University of Minnesota Athletics
Dwyer's Wit Brings Gophers Together
11/23/2016 12:00:00 AM | Softball
The Gophers spent the first eight weeks of the season on the road last year leaving each Thursday and getting back late on Sundays. Balancing out road trips with four to five games a weekend and class work while being surrounded by the same 17 teammates each weekend can make for tense and stressful situations
Enter Sydney Dwyer.
Known by many as the funniest person on the team Dwyer has used her wit to ease tension and create team laughs on multiple occasions.
"There's nothing quite like getting a good belly laugh going from the team no matter where it is. It's cool to see multiple people laughing because it builds a bond between us all," Dwyer explained. "Humor is important during season because spending every weekend on the road with the team can sometimes make stress levels high. Whether it's a late night flying or a stressful week of school for everyone, I think that can be lightened with laughter. When you share a laugh with someone you can feel the togetherness and know you are not the only one feeling down."
In high school Dwyer's classmates referred to her as 'sarcastic Syd' because of her dry delivery.
"I am lucky to have teammates who mostly all appreciate the dry sense of humor. If a teammate is having a bad day I will definitely go out of my way to try and make them laugh," Dwyer said. "I think that is one of the coolest things about being witty. You have the ability to quickly put a smile on someone's face."
While her teammates have always thought she was funny, Dwyer has really shined this fall. Losing six seniors and gaining nine newcomers left a void that Dwyer boldly took on. During the First Pitch Q and A's this year newcomer after newcomer declared her the funniest teammate.
Kendal Judge- Sydney Dwyer. She is just always making jokes and makes everything fun.
Kendyl Lindaman on who she choose to be stuck on an island with- Sydney Dwyer. She would just make me laugh the whole time and I think it would go by fast so I wouldn't care.
Katelyn Kemmetmueller- The one everybody picks. Sydney Dwyer. We are locker buddies and everything she says is funny. She can say stuff with a completely straight face and not laugh.
"Before reading all of the features on the newcomers, I wasn't really aware that many of my teammates consider me the funniest teammate," Dwyer said. "We had plenty of funny people graduate last year with a great sense of humor. With a new team comes new responsibilities."
Paige Palkovich was one of those funny people that graduated. She is more than happy to pass the torch onto Dwyer and believes she will have no problem filling the role of funniest teammate.
"She is a good candidate because she brings a type of humor that many people, including myself, are unable to have...this being her extremely dry sense of humor. She says absolutely outlandish things while maintaining a completely straight face and just stares into your soul while she waits for your reaction," Palkovich said. "Most people have to take a second to contemplate whether she was kidding or not, putting them on their heels and making them very uncomfortable which is ultimately what gives Dwyer her satisfaction. This is something that I admire very much about her."
Some of the biggest laughs of the year was the result of a ping pong rivalry for the ages.
"I used to hear about how Coach Allister was the ping pong champ," Dwyer said. "That excited me because I grew up playing ping pong against my dad and was pretty confident in my game."
A much anticipated tournament broke out when the team had a gathering at Danielle Parlich's house over the Arizona State Tournament weekend. Both Dwyer and Allister took care of business meeting in the championship match. The two prepared to face off under the lights with teammates and staff members debating who would win. Nerves were as high as a game day. A heated battle ended with Dwyer topping Allister in front of a roaring crowd.
"Playing in our first team ping pong tournament was cool because my training partner, who also happens to be my father, was there to see me take the W over Coach Allister," Dwyer recalled. "It's a lot of fun to be able to compete with everyone on the team in something other than softball."
The Gophers are known as one of the grittiest teams in the country and pride themselves in that. Dwyer has proven to be a gritty and clutch player as well helping the Gophers time after time last season including hitting a walk-off home run against Oklahoma-the eventual national champions. Her humor also comes through in the clutch providing laughs when they are needed the most.
Funniest Dwyer Memories
Palkovich- One of the times that I think Dwyer was her funniest was the majority of last season whenever she would step into the box. Often times, away stadiums had video boards that displayed our roster pictures on an enormous scale for every spectator to see. It was widely known throughout the team that Dwyer was not very fond of the way she looked in her headshot, and she would walk into every stadium praying that their scoreboard did not have picture/video capabilities. Much to her dismay, the majority of her at-bats had her face plastered on the big screen the entire time and she would shoot a look to Sydney Fabian in the on-deck circle, as well as the entire bench, that very obviously showed how she felt about it. Never got old.
Dani Wagner- At conditioning we usually have a partner that we race against. Instead of regular starts, sometimes Coach Wy will throw in weird variations to start like lying face down or down on one knee. I don't remember which starting position it was but when Coach Wy said go only one person got up and started running as Syd slipped and completely fell over. Needless to say, Syd lost by just a few yards.
Sara Groenewegen- My favorite moment of Dwyer is when she let Hannah Evavold cut her hair in the locker room with office scissors. Also over the summer when she was a nanny she would post on her snapchat story "another grueling day at work" as she was laying out at the pool.
Dwyer- One of my funniest memories happened last year on one of our bus trips. I sit in the back of the bus by the bathroom. Kayla Wenner and I decided it would be funny to take the toilet paper out of the bathroom and hide it to see how people would react. Our perfect first victim was a Maddie Houlihan who after quite sometime in the bathroom just walked out very casually rubbing the hand sanitizer together on her hands. It was all fun and games until our second victim was Coach Merchant... whoops.
