Kate Tindall and David Geiger catch the last remarks of VEISHEA 2013 and feature the announcement for VEISHEA 2014 Co-Chairs.

Freshman Leaders in Engineering’s T.C. Ringgenberg says planning and building a float
is a semester-long process.

“We started planning this year’s float right at semester,” Ringgenberg said. “We elected
our two co-chairs who help me out in November and then we got into our first building group
meeting in early January and every build group leader is in charge of a certain project. We make
Gantt charts to kind of schedule out the process of all of it through the whole spring.”

Ringgenberg also says putting together a float build leadership within the organization.

“We build the float every year,” Ringgenberg said. “It’s a great way to kind of develop
leadership within the College of Engineering. There’s never really a textbook on how to make a
float; there’s a lot of trouble-shooting involved and it really is just a great way to build
community.”

But building a float can be expensive, often times running organizations over $1,000 to
produce their float.

“$1,200 for this year’s float. Last years was a lot smaller and I think we got it a little less
expensive for a little over $500,” Ringgenberg said.

Each year, organizations try to improve on their float. Ringgenberg said he would like to
out-due the previous year’s float, but says the real goal is to get everyone in the organization to
come together and get involved with the float building process.

“Every year you try and do something better and improve a little bit and really the
biggest thing is getting the students involved is the biggest thing for me; it’s a competition.”
Ringgenberg chuckled.

The 91st VEISHEA parade will be held at 10:30 am on Saturday. The parade route will
begin at Molecular Bio and go all the way through central campus before ending at Food
Sciences.

It’s a tradition older than VEISHEA itself. More than 100 student volunteers are teaming up with faculty to bake cherry pies to be sold this weekend. They will use more than 900 pounds of dough and over 1,600 pounds of cherries in preparation for VEISHEA week. Kramer said the involvement gives those students real world experience.

“They’re going to get a lot more out of it when you have a laboratory, and this is more or less a laboratory setting. They are making all these cherry pies, there are going to be paying customers next week for VEISHEA. They get a lot more out of it, hands on stuff when they actually do it,”
Kramer said.

And extra credit isn’t the only reason they volunteer.

“It’s such a huge networking thing. You put it on your resume that you’re on the committee, or you helped, or whatever it may be. Then when employers are looking through that it’s ‘Oh, VEISHEA cherry pies, I had one of those’ or ‘Explain this to me. What is it?,’” Sarah Dickinson, junior in hospitality management, said.

The workers will make more than 14,000 reasons to give them a job.

“Iowa State is a part of Ames, and so I think that we owe it to Ames to give back and really help with events like this. I think that, as students, we owe it to the university to help out,” Owen said.

In addition to helping the community, the clean-up is preparing the site for a new ISU student leadership retreat, which Tom Hill, vice president for student affairs, said is key to improving student life.

“This is an important venture here and this is to help enhance the Iowa State student experience,” Hill said.

The camp renovation project brought together a wide range of students with a wide variety of talents. Jerry Wellington, Freshman volunteer, said meeting new people is part of the fun.

“We’ve met a couple new guys in there, we’ve never seen them before on campus, and it turns out that they share similar majors with us and similar classes, so it’s always cool to see that and make new friends,” Wellington said.

Both faculty and students said they enjoy working side-by-side.

“My favorite part has been seeing Dr. Hill out here doing a lot of work, too. That’s pretty awesome, getting someone like him out here helping us. It’s pretty cool,” Wellington said.

“I think it’s great that the university administration has been here, it provides a lot of motivation for the students to see them. It’s just been really nice to be able to interact with them and see them working hard, and it keeps us working hard too,” Owen said.

Hill said, “Being able to work elbow to elbow with students, that what it’s about. You have staff out here, you have a little bit of everybody out here; it’s great, it’s really wonderful.”

“Lacrosse is a sport played on the size of a football field or a soccer field,” said Iowa State Lacrosse Club President Alec Johanson. “[There are] two goals and a crease, kind of like hockey. You’re running up and down just like soccer. The ball is going around, passing it and trying to shoot on the goal.”

The Iowa State Lacrosse Club has been around since the 1970s and the team has grown to about 25 guys. The club gets new members from students who have played a variety of sports similar to lacrosse.

“Coming from soccer and baseball, it brings in the physical aspects of hockey and football,” said Steve Linder, co-captain of the Lacrosse Club.

The club practices twice a week and travels across the country to compete in tournaments. It’s the connections the players make with one another that keep them coming back.

“You have to mix it up,” said co-captain Jake Jorgensen. “I don’t want to spend all my day studying and watching TV. I want to come here and play lacrosse. As opposed to lifting or running on the treadmill, this is a good way to mix up the exercise.”

Jorgensen is coming off knee surgery for a torn ACL. He says it was nice to be able to come back and connect right away with his teammates.

Players with a wide variety of skills make up the team, but it comes down to one important aspect.

“Commitment,” said Jorgensen. “That’s the main thing. You don’t have to be the most athletic, you don’t have to be the fastest. As long as you’re committed and working hard, that’s what it takes.”

For some, the sport means everything.

“I don’t know what I’d be doing without lacrosse,” said  Johanson. “I love it and I have to be playing wherever I’m at.”

“I think our style of play, our hockey is kind of like the melting pot of hockey from all over the world. I’ve been to Russia twice and studied there, I’ve been to Sweden, I’ve been to the Czech Republic you know I’ve been all over. I’m from Canada originally so we take different parts from Canada and other parts of the world and put it into one package and that’s known as Cyclone hockey,” said Coach Al Murdoch.

Coach Murdoch has recruited players from all around the world including Canada, Finland and even Austria. While hockey may be thought of as a universal language… each player brings their own unique set of skills.

“Well a lot of the European styles are a lot of the same it’s a lot of hard work, there is a lot of skills involved with it. You notice a lot of the foreign guys like especially from Europe have pretty good hands and can handle the puck pretty well so it just kind of makes the game faster and more exciting,” said Trevor Lloyd.

But It is not just the players who have a different style… It is the coaches as well.

He’s got his ways he knows his systems that he likes to use that he’s been using for years and back home I had a bunch of different coaches so its kind of adjusting coach to coach and here it’s kind of nice to have the same coach for four years in a row. You learn the systems and they don’t change,” said Jon Toigo.

Ice Hockey may seem the same worldwide when watching it on television, but there are a couple differences that change the play and pace of the game.

The biggest thing that players that have played in Europe play on a wider ice a hundred feet wide instead of eighty-five. Actually the Canadiens that we have on the team play on the same size of ice. Maybe just a little more physical in other parts of the world and a combination of those two things are good,” said Coach Murdoch