September 24, 2012

A long week of Travel


We had a full week off until our next match. This time it was against reigning GPAC champion Morningside.  We felt that we were unbelievably prepared for this match.  We had to adjust our lineup with Sam being out for a few weeks due to her injury.  We inserted Sarah Kruse, a freshman from IA, into the lineup and thought that we had something special with how we knew the match would go with their lineup.  Unfortunately our other starting junior, Rachel Tinklenberg, suffered a head injury while on campus during the day and was not 100% for the match.  Only after the match did we find out how serious the injury would be.  Rachel did play and played very well for most of the match.  As a team we played extremely well taking a set from Morningside to have the match tied at 1-1 going into the break.  After dropping the 3rd we came back out in the 4th with a readjustment to our starting rotations and it paid off. We controlled most of the 4th set had a couple of set points to force the 5th.  However, that lack of killer instinct crept up on us again and we just couldn't put the 1 ball away we needed to seal the game.  I was very proud of the team as we have never played so well against Morningside and I do believe the next match we play them we will win or it will go to 5.

We had to refocus again as we found out Rachel's injury would keep her out for the next few weeks.  We are now facing a part of the schedule with about 5 very winnable matches out of 7.  However, we have to go through it without our 2 most veteran and leading attacking players.  This is the time of the year that we have to show some resiliency and have a lot of freshmen and sophomores raise their level play immediately. Small mistakes are now big ones for us.

We approached the weekend without Sam and Rachel still in a very positive manner. Knowing that our opponent, Concordia Univ., was a team struggling like us to make other teams beat them.  I was so confident in our players and the lineup we chose to use for the weekend that at not one point in time did I think that we could even go to 5 with them.  We found out that we are great team in the middle of matches (like top 35 in the nation good) but at the start of a match and the end to close it out we play with some fear to make the big play.  We were up 2 sets to 1 and played well for 2/3 of the 4th set.  We just couldn't close out the match as we became a little tentative on offense and gave away too many easy chances for Concordia to make a run.  The 5th set did not start off favorably as we did not receive serve well enough to stay in system.  We made a small push but it was not enough to get over the early deficit we gave ourselves.  This was still an unbelievable performance by our team that played with mainly Freshmen and Sophomores on the court a majority of the match. We have heart as a team but are still looking for that clutch performance by any of our hitters.

We have a short turn around as we look into next week and play Mt. Marty on Tuesday and Dakota State on Wednesday then travel to North Dakota for matches against Jamestown and Valley City. We have to find some kind of killer instinct as I do believe that we will put ourselves in position to win each of these matches. Can we finish the job each time is the question.

So the title isn't only about our matches.  We had some bus issues on our way to Morningside that delayed the start of the matches by an hour and half.  We then were supposed leave on Friday night to head down to Nebraska for our match with Concordia on Saturday. As we were waiting outside for the bus we received the call the bus was not going to be able to make the trip.  We then had to adjust our departure to Saturday morning at 6am.  Just not a great week for us with bus travel.

Keep checking our FaceBook and Twitter (@DWUVB) pages for more information. We also have a YouTube page with funny videos of our team. Have a great week.

- Coach V

September 17, 2012

Tough Times at Home

From my last post we had high expectations to get our level of consistency in matches to be better.  In turn hoping that the wins and losses would take care of themselves if we made it be that the opponent beat us rather than us give away around 15 points per game in errors. I must say that overall we have cleaned up our play and earned more set wins when doing that.  Now that next step is to close out matches with confidence and a killer instinct.

We went 1-3 at our tournament on Sept. 7-8, which was not the plan at all.  We had some big troubles with giving away points early in sets and putting ourselves in too big of a hole to come out of late.  The awareness of the value of every point was not with us that weekend.

We opened up GPAC play by hosting Dordt College on Wednesday Sept. 12.  Dordt has always been a very high quality team in the conference and this year is no difference. They were a very solid blocking team and had an MH that had a great match at the net.  We added to it with a lot of reception errors which was not the norm for how our season had been going to that point.  We had been very solid as a serve receive team most of the season. We finished the match playing well and forcing Dordt into more mistakes and we began to put more balls away but fell short in the end.  It was also not a great ending as junior Sam Sandau injured her ankle in one of the last 3 points of the match. She was playing a very solid match and contributing so much to our team.

We now have a week off until we play Morningside next Wednesday.  We have to look at a new lineup and come up with some ways to earn points aggressively.  It is a big week for us with some winnable matches.

Keep checking our facebook page and our Twitter (@DWUVB) page for quick bits of information.  We also have a YouTube page DWUVolleyball.  There you can find funny videos from our team normally.

I'll talk to you next week.

- Coach V

September 6, 2012

Solid Progress for the beginning of the Season

As I look back over the first 2 weeks of the season I have mixed feelings about where we are as a team. I love the energy and enthusiasm that this group plays with every match.  We have heart and we battle every opponent.  However, in most of the matches we have played we have also battled ourselves along with the opponent due to our inconsistencies on offense.  We put so much emphasis on defense during the preseason that we knew there was going to be moments that our offensive prowess was not going to be to the level that a particular match situation would require. I am remain confident that as we progress through this season we will get our comfort level for offense figured out. We have some solid attackers and setters and it is only a matter of time and discipline training for us to find our stride.

For those following us through the website (http://www.dwuathletics.com/womens-athletics/volleyball/) or our Facebook page or twitter feed (@DWUVB) have seen some solid set scores but not the match scores every team hopes for in a result. We have played 2 weekend tournaments so far and came out 1-3 in each of those.  The goal was to go 2-2 but fell short in the 1 match in each tournament we thought we could get (Valley City on 8/25 lost in 5 and Mayville on 9/1 lost in 4). Unfortunately a match we had strong feelings about that we would win was cancelled on 9/3 against Trinity Bible College; we hope to reschedule that match.

We hosted the DWU/Coca-Cola Classic last weekend for the Labor Day weekend.  It was a great success although our record didn't show the quality of play we did have. Dani Bird (OH, Omaha, NE) was named to the all-tournament team for her solid attacking and blocking performance all weekend.

This upcoming weekend we host our annual Corn Palace Classic (match schedule HERE).  There is no doubt in my mind that we can leave the weekend with a 4-0 record to help build confidence as we head into conference play next week.  You can see all of the matches played streaming live, http://www.justin.tv/cornpalace.

We will have updates all weekend through our Dakota Wesleyan Volleyball Facebook and twitter (@DWUVB) accounts as well as our DWU Athletics pages (@dwusports).

Talk to you again next week.
- Coach V