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Now that my daughter's senior night for her College Volleyball has concluded I wanted to share the "trophies" I made for her and the one other Senior we had on the team this year. I got the original "hitter" pattern from Steve Good late last year. He didn't share the pattern on his blog, but he showed a picture of a volleyball team with their trophies from his pattern. When I emailed him and requested it, he kindly sent it to me. I just had to add the player's name, and then the college - It's Maryville College Scots - so I went with MC Scots. I also added their numbers to the jerseys. He had noted that the ones that the girls in his photo had received were cut from 1/4" red oak on the top and walnut for the base. I decided I wanted them a little more "hefty" - given the fragility of the arms so I cut mine out of 3/4" walnut for both the top and the base. My husband helped me with the router along the edges of the base to give it a little more "polished" look to the bases. My original intent was to cut the same trophy for both girls. However, my daughter is not a hitter. She is the Libero on the team which means she is the one on the back row (in the different colored shirt) throwing herself around all over the floor trying to get that "dig" and keep the ball alive. She presently has 1300 digs for her college career (which is a great number.) She still has at least 3 or 4 more matches left so she could get close to 1400 - depending on how they do in their Conference Tournament. So I decided that I wanted her's to more accurately depict her career "digging" the ball. She has been doing that since she was 12 years old or about 10 years now. As a result, I took the "base" idea of the trophy that Steve created and took a different volleyball file I had already created previously and took a photo and created the silhouette of the back row player digging the ball and created the second trophy. While they many not be perfect, I found them acceptable enough to give away - especially when you consider this is truly the first time I have cut lettering and kept the project. (I have run away from lettering previously. ) - But I had been cutting a lot of the animal puzzles and practicing on my cutting on the lines and I think that helped me a lot (Thanks Scott and Harvey )- that and a lot of prayers while I cut them out! I put lacquer spray on to finish them off. Thanks for looking. (Cross posted on here and the SSWC Forum.) Maybe I will try some more words at some point sooner then later now!