Spiked

We on the vol­ley­ball team like our boots. Not the fuzzy, warm Ugg boots, nor the styl­ish knee-high, leather ones, but those out­ra­geously bulky, gray things made of plas­tic that sev­eral of us oc­ca­sion­ally have to wear while we are walk­ing around cam­pus. Every time I see one of us wear­ing it, I al­ways want to quote Beer­Fest and say in a deep voice, “DAS BOOT.” I’ve re­cently joined the boot-wear­ing club, due to a sprained ankle I ac­quired dur­ing our game against Brown, and I’ve no­ticed that ap­par­ently it draws quite a lot of at­ten­tion. Peo­ple ac­tu­ally STARE. It might also be be­cause I’ve cou­pled the boot with crutches. There­fore, I re­ceive not only the ‘wtf?’ look that has be­come so pop­u­lar with my usual ice bags bulging every­where, but also the ‘aww, poor thing’ look as well. But it hasn’t been all that bad wear­ing a boot around. Guys ac­tu­ally hold doors open for you when you are on crutches! And some­times — if you are look­ing extra pa­thetic — they might even offer to help you carry your stuff. I should sprain my ankle all the time.

The worst part about the boot, how­ever, is that it makes me about two inches taller than I al­ready am — which is al­ready taller than most girls (and a lot of guys) on this cam­pus. Sev­eral of my guy friends who are nor­mally taller than me, but who are now shorter, are no longer com­fort­able stand­ing next to me due to my in­creased height. It ap­par­ently, and I quote, “freaks them out.” There­fore, we can de­ter­mine that gen­er­ally, men do not like women who are taller than they are. Who knows why, ex­actly? But it is a def­i­nite trend — a trend that makes per­fect sense, be­cause it is the two short­est girls on our team who are cur­rently wifed up (hus­banded up?). So hope­fully once my ankle has re­cov­ered, I can get out of my 6’1” boot height and back down to my 5’11”, MRS.-de­gree-seek­ing self. Thank god.

So back to ac­tual vol­ley­ball, since that’s what I’m sup­posed to be writ­ing about. We had an­other rough week­end, drop­ping both of our matches to Brown and Yale. We are in a funk — no doubt about it — but Yale did see us re­turn to our old selves, only to lose by three points in the fifth game. So we are work­ing our butts off at prac­tice this week and look­ing to take on Cor­nell and Co­lum­bia again at their houses this week­end. Why yes, we are the ONLY fall sport that is NOT home on Home­com­ing. In case you were won­der­ing. And not only are we not home, but we are about to em­bark on the MOST bru­tal road trip of all road trips — 18 hours. That is a lot of Fri­day Night Lights. Stay tuned next week for the recap on this beauty.

The high­light of the week­end, how­ever, was by far our Dig Pink game. We had the en­tirety of some frat’s pledge class (not sure which one, I only know like five ’13s) with painted chests and a fair amount of other pink-clad fans vying for that elu­sive iPad.

See ya next week,

KJ