Milwaukee Sting 17 Gold player Sam Trawitzke (Burlington H.S.) has made her future plans. Sam has recently made a verbal commitment to UW-Milwaukee. Sam has decided to put her dream plans of becoming a professional clown on hold for her volleyball career. "Clown school can wait," said Sam. She continued, "Volleyball will help when I graduate college and head to the big top. Dexterity, falling, rolling, all of it will come in handy when I'm in center ring." Great choice, Sam and congratulations!

Badger Region Junior High Performance Program Tryouts are scheduled for Friday, March 16th at the Midwest Airlines Center, Milwaukee WI. Check the High Performance page here for more details and links to forms.

Badger Region announces appointment of new High Performance Chair Matt Houk former UW-GB Assistant Coach Matt has agreed to take over our region's HP Programs. He has worked with our program in the past and plans to spend time making sure our region's best coaches and best athletes are part of the program.

Even though there was the threat of the Big Blizzard this past weekend, the 16 Gold team made it safely to Indianapolis for the CZ Championships. We were missing Mollie Moesch, and we were uncertain what the weekend would bring.

We started the weekend by narrowly averting disaster Saturday morning. We were heading out to the wrong site! But thanks to Mr. Sueppel, we were soon all on the right road to the Team Indiana facility. Thank you Mr. Sueppel!!

We started our first match and had an easy win against "Shank You Fierce." We decided there was no way that we could lose to a team with THAT name!… {Next - in between our matches, we got to watch 16B as they battled it out with their team of just 7. They looked GREAT, by the way!! “OW! I feel good!” It was nice to be able to cheer each other on.} Our second match of the day was against Southwest Illinois. We won this match and were ready for our afternoon pool after a short rest back at the hotel.

We started the next round of pool play against KACE and defeated them (and got to experience their "intense" coach, which made us appreciate our great coaches even more). The last match of the day was against NKYVC, which we also won. We finished the day strong, going 8 and 1 and not losing a match. We made it back to our hotel safely, watching out for snow monsters in the huge blizzard while driving about 35 miles per hour. It was a fun night to stay inside, have pizza, rest, and work on team bonding. (Sorry Karen… we know that Erik ruined the game for you… ha ha!)

On Sunday morning, we finished our pool play against Sky High. Unfortunately, we lost to Sky High, which put us in 2nd place in our pool. It was a rough start to the day. We were all wondering if this would set the tone for the day, so we knew we had to come back strong against St. Louis. We did, and won the St. Louis match in 2 games. We knew we were back on track. Then we found out that we would be playing KIVA in the quarterfinals. KIVA has been the National Champ for the past 2 years, so all we hoped for was to play well, gain experience and give them a tough match. We came out on the court pumped and ready to play, and we kicked it into high gear. Everything just clicked. Karen and Ashley owned the net. Our block was huge and our defense was stellar behind it. Jamie and Sammi were running plays, knowing exactly where to put the ball. Every hitter was able to find a way through and score. After every point, the team pretty much mosh-pitted it. Anna even bit Karen's nose a little when she jumped on her. Before we knew it, we won the first game 25-13. We took a game from KIVA!!!

After a win like that, we knew they would be ready for us in the 2nd game. They are the defending champs for a reason - we had to expect the best and we couldn’t let up. At the start of game 2, Ashley crushed a one-ball and everyone went crazy. We played great, but KIVA stepped it up for this game. It was a tight match all the way to the end. You could see the anger and frustration in our opponents’ eyes. There were even tears, either from injury or from them just mentally breaking down… Either way, Milwaukee Sting 16 Gold pulled it out, winning the 2nd game 28-26. Everyone celebrated! There were lots of hugs from our parents and congratulations from other teams and parents and even KIVA parents as well. We proved that it's all about timing, talent, and trusting that each player knew where to be. Our team had that completely down against KIVA. Thank you Rocky and Erik for preparing us so well!!!!!! Thank you, too, Mrs. Minton, for being an awesome line judge for this critical match!

The day wasn't over yet, though. We went into the semi-finals against Team Indiana. There was no emotional let-down, and we beat Team Indiana in 2 games. This win put us in the championship match (our 5th match of the day) against MAVA. We lost the first game, won the second game and finally lost in 3 to MAVA and took second place… But don't doubt that we’ll get them next time. After such an emotional day, we were happy to be where we were, happy to know what we had accomplished and know what we are capable of doing - individually, but mostly as a TEAM!

All the way around, this weekend was an amazing experience for 16 Gold! We know that with our terrific coaching, the incredible talent and chemistry of the team, and the support of our parents and Club, this is going to be a year to remember. We are looking forward to it!!

The 14 White team took home the Gold Championship at the Whitewater Open on January 28th at UW-Whitewater. They started the day by handedly taking their pool. The first cross-over match was a nail bitter. After losing the first game, the Sting girls fought back to take the second and third. The semi-final round brought some tough competition. Once again Sting had to come back to win the second game. After 2 deficits of 7 points, they took it to 3 games again. The third game was tied at 13-13 and the Sting girls pulled together and came out the winners. The Championship match was a great game but was won with less excitement than the previous two. They took home the Gold! The girls really pulled together to overcome some tough competition. Every player did their part and showed that Sting came to play and to win!