Greetings everyone! As you may have noticed, the leaves are changing and the air is getting cooler, so you know that fall is just around the corner; however, to the Lady Cougar Volleyball Team, fall is defined a little differently. When our new home becomes the hot stuffy gym, we know that fall has arrived. Our fall pre-season seemed to start extra early this year, but it went faster than ever.

Before I get into our two-a-days, I should maybe tell you just a little about myself. I am a sophomore here at MVNU and I am a setter. My major right now is Chemistry Pre-Med, but that is still very much up in the air.

The first night we moved in, we had our annual team meeting in the Cougar Room to introduce ourselves and talk about our expectations for the season. It was a nice change being a sophomore now so I can pick on the new scared freshman even though I was just in their shoes a year ago. This one night cannot possibly be enough to get to know one another, but we are getting plenty of time to bond through the many hours of practice. We definitely get closer with our inside jokes and there are absolutely no boundaries of what we can make fun of each other for whether it was some uncoordinated move or ridiculous comment someone made that day. The combination between Coach’s larger than life personality and the attributes each teammate brings to the table makes each practice enjoyable and fun. When you have a team like ours, two-a-days become actually bearable and are something that you start to look forward to. Now, I do not want to give you the wrong impression that all we do is goof off because that is quite the contrary. In fact, it is always nice to get a break from the normal day-to-day practice, which is why we always have an annual alumni scrimmage.

This year, we had the biggest turnout of alumni come to our scrimmage. There were so many that we had to make several teams instead of the normal one team. It really says a lot about Coach Swanson and his program when you see so many alumni coming back every year to see him and want to play again. It is always so much fun to see all the alumni and take trips down memory lane, and it was extra special this year for a couple reasons. Our seniors from last year, Courtney (Springer) Orsbon, Kaylin Austen, and Julie Haumschild, were able to make it, but they were not playing on our side of the net this time. Also, my sister, Katey Percival, who is an alum, was able to come and since she is so much older than me, it is not every day that I get to play against my own blood. I won’t go into details, but at the end of the day we all knew who the better Percival sister was.☺

Throughout the week, the gym seemed to get hotter and hotter, so one day we decided to change things up and were privileged enough to practice in the nice air-conditioned gym at Fredericktown High School. It was a nice break from the norm. Then, back in our gym here at MVNU, we scrimmaged Malone in preparation for our first game. It was very good for us to scrimmage another team instead of ourselves, but there was also added pressure because Malone is in our conference for the actual season so we had to play our best. Throughout the scrimmage, we tried out different line-ups to see what worked and what did not work. It’s better to experiment in a scrimmage than in a game when it actually counts. The scrimmage went well overall because we ended up winning five out of the six games we played.

Well, as soon as the two-a-days started, they ended because before we knew it we were traveling four hours to Grace College in Warsaw, Indiana for our first real games of the season. We may not have had the best start when we lost to Indiana University East in three games, but once we got rid of our first-games jitters we bounced back with a great win against Bethel in five games. Then, the next morning, we took second in our pool once we beat Huntington in three games. That win put us in the game for third or fourth place against Davenport. Our momentum carried us to win in five hard-fought games, getting third in our first tournament and that is not too shabby considering we have had a lot of unexpected injuries. The win set the mood for our very cheerful van ride back home while we jammed out to Celine Dion. We are definitely getting prepared for our long 10-hour trek to Iowa this coming weekend, and hopefully we can bring home the gold with us.

Our two-a-days are now over, and I would just like to take time out now and give a huge thank you to all the parents and families that opened up their homes to us and fed us. We take eating very seriously and it is no easy feat to satisfy our stomachs. I think I can speak for the team when I say that I did not know how full I could possibly get until I started eating at your houses. So, thank you because without all of your generosity, we could not have made it through our workouts without your delicious cooking (and trust me, it was delicious). Eating home-cooked meals during pre-season is by far the best part and makes all the run-throughs we have to do worth it. It is always a great experience with each household, so thank you again, and I hope that you invite us back next year!

So, now that I start seeing familiar faces on campus again, it is finally feeling like school is beginning. I am more than ready to kick our season into full gear with home games and seeing all our fans. We have a great team this year and we hope that this season will bring a lot of success and a lot of great memories. So until next time, stay classy MVNU!☺