USA Beach Needs Your Help!!!!

Hey everyone!!

I need your help with something!!!

So, beach volleyball doesn't really have any representation when it comes to USA Volleyball. There is going to be a meeting coming up soon (this Friday) and one of the topics should be USA Beach Volleyball getting some representation. We need to make sure that is a priority at the meeting!!!!

Here's where you can help! This is the email I received:

We need to rally together and get an email petition underway before the end of next week.
What am I talking about?
We need to petition to USA Volleyball to try to get some funding and a player run governing body for beach volleyball... Please forward this onto any player/supporter that you know! Lets get this petition going!
If you need more info read below, if you hate reading and are in to voice your opinion then edit copy and paste the statement below into an email with the subject reading: "I support Ryan Morgan's proposal for reform." Please address the email to the following three email addresses listed below:


“I’m in favor of the proposal being set forth by Ryan Morgan, because he not only represents Kerri, Todd and Phil, he also represents the opinions of every athlete on the beach. We all stand together and believe reform is necessary in order to improve the beach side of the sport within our current national governing body.”

Email addresses: newusav@gmail.com; Doug.Beal@usav.org; davidschreffusavolleyball@gmail.com

For those of you who like to read please read Hans's Blog, it is good stuff!


Read below from Hans Stolfus's blog for more info:
http://hansstolfus.com/?p=1652

Please send an email to these people and pass this around so that USA Beach can be on the same level as USA Indoor Volleyball!! Thanks for your help!!!!

Miss Michelle

First day of school!

"Miss Michelle, can I play with your hair?"

"Miss Michelle, can I sit on your lap?"

"Miss Michelle, Miss Michelle, Miss Michelle, can you tie my shoe?"

That's what I heard all day Monday, and I absolutely LOVED it!!! All of my paperwork finally got processed and I was able to start substitute teaching at the Montessori School of Manhattan Beach on Monday! It was my first day of actually being a teacher and I had an absolute blast! The kids are the sweetest things (minus one or two, haha just kidding, they were all great in their own ways) and I just loved getting to be around them. Circle time is where the guide (they are not called teachers in Montessori school) does most of her teaching and we also sing songs and read books. Well, I learned that during circle time my friends (the kids are referred to as friends) are allowed to sit on my lap and play with my hair. Ohhhh man! Every time I got anywhere near sitting down I already had like eight "friends" asking to sit on my lap and play with my hair. I LOVE when kids are cuddly so I loved this part of the day! The only time I didn't like it as much was when the girls (and boys) would give me a "pony tail" and proceed to wrap my hair in like sixteen knots, haha. Even that was still pretty funny! It was also funny when I would be reading a book during circle time and while I'm in the middle of reading a kid comes up to me and asks to sit on my lap, haha. It's like they have NO idea that anything else is going on in the room, all they know is that they'd like to sit on my lap, haha.

As most of you know, Kiki was a Montessori teacher for a lot of years, as well as my Mom and Courtney. That's how I decided I wanted to at least try that style of teaching for now and maybe go into a public school later (or maybe not). Anyway, the people at the school are all really nice and I think I am now number 1 on their subbing list so hopefully I'll be getting lots of work soon! They already called me back to work tomorrow, woohoo!

Happy Wednesday :) Wish me luck tomorrow!

Semi's!

Good news! I made it to the semi-finals of my last tournament! I played with Heather Hughes who was a friend of Pao's on the National (indoor) team. It was a ton of fun and a crazy long day! We got there to check-in at 8:15 because the website said if you weren't there by 8:30 you had a $10 late fee added onto the registration fee. Well, at 9:30 everyone had finally showed up and checked in, so we started playing around 9:45. We played three matches pretty much back to back. They were all great matches! Pretty good competition all day long. After our first three matches we had about a 2 hour break (we got the break since we were undefeated, woohoo!). While we were waiting around to play we noticed two pirate ships out in the water a little south of where we were (Redondo and we were in Manhattan Beach). We had also been hearing cannon type shots all morning! Well... apparently, the ships out in the water were the ships from Pirates of the Caribbean AND they were filming for movie number 4!!!! How cool is that??? We got to watch Pirates of the Caribbean 4 being filmed!! Some of the other people at the tournament knew all of this because they had filmed parts of the first 3 in the South Bay as well and they keep the ships in the King Harbor marina which is in Redondo. So after our really exciting break, we started to warm up for our 4th and final match. As we began play I realized the net was 2 or 3 inches high but the sun was also setting so we had no time to fix it! Anyway, we ended up losing in two but it was still a fun day over all! And, we won $50 each for finishing 3rd! Haha, woohoo!

Hope you're all doing well! :)

Blast from the Past/Vote!!!

I thought I'd throw in some blast from the past shots - Go big 'ford! :) (aka Stratford)

A few months ago I got an email through the Texas Volleyball Alum network. It was a fellow former UT volleyball player saying that there is a vote going on for the Texas UIL All Century Team (this is a high school thing). Soo, being the good Longhorn that I am, I went to vote for the girl who sent out the email, only to find that my name was also on the ballot!!! If you guys don't mind, I'd really appreciate you going to http://uil100.org/vote-volleyball.php to vote for me! There are a bunch of other Longhorns on the list so if you want to vote for other people you can do that too :)

Thanks! And Hook'em!

Another vote that you can participate in is the vote for Scott's new companies logo! Scott and two of his best friends recently started a company and are trying to pick their logo. They want the opinions of lots of people because even though they have their own favorites, they want to know what appeals to everyone else! So, go to www.phantomweights.com and click on Logo Contest, then pick your fav!!

Thanks again!!

One last favor from everyone.... Cheer loud for the LONGHORNS tomorrow!!!! I have one more tournament this season and probably won't get to see much of the game so I need everyone else to cheer them on for me! Plus, we're playing OU, so you REALLY, REALLY have to cheer hard for me!

HOOK'EM HORNS!!!!!!!

Main Draw Players

Me, Cayley Thurlby, and Heather Hughes.

I just wanted to write and tell everyone about my exciting work out this morning! Not only have I been getting to work with Liz Masakayan, but this morning I actually got to practice with Brittany Hochevar and Jenny Kropp! They are two main draw players both ranked in the top 25 players! We just did some drill work but it was really fun to train alongside such great players and also get to talk to them. They are both really really nice people and were really fun to be on the court with!

I have been training with Cayley Thurlby, a good friend of mine out here, and Heather Hughes joined in with us a few times! The picture above is after we jumped in the ocean because we needed to cool off after a work out. You can't see them very well, but I am wearing bottoms that my mom wore after she had Jennifer and Kiki!!!! I found them last time I went home and told my mom I was stealing them. I've gotten so many compliments on them and everybody asks where I got them because they want them too!!! It's awesome!!! :) Thanks Momm!

Also, I'm going to start working on a portfolio soon so if anyone has any advice or knows someone that can help me put it together, I would love to hear from you!

Thanks!

Off Season ????

This is a pic from the US Open tournament I played in. It was a BEAUTIFUL day!

So, the AVP season has technically only been over for a week, but that's only for the top like 10 teams. All of the qualifier girls and the lower seeded Main Draw teams have been done with AVP tournaments for about a month now. One might think to themselves, "Hm, I bet these girls take a good month or two off before they start working out and training again," right? False, since my season has been "over" I have had just as many people, if not more, calling to train/practice/play/get lessons! I thought I would be ahead of the curve because I was going to work out all off season and not take any breaks, but now I know why these girls know so much about the game... they NEVER stop playing!

Anyway, it's been really awesome because I was afraid I'd have trouble finding people to train with, but it's actually been way easier! In all of the training that has come up recently I've met some new really good players, which is awesome! Another really great part of the "off season" training is that I got to work out with Liz Masakayan who coached Elaine Youngs and Nicole Branagh for the last year or so! Yes, that means she coached them during the Olympics! How cool is that? So, I got a lesson from her on Monday and I'll be going to another lesson tomorrow. Really exciting stuff!

I hope everything is going well for everyone! More updates soon!