SLATE: Kansas State Odds and Ends

You can see the sun peeking over the horizon in the distance, but it’s not all the way up yet. The chill of the morning still permeates your bones as the long dark winter without Kansas State football finally reaches its bell lap.

Also, writing in second-person to drill home stretched metaphors is really weird and awkward.

It is the first Sunday in August. Fall athletes are in camp already, the eldest turdler here at BotC World HQ is beginning her final week of freedom before starting pre-K, and while football is still a few weeks off it’s less than two short weeks before a Wildcat team takes the field against an opponent.

(That would be an exhibition soccer game at home against Oral Roberts on August 17, for the record.)

And yet here we still are, with hardly any news to share. But we have some!

Volleyball

Tomorrow, single-match volleyball tickets go on sale. If you haven’t already scored a “season ticket” for $50 — $40 for faculty, staff, military, seniors, and kids — you can still do that, too. We put that in quotes because it’s 12 tickets which you can use to attend all 12 home matches, or to take 11 friends with you to just one.

The ladies will start off the campaign on August 24 with a free exhibition against Missouri at Ahearn. The big non-conference name coming to Manhattan will be Clemson, who visits on September 5. The Cats start the regular season on the road in Raleigh, N.C., at the Wolf Pack Invitational. They’ll open against the hosts on August 30, then take on Austin Peay and Maryland on the 31st.

Tennis

Jordan Smith has hired a new assistant. Tom Rees comes to K-State after three years as the head men’s and women’s coach at Division II Lenoir-Rhyne College. His squads won 80% of their contests last season, so he seems pretty okay.

Football

BracketCat counted down day minus-28 yesterday with a profile of tight end Spencer Misko, who may or may not still be on the team but he’s still on the roster and his Twitter bio still says he’s a tight end at K-State so who knows?

Texas-San Antonio seems pretty stoked about the tight end position themselves. Gavin Sharp will be the starter, but expect a guy named Carlos Strickland II to get a lot of action as well. Now, where have we heard that name before...?

Other

For the fourth year in a row, K-State is sending a team of student-athlete volunteers somewhere they’re needed. A group of mostly track, golf, and rowing athletes (because fall athletes are busy, duh) is headed to Costa Rica today. They’ll be there for 10 days helping build a basketball court in Aguas Claras as part of the Courts for Kids service program. This is the second time K-State has been to Costa Rica for this exercise; since then they’ve also been to Nicaragua and the Dominican Republic.