Want Me to Nancy Kerrigan Her For You?!

Today was our last day of Nationals!!!

We started prelims off with Amanda swimming the 100 freestyle in 52.08 seeding her at 9th for the night, just barely missing finals. Michelle swam the 200 fly in 2:09.63 leaving her in 17th place. She missed the consolation heat by 2 tenths of a second. Michelle was bummed about her race and Carolyn came over to comfort her. She asked Michelle, "would you like me to Nancy Kerrigan a girl for you?" Michelle thought this was the best idea ever, so they looked through the heat sheet for Carolyn's victim. (Sadly, Sue convinced them to keep their hands to themselves)Our 400 free relay of Sarah, Michelle, Carolyn, and Amanda made it back to the consols heat even after adding 3.5 seconds to their seeded time. Michelle was so excited to stand on the podium tonight that she pulled a Carolyn and cried about it. Something really funny happened this morning, we promise, we just can't think of it. So if you think if something, go with that...it probably happened.

We went to a bagel deli for lunch that had millions, and I mean millions of different kinds of sandwiches to order. Ironically, one of them was the Tonya Harding. We considered ordering it, but then it sounded gross, so we didn't. Dani, once again, saw someone that she knew and went running out of the deli to say hi. As she ran out into the street at full speed, we all pictured the scene at the end of the movie "Mean Girls" where the girls humorously get hit by a school bus. We thought that she was going to get hit by something because she didn't look both ways before she crossed.....and we were right! She didn't get hit by a car or a bus, or a pedestrian on a bike, but get this....A parade of wild African elephants came stampeding down the street the moment she stepped foot on it. Okay, so we lied again, Dani made it across the street safely. After we were done getting our food, Dani and Sue went to talk to these people that Dani had just said hi to, and the 5 of us just stood outside in the rain very awkwardly and watched a squirrel play with a beer bottle in a hole of a tree, while we ate our warm bagel sandwiches. Then we headed back to Camp Sycamore for some naps.

And finally, the LAST session of NCAA's. The night started off with the senior recognition ceremony. Carolyn cried, of course, because she is now officially a swammer and all the Carthage parents joined in on her crying. Amanda swam her last individual race of the weekend, the 100 free breaking the 52 second mark with a 51.63 finishing her in 9th and putting her at the top of the podium! The 400 free relay held in there till the end, placing them in 16th. For the 3 minutes we spent standing on the podium, 2 of those 3 minutes were spent waving at Carlos, trying to get his attention, in hopes he would wave back. It wasn't until 30 seconds before we were getting ready to walk off the podium, that he finally noticed a blob of red waving at him....he did eventually wave back! At the same time this is all happening, our parents were throwing their coats on and grabbing all their bags to run out of the meet to get dinner. We think they were getting sick of sitting in the stands, that or they were just REALLY hungry! So hungry that they could have been like Sarah, and be a depressed obese women who likes to eat her feelings.

After we stood on the podium, we were on our way back to our team area, when suddenly we smelled alcohol on the pool deck. We're wondering if some of the girls started to party a little too early. Then we went to the locker room to change and Michelle ran into a girl that was covering her mouth, as she sprinted for the john. She thinks vomit face may have been throwing up in the bathroom stall. Her reinactment of the 'pukey girl's' facial expressions were priceless. But, if you ever want to see this great impression, just ask her to see it, and I'm sure she would be thrilled to show you!!

So after the meet was over, we headed to this Mexican restaurant called El Burrito Loco. Amanda, once again, had an eating contest but this time it was with Carlos. When she didn't win, she tried to call it a tie. Carolyn replied, "you can't call things a tie every time you lose!" After a few minutes, Amanda decided to shove the rest of the refried beans into her mouth even though they had a gross texture, just to clear her plate before Carlos did. So now we are back at the hotel reminiscing on this past weekend, enjoying being done, and just relaxing. Unfortunately, there are now 3 500-lb people running around upstairs causing the walls in our room to shake. We are about to take a field trip to see what they are doing upstairs.

Well, hopefully you enjoyed our stories.

Signing off,
Team SMAAC

P.S. Thank you to our fans, Stephen, Lauren, Heather, Tito, and Greg

P.S.S. Thank you to our real #1 fan, Bryan Pelka, for coming to the meet

P.S.S.S. Greg, they hung our banner up behind the announcer's stand so you couldn't even see the whole thing, we were really bummed.

P.S.S.S.S. Sorry this one isn't so funny, we are disappointed in ourselves

P.S.S.S.S.S. The Luther Team likes to roll around on the pool deck

P.S.S.S.S.S.S. Tito, this one's for you :)

P.S.S.S.S.S.S.S. Is that enough P.S.'s for you Tito?!

P.S.S.S.S.S.S.S.S. The stampede of elephants that were chasing after Dani seemed to followed her to our hotel because there seems to be some rumbling in the hallways.

P.S. x 15. Our field trip resulted in, us coming to the conclusion that there are swimmers that live above us. However, we did not notice an 500-lb girls at the meet they must just stay in their rooms all day and pound on the floor.

When the moon hits your eye....more like your face, that's not amore!!!

Day Two of Nationals...

On the way to the pool, this morning Dani was a little concerned about Sue's driving as she screamed in horror for fear that she was going to lose her life, "Red light, Sue!" Sue, cool as a cucumber responds, "Dani, it's okay. I have a whole block to stop. I was just accelerating to get over the small hill made by the railroad tracks." After that, Sue no longer allows us to watch her park the van.

Then the laughs just continued in the locker room when we were all changing into our suits. Sarah, Carolyn, and Amanda were just chatting away when this old lady walks into our aisle dripping wet from the shower she had just taken, with a towel barely covering anything at all. She just so happened to have the locker directly in front of where Amanda was changing. At this point, Amanda was bending down to pull up the legs on her fastskin, meanwhile the elderly woman shimmied her way to her locker. Amanda still bent over at this time, the old lady finally reaches her locker. She removed the towel that was not covering much of anything, if you catch my drift, and bends over herself. It was not until Amanda, went to look up to talk to Carolyn when she saw a wrinkled version of the full moon. So basically, if you haven't followed along at all, an old lady put her naked, old, wrinkly butt in Amanda's face. Amanda turned to look at Carolyn and mouthed Oh jeez! and Carolyn started laughing right away causing the old lady to turn and look, so Carolyn had to just turn away and act like nothing had happened.

On to more serious business...
The Lady Reds started the meet off with the 200 Medley Relay of Sarah, Michelle, Carolyn, and Amanda. The officials were using the new touch pad system for deciding false starts for each relay, which if your reaction time off the block was faster that .09, you were automatically disqualified. This meant eight teams were disqualified including the top seeds. Our relay was one of the very few that did not get DQ'd and we were very excited to swim the race again at night. However, after much deliberation, the officials decided to call all the relays back and not DQ anyone because of touch pad malfunction, which put us in second to last place. Sadly, we did not get to swim that event again. Michelle swam her second fastest time in the 400 IM and gave it her all. The previous meet record for this event was broken four times today. Amanda swam the 200 free in a 1:54.35 which tied her for 14th, however, Dani thought she tied for 16th and was freaking out thinking Amanda was going to have to do a swim off for the consolation heat. But Amanda proved her wrong and was at a safe 14th.

Four of us got Quizno's for lunch and Sarah decided to be gross and get KFC instead and eat like a depressed, obese woman who eats her feelings away. She also called us ALL from the van to tell us Big Bertha had moved. And Alyssa expanded her horizons and ate a sandwich that had more than just bread and turkey on it and ate the whole thing.

We came back to the hotel and rested and hung out before heading back to finals.

On to finals. Amanda swam her 200 freestyle in her fastest time ever with a 1:54.10. Dani was freaking out the entire race because she took out the first 100 two seconds slower than this morning but managed to go an even faster time. She moved up two spots to 12th place!!! This meet is so fast that every record, except for the 100 breaststroke, has been broken so far not including relays.

So after the meet we hung out in the parking garage while we waited for Sue to FIND the van. Alyssa had the giggles and was laughing at absolutely everything and had to pee really bad. So Carolyn tried to make her laugh even harder while Amanda jabbed her in the bladder with her fist hoping she would leak a little......... Mission Accomplished! (*)

We got back to the hotel and ate dinner from the same place as the night before only this time, they were slightly faster. Then, Carolyn and Amanda had this great idea! We asked the front desk for the key to Fort Lagoon, which was the exercise room on a balcony overlooking the pool. We hid up there until Dani and Carlos finally came looking for us. Amanda thought it would be a good idea to go diving from the balcony into the pool, but right after she thought of doing this, she saw that there was a no diving sign attached to the balcony. Carlos told us we should do a cannonball instead giving us some good ideas for tomorrow night ;)

Signing off,
The National Team

P.S. Thank you Stephen for being our #1 fan

P.S.S. Thank you Stephen for being our ONLY fan

P.S.S.S. We hope this one is a little bit funnier

P.S.S.S.S. There is a 500-lb man that lives in the room above us and runs around at all hours of the day and night, we think it's so he can lose some of his extra baggage

P.S.S.S.S.S. Michelle has a handicapped room with get this.... two peepholes, one for when you are standing and one for when you are in the wheelchair

P.S.S.S.S.S.S. (*)Alyssa is begging me to tell you that she made it to the bathroom... we'll leave it up to you whether you believe it or not.

"But I haven't hit anything yet"

Today was our first day of Nationals!

We arrived at the pool where we claimed our seating in the corner by ourselves. All the swimmers stretched and then headed to the bathroom to spend 3 hours putting our fastskins on. Here is the conversation that occurred while we struggled to pull our suits on over our curvy figures:
Carolyn: Alyssa, how did you get your suit up your legs so fast?
Alyssa: Well, I just pull my suit up really fast over my legs and now I have to stand here for a minute because my legs hurt really bad.
Carolyn: See for me, it's getting it over my butt that's the struggle.
Alyssa: Look at Amanda's pointy hips, they just stick out.
Amanda: I can't help it I have good child-bearing hips!
(At this point Sarah hasn't said anything because she was too busy sucking the snot back up her nose and coughing up parts of her lungs!)

So Prelims-
The girls got in and splashed around for a bit for warm-ups. During warm-ups, a small brawl broke out. Scary, intimidating, 90-lb Michelle punched a girl as she was pushing off the wall for trying to pass her at the flags. Then it was time to start the meet. The 200 Free Relay of Sarah, Alyssa, Carolyn, and Amanda managed to swim a time fast enough to get them seeded at 14th for finals with a time of 1:38.08. This time was about 1.5 seconds slower than our seed time but we were excited to make it back at night. Michelle swam the 200 IM and added a few seconds to her time but we know that she will come back tomorrow and kick butt in the 400 IM. Next up, Amanda swam the 50 free in the fastest 8th place finish in NCAA history and made it as the only freshman in the finals heat. Amanda's time was a 23.98, getting her into finals by one-hundredth of a second. Lastly, our 400 Medley Relay of Sarah, Michelle (yes, she swam breaststroke), Carolyn, and Alyssa managed to finish the race. Alyssa got to experience "all eyes on her" as the anchor of this awesome relay (meaning we were the last one's to finish and she had a whole 25 to swim alone).

Funny story of the morning, a girl from California asked Dani where we were from. Dani replied, Wisconsin and the girl said, where's that in relation to Ohio? Dani explained that Indiana is next to Ohio and Illinois is next to Indiana and we are right above Illinois. The girl responds, that's in the midwest right? So apparently, people from California don't know their geography.

After some Jimmy Johns, napping, and a little bit of homework, it was back to the pool to swim finals. We got to the parking garage of the pool and Sue attempted to back Big Bertha into ONE spot. Not only did she manage to take up TWO spaces, but she almost plowed through the back wall of the garage. After Michelle told her she should probably stop backing up, Sue replied, "but I haven't hit anything yet."

We started the meet off with our 200 Free Relay, pulling our team up to 13th place. Amanda dropped her time in the 50 free to a 23.79 getting her 7th place and a plaque that Dani got to hand out. Dani was a little too short and stealth to hand out the awards, but she managed to just barely reach the 1st place finishers hand to shake.

We got back to the hotel and hung out in the lobby of the Sycamore Inn for about the longest hour of our lives, waiting for our food. It took our food so long to arrive because KENYON hogged the delivery service man. Now our tummys are full and we are finally happy. And it's way past our bedtime!!!!

Signing off,
The Nationals Team

P.S. This one sucks because today was too serious... nothing funny really happend.

P.S.S. We saw a lot of drunk parties happening on campus and lots of green shirts. You got 5 points if you hit one of the drunk students with your car and -5 points if they ran into you. We somehow managed to keep a steady score of .....get this.......0!!!

P.S.S.S. "Hot blooded check-it and see, I got a fever of 103"

P.S.S.S.S Pictures soon to come!!!

"I got kicked out of ballet, it was traumatic"

Are you ready for some more Nationals adventures?! (If not...too bad!)



We woke up today at 8 am (Dani's rules) . Carolyn and Amanda were the last ones to show up... big surprise. Dani immediately had something to yell about.... "Carolyn where are your SHOES?". So anyway we had some yummy continental breakfast. Actually, it was more like a bagel and ONE piece of toast in a vacuumed sealed bag. Odd we know! We discussed chunky yogurt and how Carolyn never ate chunky applesauce. We talked with the hotel staff about green beer day. This is the guy that told us about the bars opening at 5:30 am! Then we headed back to our rooms to hang out until it was time to take a field trip to the pool.



Now on to the more exciting part of the day. We drove over to the pool and on our way in ran into a few of the Kenyon ladies, so Dani was really excited. Pretty much everywhere we went this morning we ran into people Dani knew. So basically we stopped every 5 SECONDS, accompanied by little girlish squeals and screams of excitement, and lots of hugging. The pool is amazing! It's huge! We were taking pictures like crazy of the pool and the podium and one of the other coaches was talking to Dani and was like, "uh, first timers?" I guess we were pretty obvious. We got special VIP passes so that we can get onto the pool deck. They have this lady that is like the bouncer for the pool. (Her muscles might have been bigger than Amanda's.....hahah yeah right) She checks everyone's passes extremely closely. So don't try to make a fake!



We also got all of our free stuff! We got these really nice backpacks that have the strap that crosses over your chest. We also got a quad chair, as Sarah would call it, with a foot rest that folds up nicely into a bag. (Which by the way we set up camp in our hotel room with). We got a lanyard and a program of the meet.



Once we got our feel of the pool, we drove around campus a little more..more like another half-hour trapped in BIG BERTHA (our van), looking for a place to eat and checked out all the Greek homes, which by the way have some pretty interesting names. We found a little BBQ place called 'The Smokin' O ', that was really pretty delicious and filling. The host put us down in the basement by ourselves to eat... I think he knew we were going to be too loud. Lunch was quite entertaining. Alyssa could barely take a bite of food without nearly choking on it because she was laughing so hard. Sarah didn't feel well so she was crabby and not really talkative. Amanda was too interested in the basketball game on TV and too hungry to entertain us. Michelle had almost an entire chicken on her plate as her meal. We also found out that Michelle got kicked out of ballet class when she was four because she would go off into the corner and do her own dances and not listen to the teacher. Don't ask her about it though, it's too traumatic.

So after our small adventure on the town of Oxford, we came back to the Sycamore Inn/ Best Western and did ABSOLUTELY nothing. Carolyn talked to every single one of her friends on the computer as Amanda tried to sleep through the clattering of her fingers on the keyboard. We don't know what everyone else did....okay we lied. Sarah, Alyssa, and Michelle all got done up for our team photo at 3. Carolyn and Amanda didn't care what they looked like so they threw up their hair, and put on the same shirts as the rest of the girls so we would look halfway decent for the team picture.

We arrived back at the GINORMOUS pool and decided we could possibly get in and do a few laps of doggie paddle and such. P.S. The water temperature was about 60 degrees- cold enough to grow back all the leg and arm hair we had just shaved off. To quote Alyssa, "This pool makes me feel insignificant" because the lanes were so huge. Not to mention the gutters were huge as well. So big a "baby could fall through and get trapped, except for the babies with extremely large heads" -Amanda. From there, we met Dani's friend Julio who thought we were extremely funny and entertaining but Dani would like to think otherwise (annoying). Then we headed back to the BW.

We all got ready in our most fabulous black dress wear, put on some make-up and some high heeled shoes. Dani had on red high heels, "Oh you can watch me walk if you want to, want to I’ll bet you want me back now don’t you, don’t you I’m about to show you just how missin’ me feels In my red high heels " We got to dinner pretty early, a little to0 early, like 20 minutes too early, to take lots of pictures. When they opened the doors for us to pick our tables, we pushed Michelle through the crowd so she could run and save us a table. But in actuality, we should have made Dani do it because she's "small and stealth." So basically, it was a normal dinner. Buffet style and delicious. Complete with cheesecake for dessert. We spotted Sasquatch... she was about 6'8" with red hair. Then we left. And now we are back in our hotel resting for the first day of prelims tomorrow.

Signing off,
C-Rizz and Eighdolla holla

Next on the agenda, stories of drunken college students on Miami's campus.

P.S. Amanda won the dinner eating contest... even though it wasn't a contest, she still won.

P.S.S. As we were driving back from dinner, Amanda and Sue had a short convo:
Amanda, "If I were driving right now, I would honk and wave at every single person I saw."
Sue, "I bet you would."

P.S.S.S. The weather here is like springtime.

P.S.S.S.S. The End

Oh, Look! Civilization!

Good afternoon! This is the lady reds reporting to you from Miami of Ohio. Our journey started yesterday afternoon in lovely Kenosha, Wisconsin. Our scheduled departure time was 12:30 pm but seeing as we are women, we had to push it back an extra hour to give us more time to pack, do our hair, and look pretty for our what was supposed to be a 5-6 hour drive. We all arrived at the TARC to find lovely easter baskets from our fellow RedMen and Lady Red swimmers (thanks everyone!!!).

So after we each stuffed our 10 bags into the van, Dani and Sue started debating on whether or not to use JUST a map to get us to Ohio. Sue lost, so Dani ran into the office and mapquested our adventure. While Dani was searching, we 'hid' the 15 passenger van behind a snow mound. But little did we know, our wonderful graduate assisstant is too smart for us and could see our monstrous van from the TARC doors. oops!

Our adventure began. Michelle passed out within a minute of leaving. Amanda was constantly yelling at Carolyn to stay awake and talk to her. Dani kept rolling her eyes at us because she was ALREADY annoyed with us. Sue was very focused on driving making sure she hit EVERY pothole. Sarah tried to fit her 'daddy long legs' in a small crevice many times before hitting Carolyn in the head. Alyssa read the whole trip while throwing in a witty comment here and there.

3 hours later.... Michelle wakes up and decides its a good idea to play I spy.
Sarah, "I looooveee I spy"
Alyssa, "what, I spy a farm?"
We are all dying at this point from laughter.

Then we got bored and went back to sleep.

5 hours later... we stop at a gas station to take a pee break and for Sue to get some coffee. We found some Prego for Sarah but unfortunately it was MEAT SAUCE!!! We almost got hit by a car walking back to the van. Not gonna lie, we were kind of excited to get a moment of silence at nationals for being killed in a gas station parking lot.

Once back on the road, alive, we hit a little traffic. Sue decided that she did not want to wait and to take an hour long detour into the middle of nowhere. We pulled over at church and Dani suggested that Amanda get out.

We finally found the road again and Carolyn decided it was a good idea to sit backwards in her seat. Amanda became extremely concerned and suggested that she buckle up. Not even 10 seconds later, Sue slams on the brakes nearly rear ending the car in front of us and Carolyn smashed into the back of Dani's seat, nearly giving her whiplash. "It's always a good idea to take advice from a freshman" -Amanda

7.5 hours after leaving Kenosha, we finally hit civilization and arrived at Jimmy Johns. Did you know that the guy who started Jimmy Johns went to Michelle's high school and spoke at her graduation? His real name is Leotoad, crazy huh?! So after hearing the whole biography of Leotoad James John, we were ready to fill our tummys!!!

So now that you have experienced our entire van ride with us, we think we will wrap this little guy up. Tune in next time for some more good times with the Lady Reds National Team. Next on the agenda: FREE STUFF and FREE FOOD!!!

Signing off,
Eighdolla holla, C-Rizz, Shoe Shop, Awkward, and Spaz

P.S. Did you know, the bars open at 5:30 am tomorrow for green beer day? Can't wait to see all the intoxicated college students.

P.S.S. Carolyn beat Amanda in a sandwich eating contest. But there will be a rematch soon to come b/c Amanda can't stand losing.