Phlog Edition

Hello Loyal Panther Fans!

Thanks to those of you who have been following our blog and more importantly our season so far. (Or maybe the other way around, that is up for debate.) We are new to the blog scene and really appreciate you all bearing with us these last few weeks. In true Milwaukee Women’s Soccer Fashion, we are trying to improve each week, and this week we are trying something new: a photo blog, or Phlog as we’ve decided to call it.

First, we take you back to last Wednesday night, our first Horizon League game of the 2014 season. We got to play on Engelmann and welcomed the University of Illinois-Chicago Flames to the Horizon League, as it is their first year having a program and competing in the Horizon League. It was great to see Panther alum Jamie Forbes on the coaching side of the game for UIC. It was also great to get our first win in the Horizon League. We won 4-1 with two Krissy Dorre goals, a Sydney Senn goal, and a great goal off of a header for Cassidy Blanchard’s first collegiate goal! It was a solid team win with 20 Panthers seeing action in the game.

To start us off, one of our best team selfies to date, pre UIC game.

We’d like to take a quick moment of silence for Kelsey before this next photo. Captured by a reporter at the game and generously retweeted by MKE Panthers for all of the world to see: 

The crutching mermaid. Thinking about doing a caption contest on this one….

On, astoundingly, our first bus trip, we anticipated there would be some great photo moments to share with you all. Our 18 hours on that bus in less than 48 hours did not disappoint. Here are a few of our favorites:

Just minutes in to the bus ride, Chad experienced a first in all of his years as an athletic trainer: Ashley literally had to pull her own tooth out.. on the bus….. Serious props to Ash for handling a couple of toothless days like an absolute champ.

Roscoe: World Record Sleeper. Hour 1.

  

                  

Morgan Burrito.                     Roscoe: Hour 3.                      Grub Stop.

  

                       

Team, KO’ed.             With that many people sleeping, getting

to the bathroom can be pretty tough                  Little tougher for some than others .. Brusha Brusha Brusha!!!

  

    

                                          Captains gotta sleep too.                                    Roscoe: Hour 8

…. You asked for a shout-out, Anny.

 Panthers patiently await our Penthouse suite room keys!!! (Actually though, great hotel, Jon.)

 Freshmen NOT so patiently await dinner. Real intimidating face, Cass!!!

2.5 hours later…. Olivia still no food, Sir.

 

       

Next morning: Syd CAN NOT.          But, we can! #RISE&ROAR panthers!

After a very fun start to the trip, things turned south pretty quickly. It was nice to play on Youngstown’s new field, but we were extremely disappointed with a 3-2 double OT loss after having 1-0 and 2-1 leads on goals from Morgan and Krissy.

After the game, things went even farther South. Like Antarctica South, at least for Morgan. After a bad reaction to some medication….. we’ll leave the rest of this 9 hour bus ride to your imagination and this photo….

 #NOFILTER

So, to sum it all up….

And let us not forget, through alllllll of this commotion….

Roscoe: Hour “The ENTIRE Trip”

Back in Milwaukee, with some rest, and a couple of good training sessions under our belt, we found ourselves back at Engelmann Wednesday night, excited and ready to play. And it showed.

Kelly Lewers scored the first goal on the night, off a ball into the box from Anna Smalley to Morgan, who flicked it on to Kelly for a great finish. Illinois State answered, but we responded very well, scoring our second just over 10 minutes after their equalizer. The second goal came off of a great ball from the corner by Morgan to Maria Stephans who met the ball in the air for a pretty excellent side-netting finish. Paige Lincicum also recorded 9 saves in our win. Panthers win, 2-1! (Our favorite score against the Redbirds.)

And finally, perhaps our favorite picture for this blog:

 Did you guys hear?? Writing the blog gets you out of weight room work outs!!!

That’s all we got, folks. We’ll catch up with Dave and Jon next week, sorry to keep you all on the edge of your seats on that one.

Follow us this weekend for Senior Day: Saturday at 4:00 PM. We’ll hope to have a little bit of Packer in us as we take on the Cleveland State Vikings!

Go Panthers!!!

Morgan and Kelsey

"Panther Most Likely"

Howdy Panther fans! Writing to you from the bus headed home from a nice win at Loyola, Wendy’s Frosty in hand. (Those of you on the 2011 team will know that means it was a respectable win!) After giving up an early goal on a penalty kick, we were happy to respond with two first half goals by our dynamic forward duo of Kriss-Cat Dorre and Kelly Panther (Lewers). We won 2-1. The rest of our match was not nearly as exciting as our past week of soccer, so let's get to those games.

Thursday evening we took on cross-town rival Marquette. For anyone that came out and watched... thanks for coming in the cold!! Little too early to be breaking out the Under Armour and gloves in our opinion, but we digress. Also…. we apologize for giving you so many minor (or major) heart attacks.

We came to play in the first half, taking a 3-0 lead and came in to the locker room at half buzzing. (LINK to highlights) If you were not at the game, you’ll want to check these goals out. [Please note that Morgan nutmegged her player just before playing that great ball to Vienna on our fourth goal was unfortunately left out of Marquette’s highlight tape….] After a crazy string of four second half Marquette goals, started by another penalty kick, we were tied 4-4 with roughly five minutes left in the game.

Two minutes left: after a great ball from Caity Bestwina, Vienna Behnke dribbled down the endline, picked her head up and found Sydney Senn who calmly placed our fifth and (thank goodness) final goal of the match to give us a 5-4 win! Something about beating Marquette will just always feel good.

We used Friday to watch some video, rest our bodies, (and Kelsey’s voice/heart), before we left bright and early on Saturday for another flight to the south for a Sunday game against Auburn. Milwaukee’s 45 degree weather was nearly doubled when we got to Auburn. (Not really pleased about that either, but be careful what you wish for, we suppose.)

It was a quick little get away, and hard to believe we were only gone for just over 24 hours. We had a great first half with some promising chances, but unfortunately we just couldn’t get a result. We finished 2-0 with their second goal coming very late in the game, a good effort from our side. Also, still confused about that whole War Eagle/Tiger thing.

This week, Kelsey and I would like to bring you a new segment to help you get to know your Panthers just a bit more than what you see of them on the field. We’ll try to do these periodically throughout the season cause, well, ya know, as fun as we are, we figure you might like to learn about the other 27 Panthers, too.

This week’s segment is titled: “Panther Most Likely”. We asked all 29 girls a number of questions to see which panther would be most likely to do a certain thing. The team seemed to have some fun with this, as did we, here are the results:

Panther Most Likely

Most likely to be a celebrity -Tatum Smith

She’s Californian, it’s in her blood.

Most likely to win the lottery- Amy Kauffung

One word…share:)

Most likely to be President-Kelsey Holbert

If this holds true, you better let me ride shotty in Air Force One, Kels!

Most likely to live in the wilderness -Anny & Vienna

Least likely definitely Kelsey… proudly.

  

Most likely to hold a world record – Anny West

Possible records: most board games played in a row, largest rollerblading gang, most water bottles misplaced, worst laundry-doer EVER

  

Most likely to own a restaurant-Rachael

Free food for all Panthers, Rach?

Most likely to be a soccer coach-Maria

We can picture the jumpsuit, whistle and clipboard now

Most likely to be a comedian –Morgan

Again, braggy…

Most likely to join the armed forces –Paige

I think we can all trust Paige “The Brick Wall” Lincicum to protect and serve us all.

Most likely to start a business –Kelly Manski

(Will you hire us????)

Most likely to live to 100-Ashley

She’s already started stockpiling her favorite gum, might as well live long enough to use it up.  

Most likely to have 10 kids – Krissy

They would be the coolest kids to ever walk to planet.

  

Most likely to sleep through an earthquake- Swittel & Jen & Emma

Three lucky Panthers tied for this award!!! Congrats, guys. YAY SLEEP.

Most likely to have a best selling book- Tailer Roscoe

This one’s possible people, we even got a sneak peek on the bus ride home.

We hope these responses provided as much humor to you as they did to us. Check back with in with us in about ten years and we’ll see if any of them hold true. Next week we catch up with assistant coaches Jon Gulrajani and Dave Madsen. Everything you’ll want to know and more!

Peace & Love,

Kels & Mo

Hashtags: #Rise&Roar….. it’s gonna happen people c’mon.

Catching up...

Hello Panther Fans!

We first hope that you will accept our apology for not updating you on the ins and outs of Panther Women’s Soccer last week. We know you (and Tim Prahl) were all patiently waiting at your computers wondering how you must go on without us but, worry no more…we are back! In our defense, school started up last week and after a weekend of travel, we had lots to catch up on. Including sleep, now that our 6:30 AM practices have begun. We also got the unfortunate news that I, Kelsey, have two injuries, both more serious, that have caused me to miss our last four games. For anyone who knows how much I love this team and playing soccer, you can imagine how disappointed I am. On the bright side, I am now certain I can not bend it like Beckham with a large boot and crutches, so I will be blogging it with everything I’ve got. All jokes aside, I am still so excited to see what we can do this year, and I will be looking to help the team in any way that I can while I'm out.

South Carolina: When we were greeted at the airport with free hotdogs, popcorn and sno cones by a University of South Carolina football tailgate (literally, this is not a joke) we knew it was going to be a good trip. Then we stepped outside.

It was a great trip, but it was HOT and it was BUGGY. A lethal combination, really. When you weren’t wiping the sweat, you were swatting the bugs. We googled hot and Columbia, South Carolina came up. Even hot would say that it was hot. Like a sweating when you’re not doing anything at all kind of hot. (Yeah, call me out, Morgan??!) I’m almost not sure what’s worse… the great Wisconsin winter or the heat box known as South Carolina. (With training comes complaining, ya know?)

We played the College of Charleston and the University of South Carolina while we were in Columbia. It was a great facility, a top-notch field, and we thought we took some good steps forward from our opening weekend. We beat the College of Charleston 4-2 on Friday and saw two great goals from senior Kelly Lewers. (If you haven’t seen it, check out the UWM website for a feature of our two favorite people- Kelly and Juicy J!! Just kidding, but really, check out Kel, men’s soccer’s Laurie Bell and volleyball’s Kayla Price. Great people.) We also saw sophomore defender Kelly Manski and freshman forward Sydney Senn’s first collegiate goals—so proud of them both. After a nice day off complete with some true southern barbecue and an intense movie When the Game Stands Tall we were all ready for the next days match up. It was a quick turn around and before we knew it, we were warming up ready to take on The University of South Carolina. The now ranked #9 South Carolina gave us a good match and they came away with a 2-0 win. We were encouraged by our play against a nationally recognized team, but weren’t satisfied with the result. We created good scoring chances and know that we have more in us.

Our very own Morgan LaPlant and Rachael Van Keulen earned well-deserved All-Tournament Team Honors. If you see a blindingly pink Under Armour sweatshirt on either of the two of them, you’ll know why.

Let us not forget…in the last minute of the game, literally out of nowhere came an absolute monsoon. Not the best weather for loading the vans and getting to the airport, or for doing anything really. On the bright side, it definitely masked all of our sweat and maybe even counted as a shower for some of us (Amy), so that was definitely a plus.

Many thanks to Jon for organizing such a well planned and smooth trip- even driving us to Charlotte, NC instead of flying there, after the rain delay would have caused us to miss our connecting flight. We think Jon had such a good itinerary that Boston University, who was also there for the tournament, copied it. We were at the same hotel, same restaurants for dinner, same movies, same airports, etc. Little obvious, you know? Two Panther paws way up to all of the parents who made the trip out, it was great to have such a loud crowd at an away game. And a special thank you to all the parents that contributed to the post-game treat bags! They were excellent and actually my (Morgan) second favorite thing after a game, falling behind sleep of course.

Fast forward to Friday night, under the lights, beautiful night at Engelmann Stadium for a game against Boston College. Another tough opponent at a top-notch field with a great crowd- what more could you ask for? After going in to the locker room tied 0-0, we ended up losing 2-0 and were again disappointed with that result. We could not dwell on that result too long, as we played again on Sunday vs. undefeated DePaul. After training Saturday, some post-practice Noodles and Co. and the afternoon to rest, we came into Sunday feeling prepared and excited—and it showed. We took a 2-0 lead after 17 minutes, with two absolutely stellar goals from Morgan. (Isn’t she so braggy?!). Just kidding, Kelsey writing, and they really were great. The first was assisted by Maria Stephans and the second assisted by Kelly Lewers and Krissy Dorre. Morgan did a great job getting in to the box as these players were able to get serves across in to the box. Right place, right time. x2. We were pleased with this start, but extremely frustrated with a 3-2 result after two first and one second half goals from DePaul.

We know we are capable of more, and we know we will get to a place we want to be. In the meantime, we will be working hard each day! Follow us along this week as we take on the Marquette Golden Eagles for our cross-town game of the 2014 season and travel to Auburn University for a cross-country game on Sunday. Not cross-country running though, we’d be really bad at that.

Pretty confused why our hashtags were never trending in South Carolina, probably a Twitter malfunction, but we’ll try again this week.

#PantherPawsUp #MKEPantherPack #Rise&Roar

We promise to write again soon!

Yours,
Kelsey and Morgan

Welcome to #BlogItLikeBeckham

Greetings Panther Fans!

Morgan LaPlant and Kelsey Holbert here, honored to take on the task of weekly women's soccer updates for the 2014 season! With some inspiration from our predecessors: notably Keara Thompson of Keara’s Korner, Helen Steinhauser and Demi Price of Notes from the Midfield, and Hannah Kaul and Sara Stern from Post Game Gossip, we hope to bring you soccer notes, funny jokes, and everything in between.

Since we started a couple of weeks ago, we have a lot to catch you up on. We’ve narrowed it down to just ten of our favorite moments.

1. The Panthers. We think we speak for the rest of the team when we say we are not only excited to be back but we are also ready to see what 2014 holds for us. 29 girls, 1 team, 1 dream.

2. The First Annual Milwaukee Women's Soccer Mini-Golf Outing. Huge thank you to Jenny Gryniewicz for making everything go smoothly. Culver’s, mini-golf, friends, family, raffles, and a beautiful night.

3. The Food. Noodles, Qdoba, Chipotle, Buca di Bepo, Panera, Jimmy John’s, Erbert’s and Gerbert’s. Repeat. Thank you to Dave and Jon for organizing such great meals—they are much appreciated.

4. Blog Name Brainstorming. We gave Anny West the task of brainstorming blog names for us. She came up with a few great options- Typing with Our Feet: A Soccer Blog, Yellow Card: A Mildly Offensive Blog, and Blog It Like Beckham. After days of deliberation, we chose Blog It Like Beckham. (All complaints on the name can be filed under Anny West, Sandburg Dorms, East Tower, not a corner room.)

5. Panther Painting Day. One day this preseason, we had professionals come to campus, and (thankfully) walk us through painting the Panther logo step-by-step. Most of them turned out great. Jon, we think you should stick to coaching J.

6. The Alumni Game. Great to see so many Panther alumni!! Huge thank you to all of those that played. Let’s just say the alumni will be pretty stacked next year, wink wink. Also, nice to know Helen is just as loud, and Demi is just as clumsy as we remember them.

7. Our first weekend playing. Two tough losses to two very good teams: The University of Tennessee and the University of Oregon. Definitely not the start we were looking for, but we took a lot of positives from the weekend, especially in Sunday’s match vs. Oregon. After a hard loss on Friday night, we felt we improved in many areas on Sunday afternoon. With a couple of early chances and two shots off the crossbar, we felt we created enough opportunities to win the match. We are hoping to continue with this attacking mindset this weekend in Columbia against the College of Charleston and the University of South Carolina. We also hope the 90 degree, 93% humidity weather in Madison prepared us (a little bit) for the heat of the South!

8. The FCKC vs. Chicago Red Stars Game. We took a trip to Chicago to watch Panther alum Sarah Hagen play for FC Kansas City in the NWSL. It was great experience to see a women’s professional game and even cooler to see Apple out there. We wish her the best of luck this weekend in the NWSL final! (Sunday 2pm ESPN2)

9. Iron Chef- We were split in to four teams, given a budget, a ride to the grocery store, and the task of providing an edible meal for 35 hungry Panthers. Long story short, all the meals were fabulous. Stay tuned, we are still waiting for Bobby Flay and his sui chefs to reveal the winner.

10. Finally, our awesome families for the treat bags, pre-pre-season meals, the alumni game picnic, post-game hugs and continued support (both at home and one the road). Special shout out to the West family (Dale and Tina, not Kim and Kanye) for having us all over for dinner. Best gourmet hot dogs this side of the Mississippi! Also thanks to the Henschel family for hosting us for a delicious lunch, Sunday bar, and Egg Drop contest!

That’s all we have for you this week folks, catch back up with us next week to hear about our games, if we survived the heat, the winner of Iron Chef, and more. As we always say, if you can’t Bend it like Beckham, just blog it.

Kelsey & Morgan

Note: We’re trending on twitter! Join us this weekend as week head down south to take on the College of Charleston and the University of South Carolina by tweeting pics and posts with the hashtags #pantherwsoc #howdypanthers #blogitbybeckham

Outtakes...

Sara Stern + Hannah Kaul bid their farewell with the 10th and final edition of Postgame Gossip. The duo recap their senior season before a few outtakes from previous episodes.

Trivia...

The week nine installment of Postgame Gossip involves a little turning of the tables. Normally on road trips, assistant coach Jon Gulrajani has a little trivia for the team on the bus. This week, hosts Sara Stern and Hannah Kaul switch roles and have a few questions for their coach.

Making Dinner A Little More Exciting...

Hosts Sara Stern and Hannah Kaul bring you the eighth edition of Postgame Gossip. This week, the duo talked about last Friday's win at Oakland, the All-Horizon League Awards that were announced this week and having a little fun at dinner on the road.