BUSY Last Week for Panthers

In our last four days of the regular season we played four Conference Matches. It seems I have a lot to catch up on here. We lost to Williams in our last home game of the year, but it was a great night in other ways: it was our return to Pepin! and it was Senior Night! The Bubble has been a great place to practice given that the gym wasn't available, but we were all very excited to say the least to be back on the hardwood for our last home game. The atmosphere in Pepin is just much better, and the floor looks fabulous!

Our FOUR seniors have racked up some pretty nice honors, with three of them having been named All-NESCAC Academic last year, and Olivia holding the school record for the most digs in a singe match with 44! They have also won the AVCA Team Academic Award every year, which is an impressive achievement. Mallory sang the National Anthem with some of her a capella group, the Mischords, and Lexie read our senior night write-up and starting line-ups. I was even the recipient of some very unexpected flowers from the Patterson's. Lacee, Susie and Danny were all here to witness Lindsay's final home appearance, and Josie had an Aunt and Uncle here for her, but Kate and Olivia's families weren't able to make it.

This past weekend we played all three Maine schools to finish out the Regular Season. We swept Bowdoin with two come-from-behind games to get our weekend off on a good note. The next day, Bates came out on fire, and overpowered us in the first set of that match before we got our act together and took the next three somewhat handily. After that match, we completely outplayed Colby for two games, and then with their season hanging in the balance, Colby fought back into the match by taking set three, and making a real go at set 4. We were able to hold them off in the fourth to take the match, and with that win, Bates then surpassed Colby for the last spot in the 8 team Tournament.

Our wins this weekend put us at 6-4 overall, and good enough for the 5th seed next weekend, playing Williams. Despite having just played them and lost a tough match, we are very excited to play them again. This is the highest seed we've had in the last few years, and we're very much looking forward to our Friday night match-up with the purple cows!!

The other fun things that happened this weekend were the following (in no particular order):

Lauren's mom brought us dinner goodies, AGAIN!!! Thank you!!
The Patterson's, Barrett's, and the Goeke's were all there to cheer us on!
We (FINALLY, Ellen) got to go to Panerra for dinner!
We had a candy exchange on the bus--yummy.
We watched some, well, interesting movies.
We decided that only Ollie can run the DVD machine on the bus.
We had a very fun "social hour" on our ride home--it felt like it took HOURS, oh, it DID take hours!
The moon was beautiful as we pulled away from Colby before our 6 hour return bus ride.
The coaches won the first competition of the weekend--an informal costume contest featuring our travel group against the Maine group.
The Colby Head Coach had her baby on Friday morning, and still managed to show up for our match with them on Saturday afternoon, although she wasn't on the bench.
Molly kicked my tush on our run on Saturday morning, again.
Lauren knocked the nice map of Maine off the wall in the Hotel Lobby. (NO harm done!)
Lindsay's mom bought us snacks for between games! Thank you!!
Bates exploded with delight after we beat Colby once they knew for sure that that meant they were in the tournament for the first time in years!

Pictures will follow later this week.