Going to state

Alaina's volleyball team qualified for the state tournament over the weekend. It is, we think, only the school's second trip to state since it was formed in 1978. Her team was seeded fourth going into substate and had to win two matches to qualify. Her team beat the host team, Campus High School (think Roseville only with more employment), in straight sets in the first match. Campus was pretty good blocking (three 6-footers) but not good in the back or on offense.
In the second match, they played Goddard, a suburban district near west Wichita. Goddard was the No. 1 seed and 30-6 coming in. Alaina has played basketball with a couple of the players on their team over the years. Northwest thumped them pretty good in the first game and then scored the last three points in the second game to win 26-24. The girls were pretty excited. Laura was, too, when she realized she might get a free celebratory meal out of it. Tom got a little verklempt.
Next is the state tournament Friday and Saturday in beautiful Topeka. Northwest is the No. 6 seed out of eight teams. The tournament is two, four-team pools, which play a straight round-robin on Friday. Top two from each pool advance to Saturday's semifinals. Northwest will play Manhattan (No. 2), Olathe South (No. 3) and Blue Valley North (No. 7). The last two schools are from suburban Kansas City, which tends to dominate this tournament.

Gift of Reading

Kudos to Ted for picking up the "Gift of Reading" column mantle from his uncles Dan and Tom (previous GoR columnists). His column on Grandpa Neal and the importance of supporting the Gift of Reading program ran in the Sunday, Oct. 25 edition of the Free Press. He was a little bummed that the Freep ran an old (2007) photo of him even though they took a new one of him at the Shining Light breakfast earlier in the month. Just another lesson to Ted that the newspaper business can drive you crazy. Read Ted's column here: http://www.freep.com/article/20091025/OPINION05/910250432/

Nice win for Northwest

Alaina's team ended the regular season with a nice victory over Bishop Carroll, which was the first-place team and ranked No. 3 in the state. Northwest got drilled in the first game and was down 13-4 in the second before rallying to win. The team finished 25-13 overall and 13-3 in league play, which tied them for second. It was 8-0 in the second round-robin of league play. Up next is sub-state play on Saturday. Her team has to win twice to advance to state. Each of the last two years, it has won the first game and then lost in the sub-state finals. We'll see what happens this year. We kept waiting for Alaina after the game, wondering where she was at. Turns out she was doing some media appearances. I think she looks like Sara in the video, only with bigger dimples. If you want to see some bad video of both matches Tuesday, go to this link. Videos are on the right. Alaina is No. 9. She has some nice kills off of some slide plays.