Nov. 9, 2009
You'll have to excuse my absence from writing. My computer, which I so fondly dubbed Granny Smith, had to check into rehab recently due to an addiction to making me mad. OK, you caught me. That was a complete lie. I haven't written in ages because I just have not had the time or the comical motivation. So I apologize to everyone out there who have been harassing me for a new Advantage Annie (Dan Stelter--I'm talking to you).
We have had a lot going on in the past couple of weeks, but I want to talk about the major highlight of my October, which was obviously Halloween. I'm sure you know by now, but if not, on Halloween we have a special team practice where each person picks a name out of a hat and dresses up/acts like that teammate. Since the beginning of September, I have been counting down the hours until we got to pick names. Each night before I would go to sleep, I would visualize picking Chelcie's name out of that hat.
Chelcie, over the summer, was given the nickname "Bat" for her lack of visual abilities (sorry Chelc!) We of course loved the nickname and it stuck. So there I was, every night, about to fall asleep, visualizing that I would pick Chelcie so that I could dress up as a bat. To my disappointment, I picked Marisa and I quickly retreated home to my apartment to cry. While I was crying, my wonderful roommate/teammate, Megan, informed me that she had picked Chelcie and had no idea how to dress as her. Without hesitation we decided to swap people and my life was complete.
Needless to say, when Halloween rolled around, I had the second-most amazing costume with my bat wings, bat ears, the whole works. Now I'm sure you're wondering, if I was the second-most amazing, who was the first? That would of course have to go to our coach, Michelle. For the second year in a row, she came into practice with a costume that had us on the ground laughing. As a joke about her age, we once called her Billie Jean King, so she came dressed in wig, lipstick and tucked in shirt, looking like a dead ringer for Billie Jean King.
But now let me get to the really juicy information. If you have been following our results this fall, you will see that they changed things up by having two regionals this year. Hosted here in beautiful Champaign-Urbana, Amy, Christine, Kristina and I participated in the "B" regionals. Two weekends later, (this past weekend), the same four of us found ourselves in a large, Ford Expedition rocking out to Disney music on our way to a tournament at Western Michigan.
Since the four of us have been spending so much time together, I tried to come up with a clever nickname for us. I quickly realized that there are no famous fours, only threes: The Three Amigos, Three Musketeers, Three Blind Mice, Three Little Pigs, "We Three Kings," Charlie's Angels, Alvin and the Chipmunks, Three Stooges, Red White, and Blue, and of course the Hanson brothers. Since Kristina clearly stated this weekend her hatred for "Mmmbop," or maybe just her hatred for me singing "Mmmbop," I decided against a nickname altogether.
This past weekend, in mock dual-match format, we combined our lineup with two players from Notre Dame. After discussing amongst ourselves and then with our new teammates, we came up with the combined name of the Fighting I. We had to rule out Illini Dame and we never got around to doing our cheer I-L-L // I-N-D.
The most important addition to our team, however, was of course our wonderful and wise assistant, Georgia Rose. I can't even put into words the wonders of Ms. Rose, so I will instead create a bullet point list of her great achievements.
After eating our first dinner, a pasta buffet provided at the tennis center, Georgia decided to take us out to TGI Fridays for our "second dinner."
Following dinner No. 2, Georgia informed us she had bought a big bag of candy for us.
Since the grocery store she went to didn't have chocolate chip Teddy Grahams,
Georgia bought us honey Teddy Grahams and chocolate Teddy Grahams and we
cut the bodies in half and mixed the heads of the honey bears with the bottoms of the chocolate bears.
The following day, Georgia bought us both Scooby Doo and Spiderman fruit snacks to ensure that we were in fact the coolest team at the tournament (although Indiana had a cooler full of juice boxes which had me feeling a twinge of jealousy).
Georgia taught us how to recognize that when our partner hits a good deep ball in the "box," the net person should poach and in doing so, will win the point about 99% of the time.
She laughed every time I sneezed (which totaled about 10 times a day).
She bribed me with a Frosty into hitting topspin.
She laughed every time I cheered for our new teammates under my breath instead of out loud because I messed up the pronunciations of their names.
She let us complain to her consistently, each day, which will probably continue for two weeks into the future, about how our Jimmy John's sandwiches had pounds of mayo on them, forcing us to refuse to eat them.
Well, I think that I have possibly kept you for too long. We have now ended
"official" practice and will not be competing again until the beginning of January. If you are lucky, and I can't make any guarantees, I will write again before then, but if not, try not to miss me too much!
Until then,
HERE WE GO ILLINI!
--Annie Mac
