Pickin' Nits Spreading The Holiday Spirit

It's this time of the year when we're all gathered around our favorite family and friends. We're reminded about what's important in life and how to appreciate everything that is in our lives.

I think I can speak for the rest of the Nittany Lion faithful around the country when I say we never forgot about the dynasty in our own backyard.

It's easy to forget about something we all expect to be great year after year, but it's another thing to sit back in awe and understand what goes into this machine we refer to as Penn State women's volleyball.

As great as their national championship run is this year, some other programs are spreading the winning spirit as well as Freddie Mercury would want them to. Let's go!

Gymnastics

I'm going to serve like the student teacher every kid in elementary school hopes for real quick. I once had a substitute teacher bring in her pet snake one day since we covered material quicker than anticipated since our regular teacher was out on maternity leave. Since the world of gymnastics isn't exactly 'buzzing' right now, just watch this to imagine something gymnastics related.

Little gymnastics girl sliding in your DM's like. gif right here.

Swimming and Diving

Same thing as the gymnastics. I have beef with guys that try to make a diving board trick video and jump off the little dinky boards at community pools. That's like having a dunk contest on a seven and a half foot basketball hoop. Everyone thinks it's easier to pull off some sick moves, but there's not that much room to land on that short of a hoop. Trust me, I know.

Go stand on the highest board possible and see how many flips can be achieved before hitting the water. Nobody cares how many flips you can do on a board a foot above the water, bro.

Women's Ice Hockey

Everyone around this program is in higher spirits around the holiday season than the last couple of seasons with the 10-7-3 record. It's still a couple days away until Ohio State and Penn State square off for the first time in Pegula Ice Arena, but there's a certain level of confidence now after those wins over Mercyhurst about two weeks ago.

Ohio State has a girl from the coveted Penn State recruiting grounds of Minnetonka, MN. The Buckeyes better watch themselves since I'm self-proclaiming that as Penn State grounds.

Women's Volleyball

I'll admit I was skeptical whether or not this Penn State team would be able to finish the job like so many before them have done. Even though player of the year Micha Hancock was joined by seniors Nia Grant, Lacey Fuller (scrappy son of a gun) and Dominique Gonzalez, I was worried the entire season how the rest of the troops would perform in the pressure situations.

Needless to say, they answered the call.

The final two games were the best I've seen junior outside hitter Megan Courtney attack the ball with such force. She displayed a certain amount of tenacity that wasn't lacking on this team, but certainly appreciated to complement junior Aiyana Whitney and freshmen Ali Frantti and Haleigh Washington. There simply wasn't any one unit on Stanford that could stand up to the task of defending them all match long.

It's only fitting that we end the last women's volleyball post of the year like this.

Business as usual on Saturday over BYU. 3-0. NATIONAL CHAMPS.

We'll all be counting down the days until the 2015 final four in Omaha to hopefully see our Nittany Lions compete for title number eight!