O we will fight, fight, fight for Iowa State...

I originally intended to post this column last week sometime, but then something unexpected came up: Christmas.  I’ll try to write a real Christmas-themed column in the upcoming days, but somehow last week arrived and I came to the abrupt realization that I had less than two weeks to figure out what the heck I am doing for the holidays, do all the Christmas shopping, and get the house cleaned up so our catsitter doesn’t think we’re a bunch of slobs when she shows up.  So, imagine, if you will, that it is December 13^th instead…

December 13^th finds us in the car on Interstate 80, just east of Omaha.  There’s a duffel bag of clothes in the back, along with a cooler of Whole Foods goodies (that you may have heard about), and we are just settling in for the two hour drive back to Des Moines.  The roads are fine now, but it is still just days after the biggest snowstorm in thirty years, so there was some question as to whether conditions would be suitable for travel when we left.  So just what was it that caused this pilgrimage to Omaha?  To answer that, we have to look back further, about four years ago.

It’s a crisp fall day, or maybe it’s a blustery cold Iowa day, or perhaps even one of the freakishly hot sunny days that arbitrarily pop up in September and October here in the Midwest.  The point is, I don’t exactly remember the weather, but I do know exactly where I was.  Jack Trice stadium, with Stacia alongside, cheering and shouting (most likely in vain) for our Iowa State Cyclone football team.  Of the six years that I lived in Ames, only one was spent without season football tickets, and we made it to nearly every game.

So there we were, enjoying the cool air, or huddled together for warmth or sweating like crazy, when an announcement was made on the giant videoboard.  Anyone with a football ticket for that day was invited to the ISU volleyball game that followed at the nearby Hilton Coliseum.  Stacia was fairly excited, as she had played volleyball in high school.  I was fairly confused, as I had no idea Iowa State even had a volleyball team.  But hey, I was an open-minded college kid, so why not give it a try?

We got inside and sat down, amongst a strangely disparate crowd of older folks and frothing superfans, as well as a few students like us who looked just a bit lost.  The first set started, and I thought, hey, this is pretty exciting.  I started asking Stacia all sorts of questions about the rules, and also started getting into cheering the team on.  I can’t recall if the team won or not that day, but I remember being astounded at the athleticism needed to play this sport, and walked away having enjoyed the experience as much, if not more than the football game we’d just come from.

Over the next few years in Ames, we made it to several volleyball games a year, and gradually became more knowledgeable about the nuances of the game.  I started to grow less excited about the commercialized, big-business football team, and shifted my focus to the raw emotion and talent on the volleyball court.  We eventually moved down to Des Moines, and due to schedules and travel times, missed all but one game this season.

We did follow the team online, and knew they were pretty good, so we weren’t shocked that they made the NCAA tournament.  What was interesting was that ISU was selected to host the first and second rounds.  It was a quick consensus that since we’d hardly seen any volleyball this year that we should darn well make it to the tournament rounds.  Forty minute drives back and forth on Friday and Saturday were well worth it to see ISU decisively beat George Mason and Wichita State.  The team was on to the quarterfinal rounds.

Which were in Omaha, interestingly enough.  A short two hour drive from Des Moines.  As we drove home, relishing the win over Wichita State, the same thought occurred to the two of us: let’s just do it.  Let’s follow the team on the road, and cheer them on.  After all, they were facing Nebraska, the local favorite and a national powerhouse, so they could use the support.  Within an hour of arriving at home, we’d ordered tickets and booked a hotel on Priceline.  We were on the road to Omaha.

 Omaha was good, and also not so good.  Taking an arbitrary vacation on less than a week’s notice – good.  Getting a 4-star hotel in downtown for less than $50 a night – way good.  The smoked gouda-pale ale soup at Upstream Brewery in Omaha’s Old Market – quite good.  And being there to see the Cyclones play volleyball for the last times in 2009 was great.  Unfortunately the game didn’t go as planned, and ISU got swept by Nebraska.  But through it all, we had a blast.  We were an island of cardinal and gold in a sea of Nebraska red.  When our band played the fight song, we were the only two in our section standing and loudly singing along.  We cheered every Iowa State point and yelled encouragement until our voices were gone.  It was awesome.

Omaha was nice to us, too.  With Nebraska fans all around us and their team utterly dominating ours, they could have been mean or spiteful or even snarky, but everyone we talked to was polite.  We went to the second game of the series, where Nebraska eventually lost to Texas, and it was fun, but without a side to root for it wasn’t quite the same.  We drove home, having spent a very pleasant weekend in a nice city, and even though our team lost, we were there to let them know we had their backs.  With the 2009 season at a close, we studied our roster and saw we had a lot of returning team members, a good sign for a solid 2010.  And based on the last few games we’d seen, we vowed that we would be back for many more games in the upcoming year.

Congrats and good luck next year to the Iowa State Cyclone volleyball team!