Service Honor Roll

The team has set some pretty lofty goals for themselves on the volleyball court, but they also have some big goals away from volleyball.  One of those is for every member of the team to earn a spot on the community service honor roll.  To qualify they need to volunteer for at least 100 hours of community service.  Freshmen Marcey DeHaan commented, "It's our goal this year because it's important for us to use our extra time to serve others and help them get done with things quicker and in more efficient ways."

So far this season we have been working hard on this goal.  We volunteered at the Davenport golf outing and helped new DU students move into their rooms for the start of school.  We also have maintained a relationship with the organization Women at Risk. We absolutely love this organization and what it does.  We try to volunteer there a couple times a year.  During preseason we went to their new warehouse and worked on various projects.  Marcey adds her thoughts about the projects we have already done this year.  "We have done the golf outing and helped out at W.A.R.  Both were fun.  Being outside all day at the golf outing and interacting with different people was great.  We also enjoyed helping out W.A.R. with their projects.  We organized packages and counted cards.  It was a lot of work for our team and I can't imagine them doing it by themselves.  We were glad to help out." 

Here's some pictures from our time there.

Molly, Nicole, & Amber

Kelse, Belma, & Hannah Stone

Hannah Pohlman, Brooke, & Emma

Sidney, Marcey, & Becka

Scholarship Golf Outing

Monday was our annual golf outing at Egypt Valley golf course, which raises money for academic and athletic scholarships at DU.  It was a gorgeous day for it and our whole team was there to help run the event.  Some of the girls share their experiences from the day below.

Emma Matthew - Today at the golf outing was a blast! It was awesome to meet the people who help with giving athletes scholarships through DU and also seeing them have a great time! Being able to thank these people personally was a great experience.

Hannah Pohlman - My experience at the golf outing was fairly interesting. I got to see and talk to just about all of the golfers because I was working at the most popular drink station. Everyone was very nice and wanted to know all about how I was connected to Davenport. My favorite part was putting out a tip jar almost as a joke, and making over 60 dollars!!! It was a beautiful day out, and I would volunteer again to help for our scholarships! 

Rebecca Wadsworth - It was such a beautiful day for a golf outing!!  Amy VanEns (cross country, former VB player) and I had a great time giving the golfers advice on how to get a hole in one, from our vast knowledge from no previous golf experience... and win a vacation for four to Naples, FL.  Unfortunately, no one made a hole-in-one, but a good time was still had by all.

Lexie Spetoskey - I was on the Valley course hole #11! Which 11 is my number so that is a great start to a day! I also was partnered up with a golfer at that hole and his name was Warren. It was fun watching all the golfers wanting him to join their team and golf for them. Which he was able to hit off the tee for any golfer who would pay $20. Warren did a wonderful job for them I don't think he ever missed the fair way! So I think the golfers were able to get their moneys worth. It was a perfect day I got a little burnt but not bad at all! I would say my favorite part of the day would be watching all different kinds of people come through and help support Davenport University :)

Belma Alic - Today was a perfect day for a golf outing! Molly and I had a great time getting our tan on and pretending like we understood golf! We met lots of people and were at the perfect hole ( next to the bdubs tent). All in all it was a great day :) and we did learn a few things about golfing! 

Nicole Chase - The golf outing was a huge success a great deal of fun.  I was on the Ridge hole 3 with Kasey Bylsma and a very large silo that three people ended up hitting but we had a ton of fun.  It was great to see all of the wonderful people who sponsor Davenport Athletics and support our scholarship fund so we can go to school.  We meet lots of wonderful people and Kasey did a nice job making sure teams got on the green if they were willing to give a little extra for her to T-off for them, it was very impressive how consistently she hit and how well she is at golf!  The weather was beautiful as well and overall we had a wonderful day and as far as I know all the golfers did as well!! Thanks to everyone what golfed in the tournament, participated in the auction, helped put the tournament on, and worked during the day.  I was an awesome even and I am so grateful.

Kelse Moon - Today I was on the Valley course hole 7 with Jamie Cattran of the golf team and I was sooooo thankful because it was shaded for the majority of the day! The weather was perfect and the view was gorgeous! I was one of the few who didn't even get burnt! We even saw deer prancing around everywhere which was saawweeet! It was so great to see and meet some of the people there who give so much to DU! After the 5ish hours on the course we made our way back in. I had to awesome opportunity to speak at the dinner later in front of the 300 some people that attended! It was so eye opening to see all the generous people that donate to Davenport Scholarships! I got to stay an enjoy the delicious dinner and got to sit at the head table with President Pappas, Mr. Lettinga, and other nice welcoming people! It was quite the experience and I even won a 50/50 raffle price! Overall today was a super success! Yay DUVB!

Amber & Sidney watching for holes in one

Amber helping the baseball coaching staff with their putts

Amazing Race

Preseason is off to a great start! The team is practicing hard and learning a lot.  On Thursday we had a special challenge for them.  We did an Amazing Race in Grand Haven with the men's soccer team.  It was certainly a challenge, but the girls learned a lot.  Here's their perspectives...

Brooke Pyles - I was on the yellow team, and we started off pretty slow. The Star Wars puzzle was very difficult and it took us a while to finish. We found a short cut and would have been making awesome time if it wasn't for the fact that we went all the way by the pier instead of city beach. We were the second to last team in and running and walking for that long in the rain was a challenge but I'm glad we accomplished it.

Amber Getty & Rebecca Wadsworth - We joined with Stewart and Emrah (sp) from the boys soccer team for the Amazing Race. We had our ups, and we had our downs as a team.  We started good finishing the Hello Kitty Holographic 100 piece puzzle in 2nd place.  We then moved onto picking our team color, orange, Amber's Favorite color.  They were frozen and we had to try our best to break them apart and put them on our smoking hot bodies.  So we did our best and put the T-shirts near a car engine, behind the Davenport Bus to warm them up, and smashing them on the ground to get them to come apart.  After much difficutly with that we were on to our next task wearing our wet and cold orange T-shirts, finishing 2nd again in the task.  We thought we knew where the next destination was, but turns out we did not have a clue.  Our team ended up going the opposite way we were suppose to and got ourselves 20 minutes behind the leaders in the race.  When we found our destination finally, we knew we had to pick up the pace.  We had to make a DU logo in the sand with only our feet, ours was pretty dang good I must say! Then getting our next clue we figured it out right away and had to go up this HUGE hill...okay maybe not that huge but it seemed like it.  Once we got to the top our next clue was waiting and we found our volleyball coach in the distance and ran down the dunes to her.  When we reached it the task was to succesfully throw a raw egg 10 times without it breaking, Amber and Stewart took this task...and it only took 2 eggs to do it!! Then we had to head to the library where we found big help on the way.  We knocked on a house to ask for directions, and the lady ended up giving us a ride to it, she was such a sweetheart.  The library task took us 5 minutes tops, then realized we had to go to a kite store.  There  eachhad to ride a little bike around the store.  After we were done we might have hid the bike for the others to find ;) The next clue led us to an ice cream shop where our team got real excited because the task was to eat ice cream....but it wasnt the ice cream we were expecting.  We had surprise toppings of ketchup and a pickle to mix up the tastes a little bit, not so appetizing.  Becka was the champ though and downed the pickle with ice cream and chocolate all over it.  Then we got our next clue and raced for the boardwalk while our stomachs were still turning from the not so yummy ice cream.  Once we got their Nicoles Mom all bundled up asked us where we have been and we had to name all the destinations.  Once we did we had to race towards the beach to find our lunch waiting there as well as the green team which took first....They ended up being 20 minutes ahead of us, which means if we didn't make that wrong turn...it woulda been a battle!!! Overall it was a very fun experience, especially joining in with the boys soccer team, which has such good stamina and kept having to us girls on to keep running.  We all contributed and go along and succeeded to make it 2nd place even with our slow start!!! :) Go Orange Team!!!!!

Hannah Stone - The Amazing Race Grand Haven 2012 was a one of a kind experience. I was the only volleyball player along with three soccer boys. Our group was the last ones to finish the puzzle so in order to make up time we ended up sprinting all over Grand Haven. My favorite memory was when I was dying from sprinting so much and falling way behind the rest of my group and Kevin yelled "Come on Hannah" in his Irish accent. In the end we bumped up two places and finished about 6th or 7th. It was very fun and challenging to work with the soccer boys.

Belma Alic & Sidney Rodriguez - The amazing race today was such an adventure for Sid and I . We were on the blue team with D and Nate from the mens soccer team. We came across many challenges,  like when D took one for the team and scarfed down the ice cream with whipped cream, ketchup and pickles at Temptations but we made it through the day!! We started of second to last but then made it back to the finish line in 6th place out of 9 team.. All in all it was a very adventurous day!

Hannah Pohlman & Molly Lameyer - We were on the Green team and we won the Amazing Race!!! Our start was fast because we were the first team done with our Hello Kitty puzzle. After that, we thawed our frozen t-shirts in record time and were the first team on the move. Luckily, we went the right way to the beach and wasted no time drawing the DU logo in the sand, with our feet!! The things that kept us girls going were the positive attitudes from our soccer teammates, the goal of winning first place, and Jay's (our new soccer friend) awesome English accent. After being the first team to the egg toss, library, kite store, and the ice-cream shop, we had a pretty good idea that we would be in first place. However, we continued to run the rest of the way, down the pier and back, and across the beach to the finish line. What a day!!! 

Emma Matthew & Marcey DeHaan - In the beginning of the amazing race the purple team started out slow trying to put their puzzle together, but eventually finished! Then the team went on to where we had to open frozen t-shirts that we would wear for the rest of the race. As we traveled through the city of Grand Haven we kept calm and got the job done. One stop was at temptations ice cream shop where we got to enjoy a banana split with a frozen pickle and some ketchup added to it yummmm. It great lesson about working together as a team with people you have never met before. also making us communicate with each other.The purple team ended up 5th out of 9 teams. It was a great experience and we even made some new friends!    

Lexie Spetoskey - Team Pink had an okay start. We were about middle of the pack between 8 other teams. We were on a roll the first few times and got to each spot pretty quickly. Then after we were in a kite store we were given the next clue. We knew it was an ice cream shop but there must have been a miss communication between the sales person and one of my teammates. Some how we ended thinking the spot was sweet temptations but it really was an ice cream shop that was called TEMPTATIONS. We ended up about 2-3 miles away from the actual spot where we were suppose to go. Lets just say we were dead last by the time we made it to the finish, but hey at least we didn't quit! GO TEAM PINK!

Kelse Moon - My team, the red team (Me, Bradley, Hayden, Stephen), had a very interesting amazing race today. It all started off at the Duncan Park where we were faced with a puzzle...and by puzzle, I mean actual 100 pieced puzzle...only ours had 101. YUP! 101. When strategically picking out all the corners first, we were amazed and 'puzzled' to find that we had 5 corners! From that very moment, we new this was going to be a interesting day. But we made it work. We made sure EVERY PIECE FIT...in some way or the other...it may not have looked like our star wars character it was suppose to be...but it passed inspection! We then were headed to the frozen t-shirts. I never thought the day would come where I would have actual charter bus grease on my hands, but it managed to happen today...while working on heating up those t-shirts under the exhaust and anywhere else warm on the bus in order to get them on us and move on to the next destination. Our next place seemed to really put us behind from the start. First, we ran out the entrance of the park only to find out...from a very nice older lady across the street, that we need to go back in the park and take the trails. So we start running, then we finally started using our brains and stopped to stick out our good ole thumbs and hitchhike a ride from the most tender hearted lady ever who brought us to the state park...which is exactly where we thought we were SUPPOSE to be. But this was a fail. After walking towards downtown GH, we get to the YMCA and figured out that was our 3rd destination and we had to go back to the CITY PARK...yup...that piece of park that is right next to where we just were...so yes...we hitchhiked back to the park in a VERY creepy old van who's owner was a old man who lived in his van...and yes...I (being the only girl in the group) was the one voted in to go talk to this man and beg for a ride. When we finally reached the city park beach, we breezed through our sand drawing of our panther logo and our 2nd destination on top of the dune hill....so on to our 3rd destination, the YMCA, which I got to sit and rest while 2 members smoothly tossed an egg back and forth. At this point we had gained a lot of time...thanks to our driver friends and reaching the library where we accomplished that goal without a problem. It then got interesting. We made our way to the toy store and found the yellow cart wheely thingy without a problem and had fun riding around the store...so we got directions to our next place...the ice cream shop...Temptations. We were oh so pleasantly surprised to have a ice cream sundae waiting for us that we mowwwweeddd through like scavengers...and that pickle and ketchup that they put in there...no big deal...took it like champs. Our next mission was to hitchhike right away again to get back to the pier...butttt as soon as we headed out...the trolley pulled up!! ANDDDD his first stop was the pier...how lucky were we!!?? So we enjoyed our ride over and then sprinted to the end of the pier...and by sprinted I mean I sprinted and the soccer boys seemed to just jog...but for some odd reason got really far ahead of me...they must do a lot of running?? :) But I got there and all in all our team finished 5th! We had some rough spots along the way but we pulled through and finished with a lot of effort! We learned that is important to stick together as a team when times get rough and to we also learned to have fun along the way!! It always feels good to work hard and have fun at the same time! 

Nicole Chase - Today was the Amazing Race and it started out nice and dry but we got very wet along the way, causing a few tasks to me more difficult and a lot of laughs along the way.  My team was the teal team and there were three soccer guys and myself.  You could definitely tell they were soccer players because they could just run and run and run, but they were very fun and we did enjoy a nice power-walk at times however.  It started out interesting; we had a Star Wars puzzle that changed pictures every time you looked at it at a new angle, then had our fingers frozen when trying to pull our t-shirts apart as they were frozen in balls and then had to put them on…. Brrr.  That plus the rain made for a chilly afternoon.  After that we turned and ran the wrong way to the beach, then past our destination at the beach and had to turn around.  After we all got our heads on straight we headed up a very large hill down a steep sand dune trail and Bernard shoot 20 full court lay-ups to put us in fourth.  We headed to the Library to figure out the number of Olympic Medals the USA won in 1992 and headed to a kite and toy store where we rode a little cart around and almost took out a few children who happen to be standing in our path…. No worries we didn’t!  We then thought we were going to get a tasty treat at the ice cream shop and the boys were trying to decide who was going to get it, but when we got there it was a banana split with a pickle and ketchup in it.  I was the lucky one who got to eat the frozen pickle with chocolate and ketchup all over it… yes it was a very gross taste and I still don’t know how I finished it without wanting to vomit.  We got it down and headed to our last destination, the lighthouse, a very long jog/run/walk I might add.  We decide to walk the last part of the boardwalk until we got to the uneven cement and wouldn’t you know it then we decided to run, bright idea I know, running on the jetty when it is uneven and wet, but hey we wanted to get to our last destination.  We rattled off where we had been and then headed for the bus and yes… food!!!! We finished in third place! We had a nice cook out in the rain, waited for all of the teams to finish then headed back to DU.  It was a really fun day I got to know a few of the soccer players better which will make it much more fun to watch them play, there were very very nice as well and the race was fun too, minus the fact that we literally ran for 2 and a half hours! J

Girls on the Run

Last weekend we were Happy Hair Stylist for the Kent County Girls on the Run 5K Event and once we all woke up we sure were happy!  We started out our day bright an early, too early for a few of our minds to function properly, you could say we are in summer mode, but  never the less we made it to EKHS track and we were ready to go.  Our job was to be Happy Hair Stylists; this entailed making the hair of the girls running in the races B.E.A.UUUUUUUUTIFUL.  We spray painted different colors and designs in as many of the girls hair as possible, some were crazier than others and some of us had it running down the foreheads of the girls, but either way all of the girls seemed to really enjoy it.  We ended up running out of spray paint so you know that they station was a big hit with all the girls participating in the race.

After we were finished with being Happy Hair Stylists, we became security to make sure that no one entered the track where the girls would be running.  A tough job when you don’t want to be mean, but were all got practice putting on our serious faces and not letting anyone through…. Well a couple people slipped through but all of the runners made it safely to the finish line so who’s counting.  There were about 1,700 girls running in the event, over 600 adults running and twice that many spectators so one or two were bound to slip through right?! Well we finished up the day cheering on the girls as they completed their last lap of the course, cleaned up our station, and headed back to our cars.  Our day of volunteering was over but I can say that we all had a blast and will want to help out with the event next year!

~Nicole Chase

Prom

Several of our incoming players have attended their proms recently.  It's fun for us to see them all dressed up and out of their volleyball attire.  Here's pictures from a few of them.

Brooke Pyles and her date

Emma Matthew

Marcey DeHaan and a friend



Molly Lameyer with her parents

Hannah Pohlman with her date & parents



Spring Fling

On Friday we conducted post-testing to see how the girls had improved over the last 10 weeks.  They did awesome so we celebrated at the Spring Fling in the aux gym.  It's meant to give students a good break from studying and celebrate the semester.  They had lots of activities like balloon animals, velcro wall, bungee run, and elephant ears!  Here are a few pics from the day.

The team with their balloon animals

Lexie on the bungee run

Kelse's turn

Lexi & Kelse on the anti-gravity ride

Hannah on the velcro wall

Ice Cream!

The athletic department did a fundraiser for Make-A-Wish recentenly.  Our team sold the most t-shirts for the fundraiser and were rewarded with a trip to Dairy Queen courtesy of the women's basketball coach Mike Williams who owns the DQ at the Woodland Mall.  So we made a day of it to give the girls a study break.  We had some Chinese then ice cream!