Volunteering with Bridge Project to help feed the homeless

By Liz Reikow
Junior, Middle Blocker

Last Thursday, we went to dining services and made some food for the homeless. We were split into groups and put in charge of making different parts of the meal. I helped make apple pie. Since I live off campus now, I do a lot of cooking. We made everything from scratch, though, which was really cool.

Then on Friday, we went to the Y-Bridge in Akron and served the food to the homeless. It was really cool to serve food to them and also to have a chance to talk to them and see what their lives are like, what their interests are and get an idea of what they do everyday.

I’ve served food to the homeless before, but it was about 10 years ago. This was a good experience and it was really fun to do something for a good cause. It provided another team activity and working with my teammates is always fun.

This experience made me more thankful for what I have and having the ability to help others. We have a lot of people come to our games and support our team, so it felt good to give back and support other people.

Lessons learned heading into spring finale

Kent State concludes its spring schedule with the Golden Flashes Spring Tournament on Saturday. Sophomore defensive specialist Alexis Rains and freshman middle blocker Drew Norberg take a look back at the last two weekends of competition and discuss this weekend’s home event.

Alexis Rains

The first weekend we played at Duquesne and it was exiting for me because I live in Pittsburgh. We played against Duquesne, Robert Morris and two Pitt teams. We fell short in all of our matches, but it was really good competition. Duquesne won their conference last year, Pitt finished in the top half of the ACC and RMU is also a good team.

It was definitely a learning weekend for us. I feel like we got better as the day went on. We took what happened during that first weekend and we went to practice the following week with a whole different mentality of wanting to get stuff done. So it was motivation and we definitely got better from the first weekend to the second.

We are really looking forward to playing at home to end the spring. This weekend’s always fun because you’re defending your home court. You have a lot to prove and everyone wants to beat you. There’s going to be a lot of good competition and I’m excited to see what we can do.

Drew Norberg

Just like the first weekend, the Michigan State tournament was a learning experience. Our matches were against IPFW, Grand Valley State, Ferris State and MSU. We stepped it up and won a few matches, which was good. I feel like two areas where we improved a lot from the first weekend were serving and owning the net. We were a lot stronger at the net offensively.

I was really excited to have a chance to compete against other teams. Obviously when you’re playing against the same people everyday in practice, you know what they’re going to do and when they’re going to do it. It’s fun to be competitive in a different way and not know what your opponent is going to do.