We are Grantsburg Subscribe

"We would worry less if we praised more. Thanksgiving is the enemy of discontent and dissatisfaction." ~ Harry A. Ironside

If I sat for any length of time and wrote down all the things God has blessed me with I would be able to come up with thousands of things. It is so easy to get wrapped up in my problems and temporary crises that the gratitude gets pushed to the kids' table. But I am so thankful to God for the life he has given me.

I'm thankful for:

A wife who inspires me

Children who adore me

An extended family that loves me

A church that cares about me

A community that supports me

A country that fights for me

And a savior, Jesus Christ, who died and rose again for me

Today was supposed to be the airing of the D3 State Championship match between Grantsburg and Cuba City. It was rescheduled to air tomorrow (Sunday, November 22) at 4pm. It's channel 40 for those with Grantsburg cable. Thanks to Deb Johnson for the heads up!

If you're interested my most recent column has been uploaded to the Burnett County Sentinel's website. It's about my wife and me going to state volleyball… alone. 

How in the world do the Pirates only get four players on the all-conference team?!? Out of 23 all-conference players named, only four are from Grantsburg.

They only went undefeated in the conference.

No conference team scored more than 19 points on them and that only happened once.

The average score of a conference set was 25-11!

The four girls who were recognized as all-conference (Emily Cole, Kortney Morrin, Annie Palmquist and Lauren Romanowski) were also recognized as part of the all-state tournament team. Three of them (Emily, Kortney and Annie) were ALL-STATE.

You're telling me that this conference is so loaded with talent that there was just no room for Larissa Wilhelm? or Kallie Thoreson? or Tiff Meyer? or Sarah Wald?

It is ridiculous that some of these players are not getting recognized! All of them would start and be one of the best players on ANY OTHER TEAM in this conference.

Look at the Flyway Conference all-conference team. They have Laconia (Grantsburg annihilated them in the state semi-finals) and Kettle Moraine Lutheran. KML is a volleyball powerhouse and won the conference. Laconia finished third. That conference recognized SIX Laconia players.

This rant of mine is not intended to take away from the other 19 girls who were recognized by the coaches… it's just to say that the process is flawed when a team can have such a dominating season and have clearly superior talent yet only four are recognized.

To me it is unfortunate.

Set your TiVo because Fox Sports Wisconsin will be airing the WIAA state final match between Grantsburg and Cuba City on Saturday, Nov. 21 at 4:30 p.m.

It took a while, but the West Lakeland conference volleyball team has been announced and here it is…

Grantsburg
Emily Cole, junior
Kortney Morrin, junior
Annie Palmquist, senior
Lauren Romanowski, senior

Clayton
Annie Grossenbacher
Ashley Grossenbacher
Lindsey LaBlanc
Krystal Kohnen – honorable mention

Clear Lake
Rachel Norby – honorable mention
Jaici Vangsness – honorable mention

Frederic
Chrissy Chenal

Luck
Morgan Denny, junior

Shell Lake
Ashley Anderson
Stephanie Clark – honorable mention

Siren
Carley Emery – honorable mention

St. Croix Falls
Sarah Petznick
Megan Yunker

Turtle Lake
Ashley Lahti
Tricia Hanson – honorable mention
Alex Tschida – honorable mention

Unity
Crystal Donahue – honorable mention

Webster
Mary Johnson
Siiri Larsen – honorable mention

Some of the state champion Grantsburg volleyball team stopped by the WCMP/WXCX station to discuss their season with myself and Sam Klemet (sports director).

This is somewhat old news from Grantoberfest, but I just came across it from Grantsburg’s Chamber of Commerce site.

She won the chili cook-off. This is not the first time her recipe has won a blue ribbon, either.

So… congrats, Mom!

There are lots of pictures and a list of all the different winners of various and sundry things on the page, too.

We’re sitting tight on the all-conference selections because I don’t have the entire list (volleyball or football).

What I do have is the WSN all-tournament volleyball team*, which differs a little from the WVCA’s team which you can read about in this previous post.

The WSN all-tournament team* has three Grantsburgians…

Kortney Morrin, Annie Palmquist and Emily Cole represented the Pirates. Congratulations on another accomplishment!

RANT ALERT… RANT ALERT…

I just don’t know how some of our girls could get left off that team. With the absolute domination of the tournament four, five or even six of the Pirates could’ve made the team. Only three? Please.

It’s pretty clear that for the WSN team they were allotting three places for the champ, two for the runner up and one each for the two semi-final losers. To me that makes this pre-formulated all-tournament team* a little less special than the WVCA one where it was truly the best team they could think of. Although, I still think Grantsburg could beat the best players from the other three state teams combined (Washburn could too!)

* indicates a “we don’t want to hurt anybody’s feelings so each team gets to be represented on this team even though two of them would have lost to the champion’s JV team” made up team.

The Burnett County Sentinel recently changed the format of their site which made some things inaccessible, including my recent column about my daughter and her relationship with Sarah Wald.

Thanks to Todd Beckmann over there for fixing that issue and now allowing everyone to read it.