Beet Eating Volleyballers '10
Burke’s regular season came to a resounding close with a 3-0 win. It was a great match and a great way to celebrate Senior Night 2010… and a great way to send the team off for next week’s playoffs, peaking right on time.
Q!
The night was capped by Pam, team Coach and James Dean of Students, who spoke about each of her seniors, in words that “dug” out what they each brought to the team, and ‘served’ to demonstrate how they have grown as players and were ‘set’ to leave Burke as men. Her stories and observations felt so spot on and true.
The victory was so powerful that one player (a senior, no less) proudly exclaimed on Facebook that they ‘beet’ the opposition. Unfamiliar with this linguistic construction,
BorschtMan
Burke.Word looked it up. Turns out that beets date back to the second millennium BC, when people started throwing rock-hard beet roots at their enemies – a documented precursor to volleyball. The beet took on a life of its own in 19th Century Germany, when the sugar beet was discovered to be a source of sucrose or table sugar, which now fills the bottles of various ‘energy’ drinks favored by volleyballers. The ‘root’ of the word comes from a family of old english words meaning to mend, improve, make good, as in to make good on the promise to beet the other team. Apparently the word has now been added to the street volleyball vernacular, which includes other aggressive phrases like: “he roofed him,” “put him in the phone booth”, and he got a “kill.” For example, a player “puts the beet down” on an opposing player, when he spikes the ball off his head, making his face beet red.
See if you can guess which senior coined the term from the Senior night photos above, I mean here. Also there are lot’s more photos at BurkePix. Congrats to the players, Pam and Philip (and Philip’s throw-back cap).
Bender!
Daniel
The Machine!
Lead Guitar
O.Z.!
Professionally Made Program
My friend, Sami
