Stepping into the Marriott for Casino Royal with my friends was like walking into Prom night all over again. Illinois State really seemed to outdo itself; it was unexpectedly fancy, with many students dressed in their best and ready to gamble their free chips away. Walking down the hallway towards the main room, we were immediately greeted with the sight of students in funny hats and costumes, taking advantage of the free professional photos. After taking full advantage of it ourselves, we decided it might be time to see what else this event had to offer. A short walk, check in, and balloon arch later, we were frantically looking for an empty table to put our stuff in our hurry to get to the dance floor. Half of the large ballroom was dedicated to tables, food, and games, while the other half had a DJ, lights, and loud music. We ended up dancing almost the whole time, only stopping every now and then to enjoy the fruity punch or try some of the large assortment of snacks. There were cookies, hot dogs, meatballs, cracker jacks, and soft pretzels; along with different kinds of punch, pop, and even coffee. Servers were waiting in the background to take away empty cups and restock the refreshments. There were also carriage rides out front, which regrettably we didn’t find time for (which is sad, how often do you get the chance to ride in a horse drawn carriage anyway??). I also wish we had spent more time playing some of the many casino games set up near the prizes and drinks. There was blackjack, poker, and a roulette wheel, among other things. After winning chips in a game, you could exchange 10 chips for a raffle ticket to place into one of the many mystery prize bags. One friend won a bag with the title ‘Staying Warm at State’, which had a blanket, t-shirt, water bottle, and the first season of Game of Thrones. All in all, this was an amazing event to go to, and what made it even better was that it was completely free. If there are any future Casino Royal nights on the horizon, I will definitely be going to them!

Doing My Part for the Community

For my community event I decided to do volunteer work.  The title of the volunteer work is called “Recess Buddies”.  This was not my first time doing this type of volunteer work, as I have done this activity almost every Friday of the first semester.  I would have continued to do it on a weekly basis through this second semester but my English 101 class goes right through the middle of it.  But lucky for me I was able to go one Friday due to the fact that our English class became optional for that day.  The job description of this event is to go to an elementary school near campus and play with the kids during their recess.  (This is an athlete only volunteer work event).

            Three other athletes and I walk to the front of the building not knowing what kind of day it would be with the kids.  I have done this many days before but we never have two days that are exactly the same.  As we reach the yard the kids are already at play, spread out across the entire playground, blacktop, and grass field area.  Just looking at the kids reminds me of my days at recess when I was a kid.  It was easily the best part of my day, just watching the clock tick, waiting for recess to begin.

            As us athletes begin to walk around kids begin to come up to us with curiosity.  They begin by asking us question after question about our respective sports.  This is nice and is quite humbling as many of these little kids look up to us athletes.  After the introductions we try to get some sort of game going with the kids, whether its basketball, football, or “chase” the athletes around the playground.  On this gorgeous afternoon we decided to play basketball because we happened to be on the court at the time.  We athletes begin by splitting up the kids into even groups.  As we break our teams huddle with a “team work” the ball is dropped into play.  The game quickly becomes a chase for the ball as the kids run up and down the court.  The kids do not exactly understand the rules of the game.  The only rule they follow is try and get the ball into the basket. So the kids pretty much excluded the traveling rule and dribbling the ball.  But our job as the athletes is to try and evenly spread the ball amongst our team to let everyone get an opportunity.  Throughout the game we stay positive and encourage the kids to keep trying even with failure.  As our game came to an end so did the recess period.  The kids were sent to their line up lines and were brought inside.  Our day was over, and it was time for a nap.

By: Matt Cotiguala

            

This picture is from Recess Buddies but from another day.

Missouri Valley Conference 2012

On March 4^th 2012, I attended was the Missouri Valley Conference basketball game with ISU playing against Wichita State.  The night before the game, I was talking to one of my friends and he asked me if I wanted to go down to St. Louis for the weekend to see the game.  Since he had an extra ticket, I thought it would be a great idea.  Later that morning, we drove down to St. Louis and the tournament was held at the Scottrade Center.  When I got to the center, I was shocked by how huge the building was.  It was like walking into an airport terminal.  Walking to my seats, I knew this was an important game for Illinois State to win.  Winning this game will advance Illinois State to playing other teams for the championship.  Just walking into the stadium you could feel the energy of everyone cheering for his or her team.  This wasn’t just any other basketball game, but this was an important game that everybody goes all out dressing up for each other’s team colors.  When I got there I was all out in red, with a school shirt that I brought that could differentiate me from the opposite team.   Everyone, especially with the group that I was in was screaming the whole game cheering for Illinois State whenever they made a basket. Throughout the whole game, the point deficit was little to none.  If Illinois State made a mistake, then the whole game could be turned around and they would have ended up throwing the game away.  When Illinois State started pulling ahead of Wichita State, I enjoyed the blare of energy that other Illinois State fans contributed to.  I may not be the biggest fan of basketball for our school, but when I was there, I felt like I made a difference in supporting my team.  It was a fun experience, watching players from our basketball team shoot three pointers, dunking, and defending.  Overall, I thought the game was really fun and I enjoyed going out with a bunch of my friends to support our basketball team.  To watch them advance through the bracket was fun and it was disappointing to see them lose in the next round.  If I had another opportunity to see the Missouri State Conference tournament, I would definitely take the opportunity and encourage anyone else who may be considering it to go because it is a fun time and great opportunity to support your school.

March Madness

As I walked into Braden Auditorium I was filled with surprise to see that it was packed to the brim with thousands of people, all crammed together in the dark and very hot area. On Saturday, March 24th, I attended a campus event called March Madness. This is an event hosted by the sorority, Chi Omega, and is a philanthropy event in order to raise money for the Make-A-Wish foundation. This is a fundraiser in which many of the Greek life participants create and choreograph dances and compete against other sororities and fraternities to win the title. March Madness began with a brief description of why we were all there and where the proceeds were going. A young girl from the Bloomington area arrived on the podium and explained to us her story. This 16-year old girl has suffered multiple surgeries and spent ever year holiday of each year in a hospital trying to recover from an illness that has affected her spinal cord. It was deeply moving and everyone in attendance responded with a well-deserved standing ovation for the young girl. In addition, I inquired, and was happy to find out, that all of the tickets were sold and every seat was occupied. In this dance competition, there was one requirement of each team, and that was to make the music to your dancing follow the theme of "Opposites Attract." Each dance should be composed of two musical artists of different genre. After an excruciatingly intense competition, the winners were crowned. The winning sorority was Gamma Phi Beta, who did the clashing theme of Barbie and Space Jam, and the winning fraternity was Sigma Epsilon, whose theme was composed of Luke Bryan songs, and the artist Nelly. All of the money raised at this philanthropy event was donated to the Make-A-Wish foundation, providing kids with a chance to have small wishes fulfilled that are impacted by serious diseases in their lives. I was happy to be a part of the event with my sorority, Alpha Gamma Delta, and am proud to say that I contributed to the Make-A-Wish foundation. I left the event with a new found respect for those people who struggle with disabilities and the realization to never take small things for granted in life. This event was a big eye-opener and a fun experience for family, friends, and supporters of the Make-A-Wish foundation to attend.

March Madness 2012

On March 24th, 2012 at 7:30pm my buddies and I went to support my friend in Chi Omega's 36th Annual March Madness. March Madness is an annual event where all the sororities and fraternities of Illinois State University come together to raise money for the Make-A- Wish Foundation. Every year this event is organized by the Sorority Chi Omega. The Make-A-Wish Foundation is a non-profit organization that grants wishes to children between the ages of 2 and 18 who have life threatening medical conditions. The program started 36 years ago after a member of the Chi Omega sorority passed away after a long battle with Leukemia.  The previous year the a record $16,262.87 was raised. Since the year 2003 the sorority has raised over $90,000. The event takes place in the Braden Auditorium where each frat and sorority compete in a dance off.  The theme of this year's performances was opposites attract, meaning they had to incorporate two different genres of music into one collaborated dance. For example, the fraternity Sigma Phi Epsilon (the frat my friend is in), mixed together country and rap. More specifically they used songs from the country artist Luke Bryan and collaborated them with rap songs from Nelly.  There was a combined total of fifteen sororities and fraternities, which each act lasting about two to three minutes. In between performances there were three exhibition acts. One of the acts was performed by the Acafellaz who are ISU's premier A cappella group. The other two acts were performed by the Noir which was directed towards a theme of hip hop dancing, and ISU's Competitive Dance Team who did a combination of different dances. Each team got their own choice of costume, most of which were homemade. The guys costumes were basically just t-shirts or some just wore their suits. The women's costumes were all glittered up.  The entire show ran from about 7:30pm to 10:30pm. The last performance of the night was a group dance with two members from each sorority and frat.  After that the judges announced the winner. The sorority and frats were each judged separately. The winner for the fraternities was Sigma Phi Epsilon and the winner for the sorority was Gamma Phi Beta.  Sigma Phi Epsilon also was voted number one for the best use of theme by their selection of mixing country with rap. My favorite performance was Sigma Phi Epsilon. It was really cool to see my friend win something that him and his fraternity brothers practiced so hard for.  All the groups did an amazing job and you could tell that a lot of time and effort that went into this event. The money went to a good cause and benefited a lot of people in need.  I would highly recommend going to this event next year. You are guaranteed to have a great time. 

Icebox Athlete: Increasing Athletes Mental Toughness

Spencer Wood

 “AWESOME, an 8 pm meeting this Wednesday, my off day”, that was my reaction to the news I had to attend an all student athlete seminar. On Wednesday, February 15th, I attended a mental toughness training session titled, “Icebox Athlete”. The seminar was located at Redbird Arena, and had roughly 400 student athletes. This presentation was on mental toughness, it’s aim was to teach athletes skills on how to increase their mental toughness in all aspects of performance. The skills and techniques we were taught prove to be helpful in the mind of a student athlete .The speaker, who also happens to be the president of the organization, was Spencer Wood. Wood is an internationally renowned speaker and dynamic trainer of athletes and coaches in the areas of cutting-edge Mental Skills & Toughness. Wood’s credibility and experience in the field of sports psychology made this seminar one of the professional levels. 

This seminar served as an overview of Spencer Wood's mental toughness program. In actuality, the Icebox program is a 26 day plan, but this workshop was only 2 hours. Spencer gave us a motivational speech that demonstrated the importance and helpfulness of mental toughness in the sporting world. The main advice given to us was how to handle your focus level in the toughest of situations, for instance, when the game is on the line. In order to demonstrate this, Spencer decided to conduct an activity.

Playing a college sport in front of a large audience can invoke a sense of stage fright, which affects your ability to perform. With students, parents, alumni, coaches and faculty members all watching, the feeling of failure in competition becomes worse in your mind. When the game is on the line, this problem worsens.

Midway through the seminar, Spencer randomly called a female athlete down to the stage, and told her she could not leave the stage until she recited the entire national anthem in front of the 400 people in attendance.  Spencer began to count down from 15. As any human would, this young lady got incredibly nervous. Sitting in the audience, everyone looked around in feeling of her embarrassment. Once the countdown had ended, the speaker informed the audience that this young lady did not have to sing the national anthem. The purpose behind this brief activity was to simulate the anxiety level involved in collegiate sports, and it clearly served its purpose.

At the completion of this seminar, my views on mental toughness in the sporting world had changed. This is something I benefited from, because I now recognize ways on how to increase my focus level in competition.

Chamber Winds Recital

On March 5th, 2012 at 8:00 PM, the first Chamber Winds Recital of the spring semester was held at Kemp Recital Hall.  The admission was free and the seats were roughly one-third full.  I particularly enjoyed it because it showcased many genres, styles, and instrumentations.  Also, musicians from freshmen to graduate students performed, including myself.  I performed the 1st movement of the Wilhelm Ramsoe Brass Quartet No. 4 towards the end of the recital.  However, I was able to be in the audience for most of the performances.  Generally, most of the groups that were involved in Chamber Winds last semester stuck with it this semester.  It was really cool to see how everybody has improved over the course of just a few months.  I was especially impressed with the very last performance of the night; The Wind Symphony Saxophone Quartet.  Hands down, they demonstrated the most improvement and the highest caliber of musicianship.  The piece they performed was modern, but it wasn't atonal by any means.  It was filled with complex rhythm and compound meters-- most of which was very fast.  I thought it was exciting and was executed very well.  Differentiating between this style and the styles of other groups is actually pretty easy.  This was modern and extremely intense music whereas the piece that my brass quartet performed was from the Romantic Era.  It was less 'in your face' (which isn't necessarily a good or bad thing.)  In my opinion, the part writing was more conventional than the saxophone piece.  The chord progressions and non-chord tones used were more common, but it didn't take away from the quality of the piece.  It had a fairly obvious resemblance of a Beethoven string quartet though.  This made the piece very challenging since this style is so uncommon for brass ensembles.  Anyway, it was a great experience to perform since brass players seldom get opportunities to play in this style.  If you enjoy instrumental music, I think this would be a wise event to attend.  The audience is not expected to stay for the entire duration because the recital lasts longer than two hours.  In general, it is a casual setting, there's no need to dress up, and everybody is welcome.  The second recital will take place on Monday, the 23rd of April.  I suggest stopping by for at least a portion of the event.  You could use it as a fine opportunity to take a break from homework and such to simply relax and enjoy the music.