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Without question the best event in Shocker athletics every year. Great way to start the school year. -
Maybe I should check it out than!
Question, would there be any ex-Shocker volleyballers in attendance that would be interested in dating a giant orange slice with a mohawk and sunglasses?
Asking for a friend.The AssmanComment
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I believe this is Dinner & Auction #11. My guess is WuDrWu has made all 11. I unfortunately can't make that claim as I missed one a few years back. I concur with Doc that this event is a great way to start a new athletic year.
I see they are doing a little rebranding this year dropping the Volleyball 101 name in favore of Dinner & Auction. I suspect this is probably due to the fact that this event has grown to the point that they simply do not have time for the Volleyball 101 aspect anymore and needed to drop something to keep the time more reasonable. IIRC they skipped that last year although it was on the scheudule.
For those who would like more technical Volleyball stuff a good way to get that is to join the Shocker Match Club which gains you access to pre-game scouting reports by Lambo.
Paul Suellentrop wrote an interesting column on the Shocker Volleyball Dinner back in 2014 when the estimated the Shockers raised $60,000.
Don't think for a second that this kind of support hasn't and doesn't go a long way in keeping Lambo in the employ of Wichita State. And saying that Shannon Lamb takes on a large role in the Volleyball Dinner & Auction has to be an understatement.Before Wichita State’s volleyball team practiced Monday, coach Chris Lamb and I tried to identify schools that draw a crowd to compete with Volleyball 101.
Nebraska and Hawaii, no doubt. Wisconsin. Probably Penn State. Maybe a few others. It’s a short list, without question.
Lamb says those events don’t work unless the coaching staff buys in and wants to be a part of it. An athletic department’s marketing staff can only do so much. At WSU, director of operations Shannon Lamb takes on a large role, as she did in the event’s infancy.
The one area of support where WSU could do better IMHO is in the relatively small numbers of WSU students in attendance at matches. Maybe hosting the NCAA matches last year will perhaps ignite a little more interest among WSU students.
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$40 ticket might be the primary reason for low student turnout.Originally posted by 1972Shocker View Post"You Just Want to Slap The #### Outta Some People"Comment
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I obviously wasn't very clear. The turnout of the fans at the Volleyball dinner is great. Not anything you would expect the students to support. With regards to the students I was referring to their attendance at home matches during the season. -
Maybe not but you are certainly our "Picture is Worth a 1,000 Words" guru. At least you have something to hang your hat on.
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Another reason to attend this event is that there are good items to be bought that would go for literally 5-10 times as much at the men's basketball auction.78-65Comment
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I think WuShock16 has implied this but just to be clear the items at the volleyball auction include Shocker men's basketball and Shocker baseball items and memorabilia as well as Volleyball and many other items.
I really like my 3' x 6' History of the WuShock flag I won in the Diamond Dig last year as well.
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Another good event last night although attendance seemed to me to be down a bit (a last minute change allowed me to jump in and catch the end of the event and the auction).
A few things that stood out to me.....I looked over the silent auction items. There seemed to be more corporate type items (like Kendra Scott jewelry packages for instance) than WSU memorabilia. Maybe that's a trend. There were almost no "old" items outside a '89 Cooler package. Also very few other sports items. A couple of men's seniors posters from last year and a pretty neat softball package I thought. Coach Adams was the only other coaching staff member I saw in attendance. She continues to impress, a lot. There was a good number of auction items and the dollar amounts bid seemed to be solid, so I shouldn't complain. It just seemed a little off to me. Certainly the corporate support continues to grow which is great.
The food from Caraba's (not by any measure my choice for food) was really outstanding. Nice job Caraba's. Brent's mic was off and he sounded awful. Felt bad for him. Lambo took questions and answers which he loved (he suggested it, even asking himself his own question). I'll forget most of what he said, but he likes the new conference, enjoyed the trip to Philly (was kicked out of the Liberty Bell area for having a pocket knife in his pocket), and clearly nodded affirmatively when Mike Kennedy (during the intro) mentioned great coaches getting renewed and revitalized when challenged with roster change over.
As usual, the real highlight of this event are the staff and more so, the student athletes of this wonderful program. I'm sure many of you tire of hearing the same thing year after year, but it is a special treat to interact with these engaging young women. Smiling, friendly, intelligent and supremely grateful student athletes that seem to take nothing for granted.
That reminds me.....A young lady in the crowd asked Lambo what he looked for when recruiting. He started with power....D1 is challenging and you need strength first, then the usual other athletic traits that are highly prized. He mentioned a good motor (sounding a lot like Coach Marshall) and said he didn't enjoy or want to spend much time at all getting someone engaged. You need to be ready to roll. Then he told an OUTSTANDING story of a recruiting trip I think in Arizona where he and Austin were waiting out a rainstorm, and while in the car the girl they were there to see happened to pull up next to him, get out of the car and proceed to yell at her mom. He said "let's go, we're outta here." That's not what he's looking for. Man I'm telling you, stuff like that makes you want to run through walls for this program. He ended the story by saying I guess the moral is be nice to your mom if you want to come and play here.
Back to the team...they did the usual intros. Gio couldn't stop laughing at herself. She's a special young lady with a GREAT, not good, GREAT sense of humor. She told a story of taking a final at the end of last year where she was asked if she had a parting message, said she was from Milan, Italy and didn't speak English that well, but I guess my message is I have a birthday party coming up soon (something like that)....hilarious.
The ladies would also mention a favorite memory and/or a fun fact. One of the girls said her best memory was Lambo's turkey call last year...Hey yo, Turkey! Classic! Then redshirt freshman Maddy Freund said she would do a turkey call, and I think everyone expected a similar one to Lambo, and holy crap it was a real turkey call that was freaking spot on. I looked around expecting wild turkeys to start showing up at the door. Amazing! But the best moment of the night to me was the introduction of freshman Grace Burken who introduced herself and said "and my fun fact is I'm a triplet." After the obligatory applause from the crowd and about a 5 second delay Alex Koon (who had already introduced herself early on) stepped up to the microphone without hesitation and said "my fun fact is that literally the entire team just found out that Grace is a triplet!" So cool. By the way, Alex is another of the really amazing young ladies who possess everything you want in a student athlete and person. Great kid. Another young lady that made an impression, freshman Chinelo Ogogor who has a smile that lights up a room and a personality to match, her favorite moment was meeting the team and seeing how nice everyone was to her. She'll be majoring in biomedical engineering, if I got that right. Essentially she's better at everything than I am. By a bunch. Like the rest of the team.
I think everyone was in attendance. Unfortunately, Regan Stiawalt was in a boot from an injury earlier that day. Didn't look great. Still lots of questions and I suspect a lot of different lineups will be seen next weekend. I can't imagine we won't see a 6-2 some, if not all the time (my opinion only, not information gathered). It seems clear that Kali leads the setter race right now, but it's by no means clear cut. Other than Tabitha and Gio, I'd say every other option is wide open.
Lots of alumni in attendance including Abbie and Emily. Emily only looked like a few million dollars by the way. Which leads me to the uncomfortable moment of the night. The auction item that was a night out a Snug Harbor (did I get that right?) with Emily, Abbie and Brent Kemnitz. Not exactly sure what they were auctioning off there, but I was too uncomfortable to ask. Fortunately, for me at least, no such package with a shall remain nameless former MVC POY middle with the initials SM was included in the auction....saving yours truly from spending an embarrassing amount of money to obtain.
Hats off to whomever gives their Arizona condo for a week each auction. It's always popular and was the big ticket item item last night going for around 5k. Many other items went for around 1k. ADDB got up at the end and pledged a 1k donation from himself (well done sir!) and challenged others to do the same. That spur of the moment act raised another 10k on the spot.
Great night....I wish more of you would go. You're missing out, and these things don't last forever. I promise you they don't.Last edited by WuDrWu; August 19, 2018, 09:59 AM.Comment
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Wait, if she's a triplet and she turns out to be super good ... doesn't that mean there are two more clones of her running around to be recruited?Kung Wu say, man who read woman like book, prefer braille!Comment
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Maybe, unless they turned out like Arnold Schwarzenegger and Danny DeVito.Originally posted by Kung Wu View Post
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