Script Draft: ASU Womens Volleyball Team

Coming from the best start to their season in late August, the Women’s ASU Collegiate volleyball team has come a long way. With the goal in mind to make the NCAA tournament from the beginning, this team has become closer and closer to that goal. Being a team in the toughest conference in the nation, the PAC 12, every game is a battle, or a “Dog Fight” as Coach Jason Watson would say.  With key wins against USC and University of Washington to create a successful season, the team continues its trek to hang a new banner in their home gym with 2012 under the NCAA tournament appearances. The last week of the conference games was vital to the outcome the team wanted for their season. Four games in 7 days was the real grind of the last 3 months for this team, in order to achieve the goal, they needed at least two wins out of four to even be considered for the championship rounds.

I asked Macey Gardner, starting outside hitter for the ASU women’s volleyball team, why the games this last week against U of Washington and U of Arizona were so important to her and the team and what does this mean for the continuation of the team. Macey Gardner is an essential contributor to the team’s successes. The native Arizonian, from Gilbert, graduate from Gilbert High School, is a big team player and is on the court 99% of the time and has the experience of the 2012 season. I chose to interview her because she knows what goes on, on the court during time-outs, practices and she hears what Head coach Jason Watson has to say to the team after wins and losses.

Macey Gardner: “The games against Washington and U of A were really important as they really locked in our tournament bid. For the team it meant a chance for us to do the best we could this season by making the tournament.”

The goal of making the NCAA tournament is extremely important to the ASU women’s volleyball team and their coaches because it has been the primary focus all-season for them and it has been what they have put all their hard work in for. Compared to the last few years, last year specifically, this team was a struggling team in the way that they didn’t have the drive and determination to compete in games for a win.

Me: What did it mean to the coaches that your team pushed all the way to the end of the season and competed with passion to get the important wins that you did get?

Macey Gardner: “Jason has been doing everything in his power along with the rest of the coaching staff to see this team succeed and achieve our goal. It proved to him that we are not done yet and are willing to go as far as we can physically go to give back everything they have put in to help us succeed.”

These games were a fight for the sixth place in the PAC 12 conference which pretty much guaranteed a place in the tournament. Up to 8 teams from this conference was possible to make the first round, which says a lot for the conference. Some smaller conferences only birth one team into the finals and they have to win their conference, so ASU is fortunate because of the high rankings of the PAC 12. They have been busy with practices written by Jason Watson every day to continually improve skills and teamwork.

Me: What was your favorite part of the last week and why?

Macey Gardner: “Favorite part was after the Washington game all the coaches lined up on the way to the locker room and gave us weird high fives and went into the locker room and celebrated like champions! Just to know our team was really united and that we’re all in it together.”

The passion Macey has for her team and the sport of volleyball is evident in the way she competes for her coaches and fellow teammates, especially for her seniors Erika Wilson and Sarah Clause. The amount of intensity and energy Erika Wilson, the other starting outside hitter, plays with sets a good example for any volleyball player out there. She leaves it all on the court every match and for Macey to play alongside her means a lot.

Me: What does it mean to you to play alongside senior and 4-year starter Erika Wilson?

Macey Gardner: Erika is a phenomenal athlete and a quiet leader on the court who demonstrates what it means to work hard every play for the sake of the team.

To conclude last week’s successes together with the passion of every single player on the ASU women’s volleyball team, the goal of the team into the NCAA tournament was achieved.

ASU Reacts: Hidden Chinese Propaganda

A reporter came across a unmarked museum hidden in the basement of a building in Shanghai, China. He, Frank Langfitt, observed over three hundred bright-colored propoganda posters from the Mao-Era during some of China's darkest political times. This museum has been on the down-low and was recently discovered and revealed to the public.

Frank Langfitt then interviewed the owner of the museum and a visitor who had recently come back to her home country from New York. Ruby Leung, the New Yorker, shares her thoughts about the museum and describes to Langfitt the poster series that sticks out to her the most. I interviewed Isidora Purkovic about what she thought about Ruby Leung and her favorite choice in propaganda posters:

Isidora Purkovic: "It was cool that she (Ruby Leung) came back from New York and was able to see for herself the history of her home country through the posters, especially in this cool, hidden museum."

The poster series Ruby Lueng favorited was a few very similiar, almost identical posters dating back to 1953. They show Mao standing atop Tiananmen, Beijing's main imperial gate, announcing the creation of the People's Republic of China. And as the series progresses, the officers decrease in numbers in the backgrounds of the posters.

Isidora Purkovic: "Kind of creepy how the guys in the background vanish and they don't bother to replace them in the posters."

I asked Isidora what she though about the statement Ruby made at the end of the interview ("It is a good opportunity for me to understand more about my country," she says.) and why it was important to add in the original article.

Isidora Purkovic: "I think it was important to emphasize significance of the impact it makes on Chinese people today. Because of these posters hidden from the rest of the country, it isn't really something they are proud of but it is the truth behind China's history and for it to be revealed to the public in Shanghai."

Genre Analysis: The Art Of Chinese Propaganda

The audio essay has specific features to make it one, just like an annotated map has features. For example; the audio essays have different speakers to supply the topic with evidence. They have different interviewees to contribute different points of views to the speaker’s perspective. The audio essay that I listened to was about a hidden museum in China that contained old propaganda posters that was hard for visitors to find. It was hidden in a basement without any signs to get to it (Frank Langfitt). The speaker, Frank Langfitt, interviews a woman visiting the museum and he explains her history of where she has lived (Born in Hong Kong, but now lives in New York) and he relates her story to the topic. He does this by speaking to her and asking her what her favorite posters are and why that is, so that he can explain why this museum is such a neat find and what it means to certain people. "It is a good opportunity for me to understand more about my country," says Ruby Lung, the Hong Kong native. This quote is important to the interview and essay because it relates a visitor to the museum to a personal interest, which makes her perspective unique to the others that were interviewed. To create supporting evidence of the value and historic importance of the materials in the museum Yang Peiming, the owner of the museum, is interviewed about his findings. "The propaganda poster is very, very unique," says Yang. "They describe the history with so many detailed pictures. This is interesting, because it is art plus politics." Yang is interviewed because he contributes a different perspective on the posters than Ruby which provides the essay with more facts to make it more convincing. Frank Langfitt, starts off his essay by introducing it as a broad topic of the museum itself then narrows it all the way down to a specific poster collection from the Mao Era in China. Just like an academic essay, this audio essay includes a short introduction about the topic and narrows it down with evidence from multiple sources.  The supporting evidence links to the history of China, which is what the museum and its propaganda posters are primarily about. For example the collection of posters Ruby points at as her favorite compares them with a poem “Ten Little Indians” which is vital information provided for anyone who is not familiar with Chinese history. From the beginning, the audio essay explained the importance of the hidden museum and used reliable sources (visitors/owner) to interest the audience in the history of China’s propaganda. The essay summarizes the museum in a fast and short summary followed with a little music chime to fade out of the podcast.

http://www.npr.org/blogs/pictureshow/2012/11/09/164785930/the-art-of-chinese-propaganda

Project 3:

My topic for this project will be the ASU women’s volleyball games this weekend against Colorado and Utah as their last home weekend besides the game against U of Arizona. But since that game is too late for this project, I will be analyzing the women’s volleyball team and their season by using this weekend’s games as evidence.

Project 2 Reflection: Clarity

In this project I thought I did the online/design part of it well, I know it wasn't the most important part of the project but I guess it got me motivated to complete the rest of it. I enjoyed finding all the locations I used on the map and writing little descriptions with them and linking them back to the annotation. Since I liked doing that part, I feel like I did it well. I also thought after seriously looking for resources, that I used them well in my project and I correctly cited them with MLA style. I struggled with finding a distinct criteria that applied to every location I picked. Instead of picking places that involved every aspect of my criteria, my criteria was made based on the different places I chose. So each place represented a part of the criteria, instead of judging the group of people I was doing I was judging the places more. My criteria wasn't the easiest criteria to judge a student-athlete on and to kind of rate them in a way. Which made it difficult for me to make an evaluation, which was the point of the project. I tend to make things harder for myself for some reason and so I keep learning through these projects to spend a lot of time on them to make it easier on myself. I think I will go back to how I completed my first project and spend more time editing it with what Prof. L and my other classmates suggest I do. I need to create a thesis first thing so that I can base the rest of my annotations and paper on it and to prove it with evidence. I think my evaluation was fairly strong, because (as previously mentioned) my criteria wasn't the best I found it hard to make a clear evaluation on each place, but I thought I did well for not changing my criteria. In the future, I will make sure I can clarify a thesis and criteria so that the rest of the evaluation and proving it will be distinguishable. I will apply this process of evaluation to the rest of my life by not just judging things or people on the surface or what it seems but by actually having evidence of my thoughts and being able to back myself up. I think it is important to have your own sort of "criterion" that is not written but mental, and that way you don't have to go through this process to determine if something is good or bad, but by quickly going over your criteria in your head and making judgements quickly but based on something rather than just feelings.

Project 2: Collegiate Student-Athletes

Introduction

Sun Devils have a good reputation as Arizona State University because of the hard-work they dedicate to their student-athlete life through, practice, performance, support and academics. This is a criterion a majority of people will base their judgements on when evaluating a collegiate student-athlete not only on ASU’s campus, but everywhere.  Although it is difficult to perform all four actions in one facility or location, here are some places where student-athletes go to develop that all-round character coaches want on their team:

One of the most important points emphasized is that Sun Devils are a family. Someone may ask “what this means and how do you treat someone you’ve never met like a family member?”  Being supportive of other student-athletes and ASU teams  is key to the Sun Devil Tradition, teamwork is placed on a pedestal for whether they be on a softball team or basketball team, they are a part of the larger Sun Devil team. As shown as a result of structural equation modeling, team support significantly influences team commitment and trust. Sun Devil’s must be committed to their position as a student-athlete in order to be successful. Practice/training, performance, support of other sun devils, and finding that balance between academics and sport, are what coaches, peers, other student-athletes or anyone involved, judge student-athletes on. 

Practice is included under a topic of preparedness and along with practice comes training: mental, tactile, emotional and technical. How to rate a student-athletes level of preparedness is to put them to the test of applying it. One way is during game time, which is the way that makes most sense, since that is what they are preparing for. However, if their season is a long ways away and their level of training needs to be accounted for tests like physical training, tests may take place. During this test, the way to determine a level of preparedness is to measure it based on whatever they may be doing. For a general athletic example, if the goal of an individual during training is to become faster, they can test themselves over time by giving themselves a time limit to achieve the goal they have, whether it be 2 months to shave 10 seconds off the 400m or 6 months to increase weight 20 pounds on front squats. 

How to evaluate a student athlete using the performance aspect of the criteria is to determine again how well they have completed it over time. So how this happens is by rating their performance by wins versus losses, the more wins an athlete has, whether it is on a team or in an individual sport, the more successful they are at a collegiate level of competition. Because the performance aspect is the main part of sports, everything else goes on behind the scenes, and they become factors of performing. These things, such as practice become evident during games or events, which make them more important to invest in. Investing becomes another way to rate performance, because the amount of practice you’ve had is shown in a game, race, event or competition, athletes need to be physically and mentally engaged and invested in their performance. Typically the outcome will reflect success or failure of the competition. 

As previously mentioned, support is one of the more important parts of being a student-athlete especially at ASU. Sun Devils treat each other as family members and in families, support is what can make or break one. Imagine going to an ASU football game or imagine being a football player and performing in a completely empty stadium. The lack of support from peers can be discouraging and can have a grave effect on the other aspects of life as a student-athlete. So as a Sun Devil family, it is encouraged and important to go to basketball games or track and field meets to encourage and support their fellow athletes. How this can be evaluated or measured is by the effort sun devils put in to attend a game or competition. It becomes evident by those who plan their days accordingly to not only their own athletic events and practices but to the rest of the Sun Devil family. 

Lastly, keeping the student in “student-athlete”, the biggest aspect of their lives becomes this balance of academics and sport. How this is evaluated is simply by how successful an athlete is in school as well as their sport. One can be a national champion and MVP of the nation, but that only proves that they are an amazing athlete. If you’re failing school, you aren’t even allowed to compete in sport so it becomes the basis of success in a university career. A successful student athlete doesn’t necessarily have to uphold a 4.0 GPA, but since that is the goal or wish for most students in general, a student-athlete has countless amounts of resources and services in order to help them. So do non -student athletes but the entire responsibility falls on them to go out and get the help they need. The academic coaches assigned to sports teams ensure every athlete is succeeding in school and if they aren’t tutors are assigned and study hall hours increase. So with that in mind, a student-athlete can be evaluated based on what they do about their schooling when they’re failing and when they are succeeding.

 Since this evaluation is of student athletes at a collegiate level, they have a season they compete in; everything they are judged on is based over time. Whereas if it were for an individual training to run a marathon, or for just one single event, the only way you could really evaluate them overtime is on how they train and it would be for a short time. Being a student athlete is a lifestyle in university in which case one can evaluate them in multiple aspects on a multi-part criterion. The amount of effort applied to all aspects reveals a great amount of character within a student-athlete. This character is measured in multiple facilities around Arizona State’s campus where each aspect of the criteria has its strengths depending on where the student-athlete happens to be at a moment in their week. At Arizona State are athletes, but since it is University, academics must be considered just as important as competing and because of the passion Sun Devils compete with, they are exceptional student-athletes.