Taking Our Act On The Road

Playing soon in a finished basement near you: Mickey and LA with snap artist TR Bell.

(The camera person has been let go. The next video will not be sideways.)

Ties and Tacos

Friday afternoon was the first day that had a real chill in the air. It was sunny, it was gorgeous, but it felt like summer was over and winter was going to be fast upon us. That feeling was exacerbated by our freezing cold bus. The A/C was blasting and the heat didn't work, so as we drove north we huddled under blankets and put on stocking caps. As we approached the Wisconsin border we pulled over to meet a mechanic on the side of the road who quickly flipped us over to "heat." It was a much welcome change.

St. Norbert has a brand new turf field and stadium, complete with warm visitor locker rooms right next to the field. We warmed up well and had a great start to the game, scoring two goals in the first 15 minutes. The Green Knights scored one soon after to make the game 2-1 and there is stayed for a LONG time. The game went back-and-forth, both teams trading momentum and shots back and forth. After a scramble in the box that lead to us clearing the ball into one of our defenders, the Green Knights got the ball and put it into our net to tie the game 2-2, with four minutes remaining.

That lead us to two 10:00 overtime periods. Our kids greatly surprised their coaches by digging deep and finding reserves of energy we were pretty convinced they didn't have. In a way, it was the most impressive 20 minutes we've played all year. In the end though, we were not able to score, and the game finished in a tie.

That result left both teams undefeated. We have three conference games remaining on our schedule, the Green Knights have six. This result helped us greatly improve our chances of making the four-team conference tournament, but the question of who will host it is yet to be answered.

An incredible post-game feast at the Keast house helped wash down any disappointment we may have felt regarding the tie. We sat in front of the fireplace, ate many tacos and cookies and cupcakes, met many of Ellie Keast's dolls (our favorite was the glow worm), petted the dogs, thanked the grandparents for being such stalwart fans, and played a little piano.

A 3-0 victory by the men meant a good, if late, bus ride back to Lake Forest.

Our next game is Thursday at home against non-conference opponent Milwaukee School of Engineering. Our next conference game is at home versus Knox College on Saturday at 1pm.

Saint Who?

St. Norbert (center) is flanked by St. Wenceslas (left) and St. Sigismund on the Charles Bridge, Prague

After two tough games against Midwest Conference opponents Ripon College and Carroll University the Foresters have a couple days of practice ahead. We need to reset a little, remember how it is we want to play, and rest our weary legs a bit while tuning up our soccer minds.

Friday though will be another trip to Wisconsin and perhaps our toughest opponent in the conference this year: the Green Knights of St. Norbert College. We will once again travel to the Fox River Valley, home of the paper mill stench (see blogpost on Appleton) and the Keast family. One is clearly far more pleasant than the other.

St. Norbert is located in De Pere, WI, just south of Green Bay, and as such is home to a great number of Catholics and Packer fans. Conveniently, for fans of both the Packers and the Green Knights, their colors are the same--green and gold.

So while the Packer contingent may be responsible for the colors, it is the Catholics who are responsible for the school and its affiliation. Founded in October 1898 by Abbot Bernard Pennings, a Norbertine priest and educator, the school was named after Saint Norbert of Xanten. In 1962, the college became co-ed. 

Norbert of Xanten was born around 1080, near what is now Cologne Germany but was then a part of the Holy Roman Empire. (It has been said that the Holy Roman Empire was neither holy, nor Roman, nor an empire, but that's a topic for another time.) Norbert was relatively educated but not particularly religious until he was almost killed while riding a horse. (I think there is another discussion to be had here regarding the decision to make a mounted knight the mascot of a school whose namesake was almost killed being thrown from a horse, but again, I digress.)

After recovering from the horse riding accident, Norbert's faith deepened and he renounced his place at court to be ordained into the priesthood. Relatively quickly Norbert began preaching austerity and asceticism to his fellow priests, all of whom had also taken a vow of poverty, but his message wasn't always well received.  In frustration, he sold his few remaining belongings and spent some time as an itinerant preacher in what is now northern France. It was there that he was credited with performing the various miracles that are necessary to being granted sainthood.

Eventually the Pope asked Norbert to create his own religious order and he chose a site in the Premontre valley of France. Members of his order lived a life of preaching and living in austerity. They are known as the Premonstratensians, or Norbertines. 800 years after Norbert lived, one of his followers founded a college in northeastern Wisconsin that he would name after the founder of his order. St Norbert College is the first and only institute of higher learning sponsored by the Premonstratensian order. 

The Green Knights are also the only other undefeated team in our conference. Hopefully we can shock them the same way that horse shocked the pre-religious Norbert. I certainly think our bear (Boomer) could defeat that sickly looking horse. 

Kicking In A Different Contest

Last Sunday, many of our team members participated in an IM Kickball tournament of sorts. They split themselves up into two teams, each coached by an injured member of the team, and had varying levels of success. Turns out we need to bone up on various rules of baseball like "tagging up" and not running through second base on a double. Also, we can't catch.

Team O'Connor, coached by Megan, had Lisa Sorensen, Mickey Greeneway, Ellen Rogers, Courtenay Raymond, Libby Lakeman, Fiona Jessup, and Katie Koenig.

Team Garth, coached by Courtney, was composed of Holly Lesperance, Maeve Connolly, Audra Donnelly, Blake Davies, Anya Moran, Sam Hillis, Kim Grover, Emily Keast, Becky Esrock, Nicole Ostro, And Rachel Laznowski.

Team Garth was slightly more successful than Team O'Connor but fun was had by all.

Another Fact About Appleton:

Victory Coffee in appropriate mug

We dominated the place.

Wow.

What a fun performance. It was fun to watch, fun to participate in, and fun to recount after the game.

A cursory glance at the box score tells the tale. We took 27 shots, the Vikings 6. We scored in the first 3 minutes of each half. We had six different players pick up points from a goal or assist and and four of those players had two or more points (two points are awarded for a goal, one for an assist). We took ten corner kicks to the Vikings one. Vikings goalkeeper Cassie Burke had quite a performance of her own and made some excellent saves on many sure goals. And we even beat the Vikings in fouls committed: eleven to eight. Some coaches might not think that was much of an accomplishment, but to us it signals that our Foresters displayed the aggressiveness that we can oftentimes lack.

 Of course, the celebration of a big win can't last too long. Today the Foresters are enjoying their victory coffee and competing in the campus Intramural kickball tournament (photos and story to come). Tomorrow we go back to work on the practice field to prepare to meet the Beloit College Buccaneers on Wednesday.

Appleton post-game chat hosted by TR Bell

A Little About Appleton

This is a re-post of an entry written last year. Apologies to all for the laziness. Original material coming soon!

Your Foresters are heading north to Appleton, WI tomorrow morning to take on the Vikings of Lawrence University. Both teams are 2-0 in Conference headed into tomorrow, so it should prove to be a good game. It is certainly one in which we hope to come away with a victory, but the Vikings have been a tough opponent for us I'm recent years.

 Some facts about Appleton and Lawrence:

 --Harry Houdini spent his childhood there after being born in Hungary.

 --The actor Willem Dafoe (played the Green Goblin in Spiderman) was raised there and began his acting career at a local community theater.

 --Lawrence is the second oldest co-ed college in the country, having admitted women a year after Oberlin College began doing so. Lawrence was chartered and founded in 1847, a year before Wisconsin became a state.

 --Actor Campbell Scott, son of George C. Scott, is an LU alum; as is Terry Moran from ABC's Nightline; and Jeffrey Jones, who played the principal in Ferris Bueller's Day Off.

 --John Bradley, one of the men in the famous photo (and subsequent statue) of the flag-raising at Iwo Jima, grew up in Appleton and was a graduate of Appleton West High School. After the war he returned there and raised a family.

 --Sen. Joseph McCarthy began his political career in Appleton and is buried in a local cemetary.

 --If you find yourself in Appleton and notice a not-so-great odor it is, no doubt, the paper mills along the Fox River. Appleton is a center of the U.S. paper industry--Kimberly Clark and others are located nearby.

 --The Hearthstone House, now a local museum, was the first residence in the world to be powered by an Edison hydroelectric station. Appleton also was the first community in the national to have an electrically powered street car, was home to the first telephone hook-up in Wisconsin, and the first incandescent light bulb outside the east coast.

 --Lawrence University is named after its founder, Amos Lawrence, a Boston philanthropist and abolitionist. Lawrence, Kansas is named after his family as well.

Parents' Weekend

There are lots of great things about having kids from all over the country on our team. One of the disadvantages of course, is that our kids' families are unable to make it to the majority of our games. For that reason we always pick a weekend when we have two home games and designate it as "Parents Weekend."

It provides a great opportunity for our parents to see their daughter play, to mingle with the other parents in the bleachers and join in some Forester cheers, and the presence of their parents almost always means that our kids play with a little extra energy.

This weekend was no different. We had two games under beautiful end-of-summer blue skies, picked up two victories, everyone had an opportunity to play and show their parents how hard they have been working, and the kids had the chance following the game to meet their friend's parents and get taken out to some nice meals too.

Thanks to the parents who made the trip and to those who couldn't: you were missed! Above is a photo we took at halftime of the Grinnell game with the families and players. All of our parents will soon be receiving a copy in the mail.

Whether you can make it or not we always know you are cheering for us! Thank you so much for your love and support.

The Part That Matters

There is no question that we want to win. The question is really: does winning matter? Sure, it's more fun, the bus ride home is more pleasant, the coaches less grumpy; but a year from now, two years from now, heck, even two months from now, does it REALLY matter? Maybe, maybe not. Sure working together and learning to work with different people in pursuit of a common and larger goal is worthwhile, but does it matter if the end result is victory?

Without question what does matter is the stuff we do off the field, the classes we attend, the discussions we have, the books we read, the opinions we form and alter and re-form. These are the things that will change our lives and (just maybe) the lives of others.

Here are some Foresters working together, independently, in the library--a place where the stuff that always matters, happens.

Some Shots of The Bench

Here, the team completely ignores Ellen as she walks off the field. 

Holly is disgusted that Becky has copied her headband. Or something. I'm not sure how to interpret that look.

2-1 and Learning

Well, the "easy" first part of our schedule is complete and while the loss was ugly and disappointing there is little question that every game has been a little better than the last. I suppose that's really all you can ask of a team. And maybe it was inevitable that with 9 new players and some veterans in unfamiliar positions we would have a rough first outing...Let's blame the coaches for that one and move on.

An outsider looking at our game scores and stat sheets would no doubt be confused. How did we end up with three times the number of corner kicks as our opponent and still score 5 goals less than they did? How did we lose 5-0 on Friday and win 11-0 just two days later?  How did Anya go two years without a goal and then score two in two minutes?  Who are all these freshmen who keep picking up goals? Who is this Emily Keast who plays all these minutes but rarely appears on the score sheet?

Now some of these questions are simply unanswerable, part of the grand mystery of soccer, and can be ignored unless it happens repeatedly. Some are easily answerable-- Anya had a position change from defense to midfield, Emily Keast can run forever, is extremely reliable, and tends to give the ball that sets up the assist--one that stat sheets don't recognize. The rookie class this year has really great players with a good array of gifts: some speed, some grit, some savvy, some aggressiveness. We too are just getting to know their off-the-field quirks and on-the-field talent. More to come on this. So far we know that Mickey can whistle just about any song, Holly is confused by charts and graphs, Ellen has a tendency to talk to herself/confuse herself, Nicole chews on the collar of her shirt when she is nervous, and Libby is looking to gain 20lbs of muscle by next year. Oh. And Elaina might be the fastest kid in the Midwest Conference. In any sport. The soccer coaches might just have to drive her to a few track meets this spring.