married to Kevin, mother of Kerrigan
Josh Lauer - Asst coach; married to Deb, father of Eli
Colleen “Neels” Bayer - Asst coach; married to Dave, mother of Max, Ben, and Sam
Matt “Huskey” Huskey - Volunteer; lives with the Lauer family
Laura Welch - Director of Operations                       
Trina Topping - Athletic Trainer GA; my roommate on all team trips
Vanessa & Megan - Athletic trainer undergrads
Matt, D, & Keenan - Student managers for the team
Trina and me at the airport
Some of the Dawgs sending up their love 
In addition to the above-mentioned individuals, we have the Dawgs themselves; Bri & Choi are our lone seniors, followed by underclassmen Britt, Allie, Stacey, Elena, Lauren, Chloe, Tirah, Gaby, Jasmine, Maggie, Kaylee, Des, and Megan. The team plays in the volleyball arena, which is located inside the Ramsey Student Center. 
My job as video coordinator entails setting up video recording for all practices and matches, taking Data Volley statistics during practices and matches, and Data Volley statistics of scouted matches for upcoming opponents. 
Data Volley set-up at FSU
Due to everyone up until this point in their season competing in tournaments (meaning at least 3 matches per team per weekend), I’ve had quite a lot of Data Volleying. Luckily regular conference matches have begun, so we are going to only be scouting for two teams per weekend. Not to mention we have traveled for THREE consecutive weekends, stayed in 4 hotels, been on 3 flights, in addition to travel via charter buses. It’s becoming quite problematic to remember which hotel we’re staying at, and which key goes to the door.

Thus far in our season, we’ve hosted the Bulldog Invitational (vs GA Southern, GA State, Troy and Slovenian National team), traveled to Florida State (vs FSU, FAMU, and FIU), traveled to Michigan State (vs Albany, IPFW, and Michigan State), and traveled to SEC opponents South Carolina and Mississippi State.

[note: matches in BOLD are wins, matches in ITALICS are losses – aka we are 7-4]

We are hosting Alabama and Arkansas this upcoming weekend (September 21st and 23rd, respectively). Check out our schedule HERE! If you want to watch the Alabama or Arkansas matches online click HERE then select SPORT tab and click on Women's Volleyball to view our videos.