Kelsey Evans Blog - Happy New Year!

Written by Elon Phoenix on 10:52 PM

Hello Fans!

I hope you’re excited about reading this week’s blog because I’m anticipating it to be the best one yet. It’s been a full couple of weeks following our holiday break and there have been plenty of stories to keep you entertained.

First, I’d like to wish everyone a happy New Year! I hope everyone had a relaxing and joyful holiday. Although our break was short, it was a great time to spend with family and friends after we’ve pretty much been MIA since the season started. We traveled back to Elon on Monday, Dec. 27, to prepare for our game against Marshall on Dec. 30. Before we ventured up to West Virginia, the Robertson’s (Robertson Court) invited us into their home and prepared a feast for us! I have to say, I look forward to that meal every year; it was magnificent! We had a chance to play some ping pong (we can make any environment competitive), and to visit with the couple that was so generous in donating our renovated gym.  I have to give credit to Mr. Robertson for his impressive ping pong game, and of course Mrs. Robertson is hilarious. If you haven’t seen any of her humorous videos you need to check them out. My personal favorite is “Don’t send a man to the grocery store!” I’ve also attached some pictures from our night.

Prior to our game in West Virginia against Marshall, we came across a little store that caught our attention. The store was called “Heels” and it was appropriately filled with high-heeled shoes. Look at who we found roaming the store.... Coach Christian. She might kill me for putting these on the blog, so just understand that I’m running a large risk here and I may have sprints to run, but I feel it’s necessary to share with you. Hope you enjoy it as much as I did!



Notice the Nike socks…



As you can tell we like to keep it interesting. Well if that wasn’t interesting enough for you, this next story will be. Following our game at Marshall we quickly hopped on the bus in hopes of getting home at a decent hour. And by decent hour, I mean 3 a.m. Well, unfortunately, our five-hour trip turned into a nine-hour trip.

Let me set the scene for you. I’m peacefully sleeping wrapped in my zebra snuggie (see previous blog) when I wake up to everyone yelling. My first thought was “WHY IS EVERYONE YELLING?! I’M TRYING TO SLEEEP!!!” then my second thought was “well I’m awake now, so what is everyone yelling about?” That’s when my over dramatic teammate Lisa Archie looks me dead in the face and says “THE BUS IS ON FIRE, GET YA VALUBALES AND GET OFF!” This immediately sent me into a fight-or-flight response, and of course, I grabbed my snuggie (the only true valuable I have) and ran off into the snow. At this point the bus driver tells us its okay to get back on the bus, so we hesitantly load back on the bus sending the bravest first, Coach Butler of course. We wait to hear what the bus driver has to say and he informs us that we are approximately two hours from the closest bus venue and 3 hours from home. Let’s do the math. It’s 1 a.m. already, plus another 30 minutes to call someone to go get a new bus, plus two hours for them to get to us, and another three hours to get home back to Elon. This all seems a little absurd to wait on the side of the road for that long so we started to think of alternatives:

1. Send Coach Stockdale out to flag down an 18-wheeler with her good looks and flowing blonde hair (This is when those red stilettos would’ve really come in handy).
2. Send our director of media relations, Dan, to strap on a harness and pull us the rest of the way.
3. Call Bart Hussey because it probably wouldn’t take him more than 30 minutes to get to us.
4. Wait it out.

Well Coach Stockdale didn’t show enough leg, Dan wasn’t quite strong enough, and Bart was asleep so that left us with scenario No. 4. To make matters even better they decided it would be a good idea to turn on Law and Order in the back while we waited. I just knew we were going to be the “Based on a True Story” for some chainsaw massacre movie. We tried to make the best out of the situation and go to sleep but that wasn’t happening thanks to Coach Butler and his animal snore.  We almost threw him out in the snow. It’s okay though because we got home safe and sound around 7 am. At least it made for a good blog story, and something we can laugh about after the fact.


Waiting, waiting, waiting… Pictures say a thousand words….


Fortunately we were able to recover from this traumatic event with a big win over Georgia Southern on Monday night! It was great to get back on track with our first win of 2011! It was quite an eventful Christmas break, and with classes starting on Tuesday, we say goodbye to our fun and hello to reality. This weekend we will travel to Samford to play the Bulldogs on Saturday in Birmingham before heading to Chattanooga on Monday to play UTC. We’ll be back at home on Jan. 14 to play Furman! Hope to see everyone there and wish us luck in our travels this weekend. We may need it! Happy New Year everyone, thanks for reading!

- Big Kelsey