The Bigler Bugler Spring 2023 After the rains and wind at regionals. When last we saw the men of happy valley…. We showed up at 8 pm the Monday after spring break, ready to flex, and of course, Club Sports forgot to show up and open the gates.  We did rally the troops and scurried over to West Turf for some ‘pickup’ play. And away we went.  Mostly. There were definitely a couple nights that admin forgot to let us into the fields, etc. But it was nice to be on a full field. Next up we played the Atlantic Coast Open . Saturday was big windy, and sometimes very rainy.  Like, I’m not sure how they were able to continue to use the fields but they were pretty sandy and drained quite well.  We rolled on Saturday against the George Mason, Richmond, Navy and Johns Hopkins. On Sunday we hit a speed bump in the quarters vs. Virginia Tech, digging ourselves a hole to go down 8-4 before mounting a furious comeback that would fall just short 13-12.  VT would go on to lose to...

The Bigler Bugle Winter 2023 ‘We got 3 enemies.  Ultiworld.  Facilities.  And the Weather.  And Case Western’ ‘That’s 4 coach’ ‘1, Don’t correct your elders, and B, STATE SKOOL MATH’ Rolling into winter break, our Captains Christian Piccioni, Pat O’Brien, and Ben Zhu worked hard to get buy-in to ‘win the winter’. Athletes posted their holiday workouts and there was clear commitment to fitness by the team.  As always, the weather, and facilities would be a challenge in the dark days back on campus, but, plans were afoot.  We rented the Nittany indoor soccer fields 1 day/week for some high quality 10-1130 pm reps on Sunday nights. We were able to reserve multi-sport one day a week, and in a bold move, we added goaltimate 1 night / week in the white building. In unsurprising fashion, we were kicked out of Multisport,often, and at the last minute.  But while ‘less than ideal’ the Center time and the Goalty time kept us moving. Senior night at Multi- Sport...

The Bigler Bugler Fall 2022. Tryouts “A few good men” Bigler in the fall is glorious, but Spank needs men who can weather the State College winter.  So we ran an ad in the Collegian. And 360 hardened souls (fresh faced youths) attended tryouts in 2022, with a variety of experiences (or lack thereof).  This year was made challenging by some fall thunderstorms that canceled a couple days of practice. We adapted by having double sessions. The 4 hour nights made for some long days but let us get through the full tryout process in 2.5 weeks.  After some tough decisions, Logan Piercy, Evan Medrow, Parker Steele, Brandon Shunk, Ethan Pidgeon, Doug Hoyer, Charlie Hurwitz joined the team. (Coach’s desire to winnow the field by just running lines as in Miracle was wisely over-ruled).   ‘Some call it 4 hours of tryouts because of bad weather, here at Spank.Inc we just call it the Twi-Light double header’. Fall Brawl (Oct 8-9, 2022). “The best part about Ohio is the way it looks...