Volleyball heads to New York for Hofstra Tournament
A 3-0 record and a trip to Ground Zero are in the plans for the volleyball team in New York during this weekend’s Hofstra Tournament.
All four teams in the tournament are arriving on a losing streak, but the Chippewas hope they can leave on a different note.
“I expect us to go 3-0,” said head coach Erik Olson. “But I expected us to go 3-0 in both of the last weekends, as well. We should probably be a 2-1 to 3-0 team this weekend.”
Olson says CMU's (2-4) three opponents in the tournament—South Carolina Upstate (0-5), Princeton (2-1) and Hofstra (4-3)—are comparable to Robert Morris, which the Chippewas beat 3-2 last Saturday.
“USC Upstate—I think they’re a pretty good team,” Olson said. “I don’t know how they match up with us physically, but I think they’re a good volleyball team. I’m telling these guys we’ve got to gear up, but at the same time, I think we can out-physical them.”
Princeton might be the wildcard of the three, partially because CMU doesn’t know much about it going into the tournament.
“I haven’t even seen (Princeton),” Olson said. “We’re not doing tape exchange. We’re going in blind on them. That concerns me.”
Hofstra has the most wins out of the four teams in the tournament, but comes in losing its last three matches.
“They look like they’re pretty good and then at times they don’t, so it’s an interesting team,” Olson said. “I think every team is good enough to hurt us.”
Coming off a 1-2 record in last weekend’s Robert Morris/Duquesne Tournament, the team focused on how to finish off close sets during this week's practice. In one drill at the end of practice Wednesday, one side had a 23-21 lead and had to close out the set.
“We’re working on having leads and finishing sets up. We talked about that a little bit this weekend,” Olson said. “Our focus is earning points when we’re in those situations and we’re 23-23 and we’ve got to make something happen.”
Four of the eight sets the Chippewas lost last weekend were by two points.
“We’re practicing hard on the things we do need to work on,” said freshman outside hitter Melissa Fuchs. “I think that once we click as a team and we are able to incorporate all that we learned in practice this week, we’ll do much better than before.”
Before the Chippewas fly home, they plan on sightseeing in New York City, which is about 30 miles from Hofstra. Part of their plans include visiting Ground Zero.
“We’re going to try to get to a couple of key places, especially Ground Zero on this weekend,” Olson said. “It was something I said that I really want us to get to.”
