52 Days of Summer

My summer with Daniel started June 7. We traveled 1,526 miles (over 24 hours of driving) in just FIVE days. Our Trip: Atlanta - Lake City - Lake Park  - Boca Raton - Miami - Key Largo - Ponte Vedra - Athens. 

This was all just 2 days before our week-long trip across the country 4,821 miles from Atlanta, GA to Fairbanks, AK. Despite the exhaustion (and occasional complaints), every second of this trip was 100% worth it. How many people have an opportunity in their life to go to Alaska?

4 wheeling along the Alaskan pipeline

Enjoying the scenery in Denali National Park and Preserve (Mt McKinley)

We spent the next week in Athens packing up my apartment, realizing that there is NOTHING to do in an American college town during the summer, and preparing for our next journey across the Atlantic. We traveled 5,500 miles from Atlanta to Budapest to begin our 2nd coaching tour with Bring it Promotions' Southeastern team. Keep in mind that this was not a direct flight. Our team finished 2nd overall in the tournament, losing to reigning champions Falconara juniors from Italy. For a group of college athletes that had only met 8 days before, we were extremely pleased with all they were able to accomplish. 

2013 BIP-SE team, Global Challenge tournament: Budapest-Pula-Venice

We finally concluded our seven weeks together traveling 1,089 miles from Venice to Ljungby via bus, plane, train, and car. I could not have asked for a more memorable summer. As sad as I am to be leaving Sweden and our summer together, I know that this is just another stepping stone in creating our lives together. 

My trip back to Athens continues adding back over 4,578 miles and a 6-hour time change between Daniel and me. 

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 21^st and 23^rd, 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.

Summer Lovin', Had Me a Blast!

This summer, my boyfriend and I spent 5 weeks together. Consecutively. Ok, so we had a 4-day hiatus upon his departure from the USA and my arrival in Munich, but basically we spent every waking moment together. Essentially living together with one's relatively new boyfriend is like being on that game show "Deal or No Deal"; it either works or it crashes and burns. We definitely had our frustrations - mostly when we were stuck in one place for more than 5 hours (ie. tropical storm Debbie kept everyone in Jacksonville inside for 3 days straight, our single day road trip from Athens to Maryville, TN back to Athens, or the flight + train from Amsterdam to Halmstad). Those times were tough, we would both admit, but looking back they are now hilarious.

The trip began in Orlando, FL with DISNEY!

We got married!!! Just kidding!

It's a small world!

Cinderella's castle

Mad Tea Party

Sleepy boy on the way home from Disney

We journeyed on to St Augustine / Ponte Vedra to spend some time at the beach, with my family, and (of course) coaching a little volleyball at JJVA.

Daniel with JJVA 17 -Adis

First trip to Target, he can't decide what to buy! 

St Augustine, FL

Old Town St Augustine

First Chipotle experience - he LOVED it!!

Marineland 

Tropical storm Debbie is over!

Marble Slab Ice Cream

 Visit some of my long lost friends in Aiken, SC

My old school - SABCS

Hopeland Gardens in Aiken

RBG4L

Shopping in Augusta Mall

 Spent the night at the Haney's house outside of Athens

Sophie loves Daniel!!

 Daniel had an interview up at Maryville College in Tennessee

Maryville's gym 

He looks good as a Scot

Celebrating the 4th of July in St Augustine 

Happy 4th!

He was blown away by the fireworks

Our Euro trip took us through Germany, Italy, Croatia, Netherlands, and finally back to Sweden

Cheers at the Haufbrahaus

Munich

Verona coliseum

Romeo and Juliet's Verona

If you tell a lie, he bites your fingers off

Pula, Croatia

On the Rialto Bridge

Venice

The train ride in Amsterdam 

Red Light district

Racing in Halmstad

He's a mac

We had an amazing summer together, and now we just have to wait patiently until Thanksgiving to continue the fun.

#HBTD

106. That is how many days it took for my graduate school application to be completed, received, revised, and (hallelujah!) ACCEPTED!! As of June 2, 2012, I am officially a graduate student at

The University of Georgia,  

where I will be studying Kinesiology - Sports Pedagogy. For those of you who are not familiar with this area in academics, "kinesiology" is also known as human kinetics, or the scientific study of human movement; "sports pedagogy" is the development and construction of the teaching of this ever-broadening idea of sports science.

In addition to furthering my academic education, I will be joining the women's volleyball team as the graduate assistant coach. My job will mostly entail DataVideo and DataVolley analysis. These programs are designed to help coaches evaluate skills, tempo, and efficiency of both the individual and the team thus resulting in more effective training techniques and pre-competition preparation.


I am so excited to be given this opportunity to further both academically and athletically. By combining these two overlapping areas, I hope to be able to continue my volleyball journey to the wide world of coaching. My sporadic blogging will most likely continue throughout this summer, and once I am moved up to Athens, my schedule will be pretty tight, so I make no promises for the fall. I can, however, include to you all a UGA volleyball schedule. You're welcome, and GO DAWGS!

It's officially over.

My volleyball season in Sweden has finally come to an end. After finishing up our regular season with 4 wins and 14 losses, we managed to sneak into the SM-Playoffs in 8th place. We managed to beat both Svedala (finished last) and Örebro (finished 9th) when we played them home and away, and took Hylte/Halmstad (finished 6th), Sollentuna (finished 7th), Gislaved (finished 5th) to 5-sets. We took a set from the top ranked team, Engelholm; all of these prove that after this first somewhat "experimental" season, Ljungby Volley is on the rise. Note: The top 8 teams advance to SM-Playoffs; the bottom 2 teams play against the top two teams from the lower division to fight for 9th and 10th place in Elite Series.

LVBK Regular Season Results (4-14)

In the beginning of our season, the team had a "chill" practice, where we did light aerobics and dancing before we went into the sauna and pools. It was here that we decided to make an internal team goal of making it to playoffs. No one outside the team would officially hear that information, and we instead told everyone that we would hope for the best season and try to stay in the Elite Series for the 2012-2013 season.  After many ups and downs, we achieved just that. Ljungby Volleybollklubb was here to stay.

SM-Playoffs, Quarterfinal results: Katrineholms - Ljungby

After our final loss at Katrineholms, we headed back to Ljungby. Halfway through the bus trip, Jocke made an announcement that he had wine, beer, and cider for us to celebrate such a successful season as rookies in the Elite Series. We started drinking and playing some games before finally pulling up to Sunnerbohallen and stopping at the Yellow House for our end of the season "party". We were greeted by speakers blaring Queen's "We Are the Champions" and members of the board cheering for us. It was such a great way to be welcomed home, Jo actually asked at one point "did we win?" We ate, drank, danced, and sang for hours, stopping only for the occasional speech. Despite the low feeling we all had after realizing that the season was over, this party was able to help lift our spirits. The board had decorated the club house with Swedish and American flags (love it!), all of our individual head shots from the beginning of the season, and some signs for next year's season in the Elite Series.

DJ Jimmie

LVBK is a 2012/13 Elite Series team!!

It's official!! We made the PLAYOFFS!!

Yes, my dear readers, we did it! After defeating both Örebro and Svedala home and away, and forcing Hylte/Halmstad, Sollentuna, and Gislaved to 5-set matches, Ljungby Volleybollklubb was able to secure a total of 15 "big points" (because I have no idea of a better way to describe them) towards our overall season record, thus securing our entrance to the first round of the Elite Series playoffs. Did I mention this is the FIRST time that LVBK has sent a women's team to the Elite Series playoffs??

I should maybe explain how we earn "big points". If Team "A" wins a match in 3-sets or 4-sets, they are awarded 3 "big points" to their overall record. It Team "A" wins a match in 5-sets, they are awarded 2 "big points" and Team "B" (who lost) is awarded 1 "big point".

We have our last home match this weekend against RIG Falköping - currently ranked #4. We lost to RIG 0-3 at their place earlier this season and are hoping to have a much better showing against them at home on Saturday (Feb 18). We will travel on February 25 up north to Sollentuna - ranked #7 (whom we lost to at home 2-3), and on March 4 we travel north again to play against Katrineholm - ranked #1 (whom we lost to at home 0-3).

Currently, we are tied with Sollentuna in "big points", however since they beat us in our first meeting, they are ranked higher than we are. If we are able to earn one point or more in our matches against RIG or Katrineholm, and then at least go to 5 with Sollentuna, we could potentially move up in the brackets; however, this doesn't really make much of a difference as far as match-ups go. Playoff matches begin on March 11.

Once playoffs start, whichever team is ranked #1 is allowed to choose which team, ranked 5-8, they would like to play against. Then the team ranked #2 chooses, then #3, etc. It's a little strange, but it could mean the difference between a 2 hour drive or 6+ hour drive. The way I see it, Katrineholm (located near Stockholm) would naturally pick the lowest ranked team that is near them. Makes sense to me, then again, we are in Sweden...