Volleyball looks to build on last year's improved season
Following a successful 2009 campaign ending the season in a tie for second place in the Mid-American Conference West Division, the CMU women’s volleyball team looks to build on that success in 2010.
The team will play its games at Finch Fieldhouse and has been practicing at Morey Courts as renovations are complete to the Events Center.
Despite the different setting, senior defensive specialist Lisa Johnson said the team has practiced well in the first few weeks of the preseason.
“I think our preseason has been really good. We have a bunch of new players and we are all being very competitive,” Johnson said. “We’re pushing each other, and we all have been working really hard.”
CMU will see several new faces this season as their roster boasts three freshmen and six sophomores.
Even with Johnson and senior Lauren Krupsky, head coach Erik Olson admits that his team got off to a slow start.
“I think we were slow to get our hitters into a rotation due to sickness and injuries the first couple of days,” he said.
Olson did see a positive to the slow start, something he said could be a benefit with a long season ahead of them.
“It was a good thing in that we didn’t get too beat up in the first four days,” he said. “We really got to work on repetition and fundamentals stuff.”
The team sits only two weeks from its first match, but Olson feels that they have done a good job of moving some of the newer players into their roles.
“We’re two weeks away from playing our first match. We have yet to put the starting group on one side of the net,” he said. “We’re just getting them competing, but I like what I see an awful lot.”
The Chippewas open the season on the road at Northern Iowa on Aug. 27.During the non-conference schedule, the team will compete in tournaments against national powers like Purdue, Wisconsin and Creighton.
Not looking too far ahead in the schedule, Olson said the biggest focus for his team at this point is solidifying certain positions on the court.
“We return a lot of good hitters and we have some good experience at the defensive specialist position,” Olson said. “Really the challenges for this year will be getting a new full-time setter on the court, and teaching the intricacies of being a full-time libero.”
The libero is something Olson said will be key to the team’s success and something he has high expectations of. Currently, the team has six defensive specialists on the roster, which for Johnson and CMU means increased competition for that spot on the court.
“We have six (defensive specialists) this year and it has been very competitive, so I just want to be on the court wearing that libero jersey,” Johnson said.
He said that the team will have several familiar faces in attacking positions and feels those athletes are part of what sets his team apart in the conference.
“We are looking very good and ahead of years past as far as development” Olson said. “But we still have a lot to put to together.”
