That's a Wrap on Volleyball...

And...just like that...volleyball is done for Heidi. We had her last club tournament and her last time playing on a team like this. She plans to play casually in college, like intramurals or they have college fun clubs too, but no more until then! We luckily ended at a tournament close to home, and we ended well. Alex and Sam were great coaches, and they were already trying to convince Heidi to join their adult league. ha. 

Heidi played really really well - lots of aces, lots of great serves, saves, dives, and hits. Truly fun to watch. We are going to miss it!

The day ended with a scary injury for the other team. In a third set - score was 13 to 12 with us having the momentum. The second to last point to be played, a player on the opposing team dove and severely injured herself. It was by far the worst injury I have ever seen in person and for volleyball. Short version - this girl dove for the ball but her bent knee and whole body hit the corner of the bench. Medics and everything were called. We hope that girl is ok, but it did seem like a career-ending injury for her. 

Eventually, she was taken care of, court cleaned up, and we finished the last set quickly and swiftly. They didn't lose a game their last day and I'm so happy they ended well. It was a game to remember for sure. 

Picture download...we tried to take pictures, but it is SO hard to photograph volleyball - especially when the game is good! 

Patiently waiting for the injury...

There were a few tears shed at the end of the game - but also Heidi is proud of what she accomplished and happy to be moving on. 

AND... of course, sushi to celebrate.

We are proud of Heidi for playing for so many years. Congrats, Heidi, on a great volleyball career!

Ohio University Visit

Heidi and I made the 3 hour trek to Ohio University in Athens to college visit #2. We had high hopes for our visit as everyone has always talked highly about the college. We first made our way downtown to grab lunch before our tour and it was pretty cool how the downtown was literally connected to the college. It was way busier than we thought it would be and both were overwhelmed by the traffic and everything going on. We made our way to the main campus and this visit was broken into three sections - a first mini-tour showing us part of the campus, an admissions presentation, and then another longer tour of everything else on campus. 

The campus is tucked in the hills of Ohio and I can understand why people call it beautiful with the blooming trees and rolling hills, it was very beautiful but also kind of like a horror movie? All the buildings were red brick and white windows. Every.Single.Building looked the same. It was so confusing going building to building and we really didn't even go into that many buildings. 

I think the OU made a mistake by the very first thing they show us is a triple dorm room. The lobby of the building was remodeled but the hallways and the rooms were awful. I was not about to spend $8-$10K a year on the worst dorm I have seen. I get that this university is one of the oldest in history but you could tell. Heidi was in shock. Eventually we saw a remodeled dorm room and it was livable but still, not nice at all. I would be fine with the not nice if then it didn't have a price tag the same as nicer colleges dorm offerings.  

We went on to see some lecture halls and classrooms. All fine, but not impressive but work. There were areas of remodeled spaces that were nice and the campus was busy and active. Their whole "selling" point was the history of the college, how beautiful the college is, the strong alumni group and they are a big research university. I wish they would have been more specific in talking about the areas of study and offerings. From what they have provided to us and what is online - they don't offer a ton in the area Heidi is interested in. To me, that's the biggest concern is the lack of flexibility of degrees and area of study available. 

The gym/rec center is very important to Heidi - this one was ok. Very small for being such a decent sized school and they made up for the small weight and machine area by utilizing other small areas through the building. At least everything was remodeled just busy. 

A remodeled dorm room

They weren't kidding that this college was set in a hill. We did SO much walking!

ha

There wasn't a great photo op for Heidi - so this had to do!

The general conclusion was - it is a very nice college, Heidi would be fine going there, she is still going to apply but she doesn't get excited about it. She said there is something just off. She kept comparing it back to Bowling Green and she still really really loves BG. We decided we are going to research some more colleges as we also realize we just had two completely different tours, so it is also hard to compare them.