July 24, 2012

As the summer ends.....

Well it has been quite some time since I have left a message here (Sorry about that everyone, the first baby boy certainly takes your attention away from other things).

I meant to do at least 1 or 2 posts about the spring season for the team.  Better late than never right?

After finishing the season with the amount of injuries we had we were forced to play a lot of younger players (mainly freshmen) in situations we weren't ready to put them in yet.  However, all things considered the growth of each player was great in the last 3 weeks of the season.  Our focus in the spring was to focus purely on Serve Receive Passing and Transition Hitting.  I believe our consistency in these areas has gotten better but you never know how it will translate to the following fall season after nearly 3 months off because of the summer break. We went into the spring with 18 players and a lot of focus towards each day that we trained.  There were a lot of very good days that built confidence in every player.

As we approached the time in April that team practices would start we had some roster changes (both injury and departure) occur that we weren't expecting and I can say that it did affect the overall feeling of our team looking towards the near future.  We had to alter our focus on lineup creation a bit as we competed in some friendly spring tournaments with other teams in the area.  There were some big eye-opening moments for us that showed some of our players areas of improvement that we thought we had fixed.  By the end of the spring season, there was a great deal of progress and understanding of what truly needs to be done on an individual skill level to achieve the team goals we have for the upcoming couple of seasons.  Experiences were gained in the struggles we faced on the court and sometimes that is the best teacher.

Now that we are approaching the start of the season I can only hope that every returner comes back to campus in top form and ready to continue the progress and strive to make DWU a force to be reckoned with in the GPAC.

- Coach V