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My boss, Mary, sent me an email last week asking if Bill and I would be interested in going to a volleyball game with her and her husband. They are regulars. They are in the booster club. They know all the players by first name. They are die-hards. What better way to be initiated into the volleyball universe than by die-hards? So we said yes, of course.
More excitingly, it was the beginning of the NCAA tournament. Friday night's game was first round. Winning Saturday's would get us to the Sweet Sixteen. And, there's more! Since Mary and Jerry are so in there, they go to the chalk talks before games, where one of the assistant coaches gives a little lecture on their strategy for this particular game, anything unusual with the other team, how they've practiced, etc. Pretty cool! Absolutely we'd love to be your special guests! Count us in!
So we arrived at the gym 40 minutes before game time. (Actually we arrived an hour before game time but went to the video store and rented some movies to kill time.) We walked up to the front door and handed the (absolutely inept and clueless) senior volunteers (God bless em) our tickets. The tickets for Saturday's game even though today was Friday. They stared at us. "Oh gosh! I picked up the wrong tickets! [stare] Since we have tickets to both [stare] . . . And we're meeting some people [stare] inside. Actually they've invited us to the chalk talk [stare]. For the booster club? [stare] It starts in 5 minutes! [stare] Can I see if I can find them [stare] to let them know we'll be back for the game? [stare] They're expecting us. [stare] They said they'd be waiting outside the classroom door [stare] so I don't want them to miss the chalk talk themselves. [stare] I'm just going to let them know we'll be back in a few minutes. . . ." Eventually they piped up to inform us Bill had to stay as collateral, but I could go in.
I raced around trying to find the team room (thanks #1 for the directions!), only to find out that Mary and Jerry hadn't arrived yet and there were a lot of interested faces staring at me. So I explained very hastily to the person standing closest our situation and asked that he please pass the message on to Mary and Jerry when they arrived. I found out later in the evening that this was the assistant coach, of course. He was very nice to the crazy lady.
Tear back to the car, we did, and hurried through the yellow lights to pick up the real tickets. Unfortunately, I'd recycled the tickets. (When I looked at them, I only looked at the times of the games. I got rid of the ones that said 5:00, thinking that these were separate tickets for the first game of Friday evening -- Kentycky vs. Cincinnati -- which we weren't going to. We were only going to the 7:00 game, where the Illini were playing. Oops. There's only ticket for the whole night. And the 7:00 tickets -- which I kept -- are for the game on Saturday, which will be the winners of both of Friday night's games.) So where did I shove them in the recycling pile? They must be on top. Ok. They must be close to the top. Ok. Screw this. Forget order. Where are the little buggers? (They were in the box that dinner's beans and rice came out of. Yeah, I don't know either.)
And back we go to the gym. Miraculously we get our same parking spot! And we're in time -- 5 minutes to spare! Well, except that game 1 ran over by about half an hour and so we actually probably got back in time for the chalk talk. But the important thing is we got back in time for the game. Wisconsin vs. Illinois. It was a shut out. We won 3 sets to 0. Not a very evenly matched game, but super exciting for us novices! There's no downtime in volleyball -- lots of action all the time. Very fast paced. And since we were 2 rows up from the court right at the net, we got a couple fly balls over our way, and once almost a player too.
Saturday night was much smoother. (Well, duh, no choice about tickets to grab. There's only one option.) We got to go to the chalk talk: I thanked the assistant coach for being nice to the loony lady last night, and we got to learn about the other team's weird strategies and special challenges they presented and why we play two setters and the Chinese style of attack. Very interesting. And then we got to see it in action of course. It was a much more evenly matched game. Lots of long volleys and close (nail biting, palm sweating) scores. But again we shut em out: 3-0! Now we're in the Sweet Sixteen!
It was all very exciting. A bit disappointing that now the season is over (for us attending games, anyway), just when we found out it's so much fun! Hopefully there will be someone in Boston for us to follow. But let's not get ahead of ourselves -- GO ILLINI!
