The girls less than optimal finish yesterday put them in the ‘B’ flight for today’s single elimination play, but their overall finish for the first two days was good enough to earn them a bye for the first round. Their first game did not start until 11am so the girls did not have to be in the lobby till 9am for breakfast and the walk over to the venue.
Today’s match did not fare much better although we took the Crossfire team to 3 games, but in the end could not pull off the win. Loosing one match sends you home so we were done by about 12:30 and were back at the hotel by 1 for the girls to do a quick change for the caravan back to Illinois. I had checked us out and packed the car before play started this morning so we really just needed to hop in, point the car south and hit the gas.
My mom is from Owatonna which is about an hour south of the twin cities straight d
own 35W. She grew up it a beautiful white Victorian house on the corner of University and Cedar which is still owned by a relative of her sister. We we going thru Winona on the way home to look at St. Mary’s University (where my dad, uncle and brother went to school) so we decided to take a small detour and drive by the house. The owner is unfortunately in the hospital so we were not able to go inside and show Victoria (Jenna’s team mate who stayed and rode with us) the old homestead. We did a quick drive by and made a stop at DQ for lunch, this being Jenna’s first time eating non ice cream at a DQ. Not a big deal but it is one of those things where you can look back when someone ask you if you ever had a burger at DQ and you can say ‘Yep, my first time was in Owatonna Minnesota.”
Back on the road we drove through Rochester, home of the Mayo Clinic where my grandfather was a surgeon and my grandmother was a nurse. I had neglected to share this info with Jenna and was cracked up when she saw the sign advertising the clinic and asked if the did Mayonnaise research there. I answered that it was in fact founded by Dr. William Worrall Mayo, a frontier doctor, and his two sons , Dr. William J. Mayo and Dr. Charles Mayo, and that her great grandparents were helpful in saving many lives there.
Winona is only about 55 minutes from Rochester (2.5 hours from Minneapolis) just off the Mississippi river, and St. Mary’s itself is nestled against a small set of mountains in just outside the downtown area. Last time I was at the University I was 10 or 11 years old and we were there for one of my dad’s reunions. Back then it was still called St. Mary’s College and The College of St. Teresa also in Winona was still open. St. Teresa was the all girls school that my mom went to and St. Mary was all boys when they attended.
There were quite a few new buildings including a very impressive athletic facility and some new administration buildings. Most of the original buildings that I remember were still there and seeing them brought back some good memories of my visit there in the early 70’s. Jen has been to Purdue many times with us and St. Mary’s is quite a contrast in size (only about 5000 students compared to Purdue’s 40,000 students). Her high school graduating class size will be over 1200 which is just a little less than the undergrad size at St. Mary’s.
This is one of the first schools we have visited for her and it was a good initial step towards college. She likes the volleyball program they have and the small class sizes (12-1 ratio) and the majors she is interested in. It worked out well that we could make the trip on our way back from the tournament.
All in all it was a nice weekend. I don’t usually get to do these tournaments alone with her so I enjoyed spending the time in the car and with family while we were there. I will have to see if I can convince the wife to skip the next tournament as well.