The U.S. government may be out of operation this week, but luckily we have been deemed a "necessary government service" and are still running. Those of you who read last week (random '16 from the career fair who thanked us for "great corporate facetime"), we dropped our tilt with the men's squash team on a technicality and some questionable enforcement of the rules. Thus, there was one thing on our minds all week: redemption
This week, the women's volleyball team, headed by senior co-captain Elisa Scudder '14, found us with what was our most aggressive challenge invite. It read as follows: "wanna see how the two of you will stack up against a team who's average height is well above 6'0"?"
She doesn't have time for capitalization or grammar. We respect that. We don't have time either, that's what our editors are for. We're in.
Freddie, however, was sidelined this week, out with the Achilles' heel of a number of the Dartmouth athletes: economics. Thus, our first sub Legend.
We thought of kids who didn't suck at sports, then we thought of kids who didn't suck as people and then we thought of kids who were tall. This left pretty much one kid and he was busy, so we called up Kevin Mulquin '14.
Mulquin's resume is impressive, after he bursted onto the intramural scene freshman year and never looked back. His championships are numerous and his credentials superb. He was ready for a call up to the big leagues and he was the man for the challenge. He graciously accepted and we were ready to go.
We decided this week to commit ourselves to perfection in training. To that end, we stole bananas from Foco instead of the traditional six extra cookies. We sat on the athlete side exclusively and looked only at ESPN in class instead of the traditional Facebook, Chive and Wall Street Journal circuit. Then, we watched all the beach volleyball we could, which Kevin had been doing long before he was asked to sub in.
The challenge was simple: 2 vs. 2 in a conventional set to 15 points on Thursday afternoon before practice. Yeah, we can do that.
When we got there, wearing the tightest shorts we could find, we found nothing. Assuming that our opponents wouldn't stand us up because we can write bad, maybe true, things about them in the newspaper, we trekked over to West Gym. We got a call five minutes later to come back to Leede. Another team trying to get us off our game with stupid mental games. Jokes on you volleyball team, women have been trying to play mental games with us for years. It has never worked. Or it has worked every single time. There is really no way of knowing.
Scudder brought two freshmen, "the Emilys," Emily Astarita '17 and Emily Patrick '17. Feared but respected by many and probably the only ones who didn't have enough clout on the team yet to avoid the match. We'll take it.
They must have taken us for amateurs because they wanted to do a quick lesson on the rules. Yeah, sure I learned a few things, whatever. Kevin and I lined up against the Emilys with Scudder as their third and started up. They were nasty. But the fact of the matter is, in 2 v. 2, as everyone knows, it's all about who serves first. Unfortunately for us, that was them. So really, the fact that we dropped the first seven to nine points was just chance. Could have gone either way.
We finally got the ball after one of the Emilys hit the net on a serve. Kevin got the ball and smoked it right to a gapping hole in their defense and the Legends were on the board. They picked up on his serve pretty much the next play and after a solid volley, the Legends had their second legit point on the board after a Major set and Mulquin slam. Unfortunately, the Emilys realized that if they lost, they would probably never hear the end of it and decided to, as they put it, "actually play." Like you weren't doing that before. We got our points in, so what if it was only two.
Scudder, who subbed in intermittently in the first game, proposed to level the playing field and played with us. Two Emilys against three '14s, one of whom just set the Big Green record for all-time career blocks at 281. No dice. Apparently, if you are good at volleyball, you can avoid serving it to certain players and pick on others. The Emilys picked on the short kid. The rest is lost in Legends history, but mostly because of the fact that I got hit in the head at least 3 times and those serves are exactly as fast as they look when you watch matches.
Anyway, in the hole two matches. No big deal. There is so much time left to get back to even its not even funny. A serious congratulations though to Scudder, as she secured her place this week in Dartmouth, but more importantly, Legends history.
