DWU Volleyball Blog

Injuries - It's Almost Laughable at this Point

2011-10-24T16:11:00.003-05:00

Our ride on the roller coaster seems to have no end. As the positives present themselves some tragedy strikes. We came into this past week with some confidence and a feeling that we could battle some demons that have been haunting us since the 2nd week of the season. I have thought that since the last time we played Dakota State at the Corn Palace and lost in 5 that we haven't been able to find our groove as a team. That particular match stole our mojo and we have been searching for it ever since. Well the opportunity to avenge the loss and basically face the "demon" that scared off our confidence came around this past week. We went to Dakota State in a great mental state knowing that that day could be very special. We came out in the match so well, taking the first set and what we thought was the momentum for the match. However, our harnesses from the "roller coaster" tightened up on us and we gave away around 16 errors in the 2nd set to basically hand over set 2. After some major refocusing we came out and battled hard to a 3rd set victory. DSU however was not ready to let go of the match as both teams again battled in the 4th. We had a substantial 5 point lead at a point in the 4th but couldn't hold them as they finished on a 6 point run to end the 4th. I was pleased to hear and see in between the 4th and 5th set that our team was ready to take over the match. They spoke confidently and had a swagger about them as they headed back onto the court. Then all as the 3rd point of the 5th set is scored by senior MH Kacie Sanderson, the dreaded monster that has plagued us all year strikes again as Kacie injuries her knee and cannot return for the match (and remainder of the year). This time our lineup had to adjust in the middle of the match with no preparation. This group of young ladies did not let this setback affect them as they battled for the entire 5th set and even held a match point or 2. We just couldn't escape ourselves as we committed errors in those situations to give the ball back to DSU and force ourselves to scramble to the finish. We couldn't pull out the win and again it was devastating.

We tried to refocus and prepare ourselves for the next match against Midland for our Dig Pink match that was held at Mitchell HS in conjunction with their Dig Pink match. Here is where all of these injuries and illnesses truly become laughable, our starting sophomore MH Rachel has trouble breathing and talking before the match and has to be limited with the amount of movement we can use her while on the court. Our primary hitting option is now limited, haha it just never ends. Midland however was a very solid team and our injury ridden lineup could only hang with them for 2 of the 3 sets played. We had some opportunities to win the 1st set as we lost 23-25 and the 2nd set I believe went to 21 for us. We compete hard and continue to fight.

My phrase for the season has unfortunately been "Of course that would happen now", we haven't seemed to be able to catch a single break in close sets, matches, injuries or illnesses. It is absolutely laughable at this point in time. Any prayers and wishful thoughts that anyone that reads this would like to pass along to our players, we would all greatly appreciate them. (heck any healthy bodies would be nice right now, too. LOL)

We have competed so hard and have made so many adjustments to lineups and tactics that we still believe that we will get off of this losing streak. IT WILL HAPPEN!

The Roller Coaster Continues

2011-10-17T10:29:00.004-05:00

It has been a week and half of matches since our last post and ups and downs of playing inexperienced and young players is taking its toll. I will say that this group of ladies are fighters and play with a lot of energy to never give up. We will come up with something shocking here in the next few weeks. I believe it is in us.

We have had 4 conference matches and 1 non-conference match in the past 2 weeks. The conference match ups were not friendly to us as we played 4 of the top 6 teams in the conference. In every match we had some great competitive moments of controlling play for 2/3 of sets and even taking a set but we just seemed to run out of offensive firepower at the end of sets when you need it the most. Every match we played the past 2 weeks has come down to untimely errors on our part. Missed serves after already giving up a 4 point run. Attacking balls in the net or out of bounds on free ball opportunities. Not focusing on the key attackers of the opponent during situations where they need a crucial point. It keeps coming back to inexperience in big game situations, we will continue to grow and I believe that we will get better in this situations this upcoming week. WE HAVE TO!

One performance in the past 2 weeks that needs to be applauded is Rachel Tinklenberg while we were at York this past weekend. She had 24 kills and 3.5 blocks in the match and at a couple of different times in the match she would get 4 kills in a row. She carried our team to a near match victory as we did have match point in the 4th set. However the team could not overcome the 69 errors we committed in the match.

Our roller coaster of positive and negative experiences on the court is continuing this fall. As much as I love real life roller coasters I would really like to get off of this one. This group of young ladies will continue to fight and never give up. They will continue to believe they can reach their goals and achieve great things. I believe in them and will continue to work my hardest everyday to give them more competitive experiences in practice and prepare them for the rigors of the home stretch of our very competitive conference schedule. WE WILL NEVER QUIT ON OURSELVES OR EACH OTHER!!!!

- Coach V

Errors and Injuries - 2 Things Not Good for a Young Team

2011-10-03T11:39:00.004-05:00

Hey everyone,
Sorry for the delay in getting some information up here. It has been and extremely hectic 2 weeks. We have gone through some extreme emotional situations over the past 2 weeks and we are truly just starting the recovery and rebuilding process.

Since my last time on here we were at 7-6 and just prior to that we were 7-3 on the season. I am sad to say that the left column hasn't changed in the past 2 weeks and we are now sitting at 7-13 on the season. We have battled hard in most of the matches and had to change our lineups for numerous situations. Coming out of the Viterbo tournament we felt that we were close to getting our consistency figured out on offense and just needed a little bit of pure focus on certain areas of our game to get things running smoothly again. We entered into conference play that week against Dordt and unfortunately our SR passing was not consistent to allow us to get our primary hitters involved in a faster tempo offense to keep their big block split more often and ended up dropping the match 0-3. We had the weekend off to let the team refocus and get away from volleyball for a little bit and be able to come back with a renewed passion and eagerness to learn. Our 3 practices heading into our next conference match against Morningside were highly competitive and intense, we had confidence. We battled during the first set and felt that we let the first set slip away from us with some untimely errors at the end of the set. We then ran into the buzz saw of the Morningside offense as they went through the next 2 sets without committing a single attacking error (there is no one in the country that can beat a team that doesn't commit errors).

We understood that our first 2 opponents for conference play were high quality teams and matches that we were the considered the underdogs. We approached the weekend knowing that our opponent, Concordia, had been playing well and that our two teams were evenly matched. It was going to be a very tough match for both teams. Each team traded sets all the way up to the 5th set and most of the sets were close outside of our 2nd set victory where controlled all of the play to a 25-15 win. I knew that we were the more talented team at that time but hoped that our inability to play consistently was gone for the day. Set 3 both teams played well but they outlasted us. In Set 4 we played better statistically but they fought to keep it close. Then in the 5th, the error bug bit us and bit us in a major way. We opened up the 5th with 5 or 6 straight unforced errors and put ourselves in a major hole that we weren't able to get out of and went on to lose the 5th set. It was crushing lose to us knowing we had an opportunity to close them out and couldn't do it. The worst part for me as a coach is looking at the statistics and seeing that nearly all of the stat categories we won, just not the one that counts, the game scores. I left the gym wondering if a match like this would have a hangover affect on our team. I would get to find out the next week as we went to face Mt. Marty.

Let me preface this next section by saying that this could could be one of the toughest weeks to ever go through as a coach or player.

Even to this day I believe that we are leaps and bounds much better than Mt. Marty and have and incredible amount of talent and athleticism over them. However, on the night we played them it had to be the worst match we have ever played. We committed a total of 55 to 60 errors in the 4 sets we played. Yes, we gave them 2 sets worth of points in our own errors. It was one of the more disappointing matches I have ever been involved in and it was heartbreaking to the team as well. The recovery process was going to be long and the demeanor of the team needed to change as well as the lineup. So we approached the next day at practice (with only 1 day to prepare for the next match) with an intense team meeting and a complete refocus on accountability on the court. I felt good about the meeting and the response from the team in their understanding of the new goals set ahead of them. Then the chaos and adversity we thought we had just gotten past hit square in the face as our senior OH, went down from landing awkwardly after an attack to a devastating knee injury. The positive energy and emotion we had flowing in the gym came to a screeching halt in a matter of seconds. Our thoughts about preparation for USF went directly to concern for her; we had once again lost our focus on the task at hand. As we continued with practice the need for a new lineup was absolutely necessary as we now had to figure out how to fill the hole left by the injury and who would be able to pick up the slack as now our 2nd leading attacker was most likely done for the season. We took the rest of practice not preparing for USF but figuring out which lineup would give us the best shot at competing the next night. We entered into the match against USF knowing we were just trying to figure things out and hoping to play well. We started the match very slow but managed to nearly find a way to win the first as we held a lead very late in the set around 25-24 but then went on to lose the set 27-29. Heart, fight, guts whatever you want to call, we showed it in the first set and were hoping to continue that trend through the rest of the match. The 2nd set was similar albeit that we stayed close for nearly the entire set and didn't let up, but then the error bug bit us again and we dropped the 2nd set 19-25 and the 3rd set was filled with unforced errors that not even our defense could remedy to help extend rallies. We spoke after the match about what qualities we need to have with the team as we go forward knowing that we were needing to change lineups and do things we did not plan at the beginning of the year. It was a positive meeting and we all had an understanding about what needed to come from each person to get back on track.

We then tried to prepare for the weekend as we were making a trip to ND to face Jamestown and Valley City. Our main focus heading into the weekend and from here on out is to fight for every point, extend rallies and with play with great intensity. We played Jamestown on Saturday hearing the chatter in stands they believed that the match was going to go 3 and be the fastest match in their history. Well the first set certainly gave that indicator as we committed around 16 errors and they were errors that we had control over. We took the between game time to emphasize our decision making that was causing the errors and came out and absolutely dominated play for the first 2/3 of the 2nd set. We minimized our errors to where we stayed away from committing 3 or 4 in a row. We gave away 1 run of 4 or 5 points late in the set that got them kind of back in the set but we closed them out at 25-21 (it wasn't really that close until the last mini run by them). We were proving to ourselves that no matter who play if we limit the scoring runs we give on our own errors we can play with and beat anyone. It felt great. But could we do it in back to back sets? The answer unfortunately was no as we went on to commit 16 errors again in the 3rd set and 11 errors in the 4th set. When we keep the amount of errors to 10 or less in any given set we have won nearly all of those sets this season. The Valley City match ended up being a lot of the same from the week, we committed numerous errors in a row early in sets and then had to fight back to get back in it. Our set scores were 19, 22 and 23, the team battled so fiercely and I believe we will get this ship righted very soon, as long as we begin to learn how to limit the errors we give away in a row. We also had to deal with our senior MH get extremely sick during the weekend and then could barely play against Valley City. So we had to adjust our lineup again without preparation. We'll see what happens this upcoming week as we get back into conference play and search for the conference win that has eluded us thus far. Wish us luck and wish us healthy.

-Coach V

Our trip to the State of Cheese

2011-09-12T14:55:00.002-05:00

So it has been a little bit longer than I wanted it to be that I wrote but for those of you follow our news stories on the website and my occasional twitter posts (@coachviney) you may have an idea why I have been reluctant to, let's say spread the word about the results from the past 2 weeks.

We came out of the Corn Palace Classic not as confident as a team normally should after going 3-1 over that weekend. The 5 set loss to Dakota State took something out of us. We headed to Presentation College in Aberdeen on the 7th knowing we should be able to take care of business relatively quickly. I think for the most part we did (first 2 sets we only allowed 17 and 12 points) but lost some focus in the 3rd set and let them come back and make that set interesting and forcing us to beat them 27-25. A little hectic but we got the job done. A win is a win!

We had another big trip ahead of us for the weekend. A trip to La Crosse, WI at Viterbo University for a tournament. Our 2 players from Green Bay were so looking forward to this trip. I think I have heard enough reasons why Wisconsin is great - so they think HAHA.
Coming in to the season I knew this was going to be a tournament that had the potential to be difficult. My expectation was 2-2 because of the two potential Top 25 teams we were scheduled to face there (Viterbo & Northwestern). How many of you get that feeling the day before or even the day of a competition and you just don't feel right, like something is missing? I unfortunately had that feeling on the Friday morning of the tournament. I tried to shake it all day and come up with all of these confidence building sayings and thoughts. Well my gut must have been telling me something as we entered in to the first match with Waldorf College (who was winless on the season at that time). They played right before our match and were competing so hard defensively just frustrating their opponent. I knew we were about to have the same match with them. Waldorf came out with the confidence of a team that was undefeated, scrapping for every point and making us have to earn every point. It was taxing on the players. Both teams battled back and forth for the first 4 sets and even through the entire 5th set. We finally made a statement and put our stamp on the match at the (I believe) 12-13 score in the 5th set and us being down. Out of the timeout we had a crossing pattern play drawn out to get a potential matchup for Freshman Danielle Bird to take the biggest swing of the season. In the the timeout, I told her to just put the ball away no matter what. Her response was a thunderous kill that blasted the opposing libero in the gut, I swear the gym was filled with the sounds of Danielle's contact of the ball and the ball's contact of the libero's stomach - it was the momentum play we had searched for all match long. We went on to win 17-15 in the 5th.

Our next 3 matches for the weekend were struggles to say the least. Northwestern played at an unbelievable pace that we weren't ready for and stuck it to us. The next morning we thought we had a great chance to get that second win of the tournament against Hannibal-LaGrange. Our offense was inconsistent and we couldn't put together the runs we normally get and lost each set by 2 or 3 points. Here is the hard pill to swallow - Looking at the stat sheets from both teams we had better attacking numbers and blocking numbers as well as more digs. However, HLG committed 6 less errors than we did throughout the match and therefore earned them the win. We finished the tournament by playing #21 at the time Viterbo. They play at a very high tempo with their offense and their setter is extremely accurate and athletic, the key to the team. We opened up the first set with dismal passing and found ourselves in a big double digit hole. But then we caught a break, during a play their setter got injured and had to leave the match. Informing the team of the big break that was just presented to them about the heart of their team now out for potentially the entire match, we had a chance. Our response was positive for the next 2 sets as we pushed Viterbo to change their offense to set players that don't normally get as many swings. I thought we were going to pull out the 3rd set to force a 4th but as it was the entire weekend our offensive efficiency (ability to score points and not just keep balls in play or give away points) held us back from reaching our goals. We did however, leave the tournament with our heads held high knowing that the ability to play good ball is in us and that we just have to demand and expect more from our individual performances to ignite the team.

Our tournament season is over and now we head into the true purpose for our season - the GPAC conference season. Our overall youth has been a slight reason for our ups and downs but we now have to get through the adversity we create and fight our way to the top. The matches we have played are a big part of the experience we need to compete in this great conference. We must now look forward to achieve our goal of finishing in the top 8 of the conference and make it into the conference tournament. The near future is bright this group of women, it is our time to show that youth is not a negative thing when it comes to competition.

- Coach V

Corn Palace Classic Weekend

2011-09-05T09:06:00.000-05:00

That was one extremely busy weekend. 6 college teams and 4 HS teams played 14 matches over the Labor Day weekend here in Mitchell. There was great volleyball played by every team that stepped foot on the court at the World's Only Corn Palace. Check out the stats from all of the college matches on our web page specific for the tournament. Congrats to Ethan HS and Mitchell HS for winning their matches on Saturday. They were fun to watch.

Before we go any further I have to give a HUGE THANK YOU to our JV team and other volunteers for operating the scores table, line judging, and ball shagging all weekend. All of you did a fantastic job and worked extremely long hours. I hope the payment of free food all weekend was sufficient.

Looking back at our weekend we finished 3-1, which is a very positive weekend. However, losing your very last match of a tournament against a rival will always leave a sour taste in your mouth. We opened the weekend on Friday playing Dickinson State. They had recently added 2 players that weren't playing the weeks before from suspension and were 2 very athletic OH's. We weren't sure how much they would change their team but after watching them jump out to a commanding 2 set to 0 lead on York in their first match of the tournament it was clear they were very different then what we saw the weekend before when they were out in Montana. They did end up losing some steam and lost in 5 to York but we still saw them as a dangerous team. We came out extremely focused on our game plan to take the line away from one of those hitters and cross court against the other. The execution of our blocking and then the addition of very solid ball control to keep us in system allowed us to dominate play in a 3 set victory, 25-18, 25-14, 25-15. We hit .370 in the match with only 1 attacker having more than 1 attacking error while also averaging 16 digs a set. It was a great overall match both offensively and defensively. It was an exceptional start to the weekend. We got great balanced performances from Larissa Veldhuizen and Danielle Bird while Kacie Sanderson and TyAnn Buddenhagen were extremely efficient attacking the ball with .417 and .556 hitting %'s. Katie Lindow also came in off the bench as a serving specialist to provide an ace and 3 digs.

We finished Friday night with our match against York College. In the previous few years York had always been a team that you could get school records against because of their level of play. Well not anymore, after seeing them come back from 0-2 to win 3-2 against Dickinson, it was very clear they were a team that had some talent, skill and were well coached. Kudos to Coach Fear for really getting things turned around there at York. This match was competitive the entire time. We could not put them away in any set early to give us that breathing space we like to have to close out sets. We took the first 2 sets (25-22 & 25-20 respectively and then York pushed us to the limit to take the 3rd set 25-23. We had to battle hard again in the 4th to finally close out the match 25-21. We did a great job in the serve & serve receive game with 11 aces and only 2 reception errors. We did well at the net with 11 total blocks and 49 kills. Larissa Veldhuizen was the go to player as she recorded a double-double with 14 kills and 16 digs. Katie Lindow again provided some offense with 6 service aces in her serving specialist role. While Sam Sandua continued her consistency for the season with a .238 hitting % and adding 8 kills. And Rachel Tinklenberg hit .300 with 9 kills and added 5 block assists. Tyann Buddenhagen and Briana Jung both provided quality setting and great defense as both were above 15 digs each in the match.

We opened Saturday against Valley City State. This has turned into a big rivalry match over the past 3 seasons. Heading into this match the 2 teams had played 4 times since 2009 with every match going 5 sets. We had a 3-1 record vs. VCSU heading into the match this weekend. It may have also grown into more of a rivalry since the head coach there is my wife's best friend and college teammate. It was a tight match the entire, trading the first 3 sets with us up 2-1 and barely pulling out the 3rd set. We managed to figure out some things with our offensive efficiency for the 4th set to stop the 5 set match streak at 4 and beat VCSU in 4 sets. I can honestly say that looking at the statistics without the scores one would guess VCSU won the match. However, our perseverance through the adversity of not playing as well as we did the day before and against an opponent that wanted the win was extremely key to the victory. We got another double-double out of Larissa Veldhuizen with 13 kills and 13 digs. Brooke Warne provided 20 digs in the match to anchor the defense and Sam Sandau again was Miss consistency with 9 kills with a .350 hitting %. It should be another great match when we go to Valley City the first weekend of Oct.

The last match of the weekend had us facing another rival in Dakota State. They had played some strong volleyball throughout the tournament and I knew they would come out ready to play. Both teams battled hard in the first set to a 25-22 DWU victory. Dak State committed a lot of hitting errors in the first set to help us in that set. We knew that trend would not continue as they are a team that likes to tip and throw the ball around after making mistakes. The 2nd and 3rd set Dakota State pushed themselves out to quick 5 and 6 point leads and never looked back as we looked like deer in headlights during those sets as we could only score 13 and 17 in those sets. The execution of the game plan was non-existence and the focus on the 2 hitters that Dak State uses all of the time was poor. It did not look good for us heading into the 4th set. Again we came out flat in the 4th but fortunately not putting ourselves in too big of hole. Dakota State began to make a few more attacking errors to help us stay close. As we approached the final 5 to 6 points in the set something changed in the attitude of how the team was approaching game and our energy level rose as well as our communication. We clawed our way back to a 23-23 tie and found a way to pull out the 4th to set up what would be a very intense 5th set. The first half of the 5th was back and forth as both teams played well to the 8-7 switch with DWU up. But after the switch of court we lost confidence after back to back throw kills to both deep corners from their MH. They were devastating kills that took the wind out of our sail and unfortunately the aggression out of our game (which will never happen again). It was heart breaking and even to today I have a sour taste in my mouth about how it finished. We did get some good quality performances from Brooke Warne with 25 digs and another double-double from Larissa Veldhuizen with 13 kills and 13 digs again. Other double-doubles recorded were by Danielle Bird with 11 kills and 12 digs and Briana Jung with 24 assists and 15 digs.

Again we'll take the 3-1 record and move on with a lot more learning coming our way about how to stay aggressive the entire time we play and to limit how much the other team can control what we want to do to score points. We head into the first full week of September with a 5-3 record and with a good amount of confidence as we travel to Presentation College in Aberdeen, SD on Wednesday the 7th and then out to Viterbo University in LaCrosse, WI for Sept. 9-10.

Wish us luck.
- Coach V

Out to the West

2011-08-28T07:51:00.001-05:00

The first weekend of competition has already come and gone. We took an extended trip out to Wyoming and Montana with both our JV and Varsity. Our JV team played in a tournament at Sheridan College while the varsity team went to Billings, MT to compete at Rocky Mountain College.

The JV team competed hard all weekend and did well considering 6 of the 8 players that were there played out of position. They played 5 matches during the weekend and had some opportunities to take a couple of sets but kind of stalled out at the end of those particular sets. Assistant Coach Dannie Burt coached them all weekend and said that there were a lot of bright spots from Paige VandenMeerendonk who was being forced to play in the middle rather than on a pin where she is more comfortable. There was also a big moment when 5'5" Lacey Reimnitz (playing LS, out of position) went up and crushed a kill down around the 15 ft. mark for a point in the first match of the weekend. They said that you could see the cape behind her as she flew in the air to take the swing. LOL.

Great job ladies.

The varsity team had what we would consider a roller coaster weekend with only one major drop. Fortunately that drop came in the very first match of the year against MT Tech. That's all we'll say about that one. We have decided to go out of sight, out of mind with that match. We then played MT Western and started off slow, most likely an hangover from the previous match, but somewhere in the middle of the 2nd set things picked up with communication and energy level. We still dropped the 2nd set but we could feel a change. That change came out a 5 set match win with some great performances from Larissa Veldhuizen and Danielle Bird. Check out the stats from the online schedule.

We woke up the next morning feeling better about our chances and came to face nationally ranked Rocky Mountain who in the previous weekend had beaten two top 10 teams in straight sets while out in California. We knew we had our hands full. It was a match of big runs, they had a 8 to 9 point run then we had 7 to 8 point run, each team had big runs like that in every set. Although we lost in straight sets we actually built more confidence in ourselves as we continued to look back at how the match was played, we blocked well and forced a team much bigger than us to have to use more tips and roll shots to get points. We also put a lot of pressure on their serve receive passers keeping them out of system for a majority of the match. We finished the weekend off by playing MT State-Northern, who had been playing extremely well all weekend long. It was a hard fought match with us losing the 1st set, winning the next 2 but dropping the 4th. We went into the 5th just feeling as if we have controlled nearly every aspect of the match but just let our focus slip a little in the 4th set. We came out and took control of the 5th after the 8 point switch to win 15-10. It felt amazing to leave the weekend with a win and to have a great feeling from a vast majority of the sets we played.

A lot of confidence is bubbling as the team enters into the first week of September and hosting our own Corn Palace Classic. Check out the schedule for the tournament here.

It is a good start to the season. We expect to continue this climb with confidence over the coming weeks to prepare us for the difficult GPAC schedule ahead.

- COACH V

Crazy Hot Summer

2011-07-21T09:12:00.002-05:00

I hope everyone is staying as cool as possible. This heat wave the past few weeks is just unreal. I have been working a few VB camps the past few weeks and I am thinking of starting a nation wide petition to put A/C in every gym in the country (wishful thinking, HAHAHA). There have been some hot ones this summer. My summer camp schedule is almost complete. Only one more in Houston, TX next week, I sure hope La Porte HS has A/C. If not it will still be fun to get to Houston to see my mom and sister and do a high quality camp.

Big news from the AVCA was just announced on July 20. The AVCA Team Academic Award recipient list was released and for the 2nd time in the 10 year history of award the DWU VB program was on the list for the 2010-2011 academic year. We just missed out on the 2009-2010 award by 0.04 points. We were only 1 of 30 NAIA teams to receive the award. The award honors those teams that hold a cumulative team GPA of 3.3 on a 4.0 scale. We are extremely proud of this award and something we hope will be a consistent thing we achieve every year.

I also have started a Twitter account (@coachviney). Go ahead follow this account as I'll be sending out updates from the season as well as the occasional update from my life. Don't worry, I won't be sending out tweets of what kind of cereal I am eating and that my wife's cat got stuck in the cupboard, lol. I'll keep it about volleyball and other cool things like when my son is born in October. Please follow me @coachviney.

The preseason is just around the corner for all of us. I wish every team the best as you go through your preparations for the fall. I'll keep you all updated as we get closer to the start of the season.

Stay Cool.

-Coach V

2011 Recruiting Class Is Officially Finalized

2011-06-24T11:00:00.000-05:00

So as we approach July we are complete with the 2011 incoming class for DWU Volleyball. We have signed 3 more players to cap off the recruiting year for 2011.

We have officially added Paige VandenMeerendonk of Green Bay, WI to the roster. Paige is a very strong OH that can hit with a ton of force. She has a pretty high ceiling of potential and will be a great asset for our program over the next 4 seasons. We are excited to have Paige as a Tiger.

Myriah Beiswanger is a DS from Mitchell, SD out of Mt. Vernon HS where she played the libero and OH positions during her career. Myriah will help provide some consistency in our serve receive game. It will be great to have a hometown kid in our program. It has been a while since we have had a Mitchell kid in our program. Myriah will bring a supportive energy to our program on and off the court.

We have also signed Vonnie Fredrick a libero out of Elba, NE from Central Community College in Columbus, NE. Vonnie is a great competitor and has a great deal of experience as a libero and DS at a high level of competition while at CCC. Vonnie is an exciting defensive player and has high VB IQ and court awareness. We are extremely fortunate to have Vonnie coming to DWU this upcoming fall.

These 3 young ladies are great people and have wonderful personalities that mesh extremely with our current roster. We have putting a major effort in getting the "best people" not just the "best athletes". We are heading in the right direction as a program and I am unbelievably excited about the future of this program.

As this 2011 recruiting season comes to a close the 2012 class has already been up and going and in full swing. We have had around 8 2012 HS seniors on campus from January to this late June time and have a had a great response from each visit and we have even received a verbal commitment at this time from one of our top recruits. Let's just say we stole her away from some major programs and are fortunate to do it so early in the summer. This will hopefully be the first recruit we have signed before the fall season begins since I have been at DWU. I am actually hoping that we can get at least 1 more athlete to commit before the fall season and maybe even 2 more. We'll see and be working our tail off to make it happen. To be a part of an up and coming program that relishes being the underdog and is ever so quickly getting to be a bigger name in our conference and region is exciting for every competitive athlete out there. Our time for greatness is just around the corner.

- Coach V

DWU VB Camps A Great Success

2011-06-15T11:55:00.004-05:00

The DWU VB camps turned out to be a great success this year. We went with our normal schedule of Youth Camp and Team Camps and then also added a HS level skills camp for the first time. We had the most Youth campers we have ever had in the past 4 summers and will continue to look for growth each year. The youth camp is so fun to do, we get to help mold these very young athletes with the skills that have made our players so successful during their careers. They are also so fun to coach and to watch them play can be funny and so rewarding when they get 3 contacts and play out rallies.

Our HS level skills camp was exciting. I didn't know what kind of response we would get with it being the first one we have done but we did get a good number of over 25 participants for that camp. This camp was a great opportunity for the campers to get involved in some high intensity drills that we use at DWU and to learn some advanced concepts and strategies about the game. We also had a couple of recruits come up for the camp to from Texas and Minnesota. It was a great opportunity for our players to meet and play with these players in a get to know type of atmosphere. It paid off as we did get a verbal commitment from our Minnesota recruit.

This year's team camp ended up being a good after we were nervous to not have enough teams as heading up to it we had 2 teams back out on us at the last minute. It was amazing to see the growth of the players and the teams as we went through 3 days of hard team concept training. It was such a great camp and so beneficial for the players and coaches. We had a great response from the coaches as to the great amount of time we spent on skill development while at the same time being able to do it in a 6 v 6 format. We held a tournament to finish off camp and Ethan HS defeated Baltic HS to win the championship. We then capped off camp with an All-Star match that included 10 players from the teams at camp facing the DWU players that were at camp to coach. The match started off pretty tight as the All-Stars held a quick lead but the ability to terminate the ball late in the game in transition for the DWU players ended up being too much for the All-Stars as the final margin of victory ended up being 9 points. It was fun to see some of the All-Stars raise their level of play against these college players.

We will always continue to put forth a well planned camp and bring a fun learning environment. I want to thank all of the DWU players that were here to help with camp. Thank you to Brooke Warne, Kayla O'Connell, Liz Humiston, Jordyn Heath, Cara Chomey, Stacie Brinker, Katie Lindow, Vanessa Johanneson, Myriah Beiswanger, Ashley Styer, and Briana Jung. These ladies did a great job with teaching the skills but also staying positive and energetic through the entire week. Great job ladies.

The Beginnings of a Great Class of 2011 Recruits

2011-04-18T13:48:00.003-05:00

We have a lot of great things going on for DWU volleyball right now in the present time but we need to talk about the future. The recruiting class of 2011 is rounding itself into shape and we are so excited about the additions we have coming in for the 2011 season. We are not quite done yet as there are a few more offers out to some special players but I had to get some information out about the players that have already signed. We have a few headliners in this class for 2011, such as 2 of the 3 Miss Volleyball award winners from the state of South Dakota. Introducing: Danielle Bird - OH/MH from Omaha, NE - has a unbelievable amount of athletic ability, very high jumping ability and a lot of power in her swing. We "stole" her from some very good NCAA Division 2 programs that normally make it in to the Division 2 National tournament. TyAnn Buddenhagen - S/OH from Huron, SD - The 2010 South Dakota Class AA Miss Volleyball. TyAnn has the ability to play so many positions that we may just have to create a new one in the sport for her. Setting or hitting or even doing both with a particular offensive setup we will able to do a lot of things with TyAnn on the roster. Briana Jung - S from Warner, SD - The 2010 South Dakota Class B Miss Volleyball. A wonderful compliment to the system of play we want to have for the next few years. Briana brings so much knowledge of the game and an understanding of how to run an offense that we will be able to be extremely creative with our offensive system. Katie Lindow - OH/DS from Green Bay, WI - Katie has one of the most unbelievable work ethics that I have ever seen in a player. Just a great example of "what" and "how" to do things to be successful. There are multiple ways to use Katie and we excited as a staff to find ways to let her contribute to our success. Vanessa Johannson - MH from Tea, SD - A very gifted athlete that is quick laterally and off of the floor when jumping. Vanessa will add some athletic ability to our roster that could create matchup problems with quickness for our opponents. We are excited to get her in the gym this fall. Ashley Styer - MH/OH from Wolsey, SD - Ashley, as the daughter of a coach, has a natural understanding of the game of volleyball. She can make the game look at easy at time becuase of her awareness to know what will happen next. Ashley may be looked at to play a couple of different positions over the coming year or two. Her understanding of the game will allow for easy transition into the college level of play. This is a great start to our 2011 class. We have a some more offers out to some very good players and I am extremely anxious to hopefully talk about them soon. This is a class that will be a big foundation for the success of the coming 2-5 years. We have a great plan in place and our next 2 recruiting classes (2012 & 2013) are also providing us with a great deal of optimizm for a potential GPAC championship run in the near future. Who wouldn't want to be a part of that, Right? -Coach V

The Finale to the 2011 Year

2011-04-14T13:12:00.001-05:00

So it has clearly been way too long since I have updated the world on the great things going on with DWU Volleyball. Quick Review of 2011 season: Hosted a 1st Round GPAC tournament match for the first time in school history. Continued to make the climb up the conference standings each of the past 3 seasons. Injuries to key people didn't help keep the rhythm we wanted. - Season ending injuries to our more consistent Serve Receive passers during the first weekend of the season as well as the first weekend of October held back our push at the end. All in all a pretty successful season. Something we can look back on as a positive experience. Now looking ahead to the future. There is a lot of work to do. We will be graduating 7 players from the 2011 roster as well as another 4 players deciding to concentrate on their academic futures. I wish all of you the best and will hope to see each of you at our future matches and potential alumni matches. Thank you to each and everyone of you for your commitment to DWU Volleyball. The spring season was interesting as we went through most of the training and competitions with 11 of 12 players available to practice full-time and only 9 of the 12 able to compete against outside competition. We have been working on a couple of new skills that we will be adding in for the 2012 season. Our blocking will be more aggressive and athletic for sure. We competed twice this April and both dates went very well considering the circumstances of each date. The first date we travelled to Augustana and competed against Southwest Minnesota State (one time #1 team in Division 2 in 2011) and Augustana (normally a Top 25 team in Division 2). We held our own against these very veteran teams as we put 3-4 freshmen along with 2-3 juniors at times on the court. We gained a lot of experience very quickly during that evening as we were forced to play at a pace that we couldn't simulate in practice. We had some very good runs of points against each team and all things considered we defended the fast pace systems of offense by both teams pretty well. We also play USF at Augie and had a very competitive match against them as we played 3 sets with them felt in control of most of the match. It was a very solid evening for our players. Our 2nd competition, we hosted Mt. Marty and Dakota State. We played at an unbelievably high level of speed and precision nearly all night. We were extremely organized and focused during each playing opportunity. It was a great way to finish our spring season of practices and competitions. We now prepare ourselves for final exams and then the summer go through the workout that will help get the team prepared for the rigorous travel schedule of 2012. Lot's of expectations and we are anxious to get going. -Coach V

The Tough Stretch

2010-10-20T09:38:00.002-05:00

As any coach heads into the season the circle two parts of their schedule; one that they realize that they can make a run and get potentially many wins in a row and the one part of the schedule that will be gruelling for their players and challenge the team to the greatest extent of their physical and emotional strength.

We are almost through that gruelling stage right now. We have almost completed the part of our schedule that had us playing all Top 6 teams in the conference in a row. It started with #19 in NCAA DIII poll (3)Nebraska Wesleyan on the 9th, #4 in the NAIA national poll (1) Northwestern on the 12th, (6) Hastings on the 15th, #15 in the nation (2) Doane on the 16th, #19 in the nation (4) Dordt on the 19th. We have (5) USF this upcoming Saturday.

The schedule has never been friendly to us at this time of the year but yet neither has the ability to shoot ourselves in the foot with unforced errors. This is one of those points in time that you get through and then move on as quickly as possible and try to put it to the back of your mind and forget it ever happened.

Some positives that we can look at as we progress in the final stage of our season is that we get to go back to our 6-2 setup with the return of Rachel Tinklenberg, back from an injury which held her out for from the start of this part of the schedule. Ashley Kley is beginning to get her offensive game back from a year ago at this time. Kimi Lueders is showing her offensive talent and the reason why she was put in the lineup on a little bit more consistent basis. Meghan Cronberg is beginning to understand that attack location is just as important as power and the combination of the two is lethal. We need these four players as well as Carina Fesenmaier, Stacie Brinker, Andrea Johnson, Kacie Sanderson, Brooke Warne, Sam Sandau, Wendy Schmaltz, Kayla O'Connell, Kalissa Wade, Kara Robertson, Liz Humiston, Kelli Swenson, Lacey Reimnitz, redshirt Larissa Veldhuizen and even our injured players Lexi Townsend, Sage Knudson, Nikki Gleich and Sarah Stahlke to be at the top of their emotional, mental and physical abilities on an everyday basis. We need the commitment to self-improvement and the ability to help teammates improve to be at is greatest level than ever before.

We have an opportunity to go out win our next 6 matches. Our opponents are all very beatable and not to our level of play when we have absolute focus on our game plan, skills, and togetherness. I go back to last week's comment, "IT IS THAT TIME OF THE YEAR". We are in that moment, that stage, that time of the year where great things only happen when you fear nothing and you give every drop of energy to your play, your sport, your TEAM.

- Coach V

That Time of the Season

2010-10-10T10:56:00.001-05:00

It's that time of the season. Geez that can mean so many things. For us right now it truly does. It's that time of the season that the body starts to break down for the athletes. Well, we currently have 5 players out with season ending injuries and just had a starting middle go down with an ankle injury over the weekend. We back problems, shoulder issues, and other foot and knee ailments. It's that time of the season.

It is also that time of the season that our conference schedule becomes very unfriendly to us. This past Saturday was the beginning of a stretch of matches where we play all top 5 teams in the conference in a row, then a non-conference match, and then the 6th place team. Why not throw that schedule right on top of the pile, lol. We are ready for it and are going into this stretch with a great deal of focus and preparation. To be the best in this conference you have to go through the top teams eventually (not all at once though). Yet this seems to be the schedule we have every season in mid-October. It's that time of the season.

So here is a quick review for those of you that missed out on our previous week of matches. We came off of a great match win at Midland University on the 2nd of Oct. feeling great. Our next match was at USF on that Tuesday. We came in confident and focused. We had to adjust our lineup due to the season ending injury to Sarah Stahlke, our most consistent serve receive passer on the season. Although we felt that we could manage and still perform at high level. We certainly did for the first set and half. We controlled every aspect of the match during the first set, forcing them to make at least 3 substitutions they were not planning to make. We then came out again with a quick start and about a 7-8 point advantage at like 16-8or9. And then we froze up, our serve receive passing became our worst enemy. We were stuck in one rotation for 12 straight points and that comfortable lead we had became a deficit very quickly. It was heart-wrenching and we all knew that it wasn't going end well. We struggled the rest of the match as we could not find a way to build our confidence against basically 2 of their servers as they ran us off the court with extremely aggressive serving. It was like being hit in the chest and not ever seeing it coming, everything just leaves you and you struggle to find your breathe and bearing as to where you are. We knew we let them off the hook.

We came back into the next couple of practices with that extremely sour taste of "what if". We had to figure out a way to just suck it up and get better with our ball control. There was an understanding that heading into the weekend that our Friday match against, then 0-6 in GPAC play, Concordia was a must win situation for us. We adjusted our lineup again during practices to give us a little bit more consistency with our passers. Then Friday came and with our lower numbers we were forced to play some Varsity players in the JV match. One of our starting MH's, Rachel, came down on a teammate during the last segment of the JV warm up and hurt her ankle. She played during the first set of the JV but couldn't do much with movement so we decided to shut her down for the night. With that decision we had to make a drastic change from what our practices had prepared us for. Without the additional hitter we were forced to go back into a 5-1 setup that we used earlier in the season. It seemed to work out OK. We had our struggles passing but we played consistently enough to win 3 close sets to take the match. Carina set a very solid match after not running a 5-1 in about 2-3 weeks. Our OH's came out to play and sparked our offense. Meghan and Ashley will need to continually perform at a high level within out of system hitting to keep us stable since our passing has been streaky of late. It was a great win for us and something we felt we could build on heading into the next night.

On Saturday, we faced Nebraska Wesleyan. Who was just coming off of very long 5 set match against Dordt. I thought we would have the advantage with energy level, feeling that they may have been tired from the gruelling match the night before and the 2 hour travel in the morning. However, in the first set it looked like we were the ones that traveled 2 hours and just woke up. We needed a spark, some emotion, some fire. We found it in the 2nd set as we battled extremely hard to come back and win the set 27-25. We felt good about our play and felt that we could pull out something special. We battled hard in the 3rd and 4th sets but could pull out the wins. There always seemed to be 1-2 rotations that held us back from controlling the tempo of the match. Our offense power was not with the rest of the match as it seemed all of our attacks were dug up by NWU and they limited our kills. A lack of offense has been a key contributor all year to some of our struggles. We are trying to implant that "killer instinct" into our hitter's attitudes and mental approach to attacking balls. I tell them all the time if we are going to go down let's go down swinging and trying to take off the opponent's blocking arms or digger's heads, haha.

We head into this week with an uncertainty about Rachel's ankle as well as our serve receiving passing confidence and attacking attitude. It is going to very interesting to see how this group of young ladies responds to the great challenges ahead of them with playing the top 6 teams in the conference all in a 2 week period of time. It's gut check time, who has the mental fortitude to not care about who the opponent it and just go out and execute the skills and game plan that is required of them. Who can face the challenge, stare it right in the face and scream as loud as they can, "I WILL CONQUER YOU".

IT IS THAT TIME OF THE SEASON!!!!

- Coach V

The Midway Point: WE BELIEVE

2010-10-03T11:12:00.005-05:00

Well let's see where we left off last time. We had just switched our lineup around with a four day practice window and a weekend off in between and went out to beat Mt. Marty in 3 sets, albeit that the 2nd and 3rd sets were close and we had to come from behind to win both of those to win the match. I guess you can say that is our forte.

We had 3 days to prepare for Morningside, a team always at the top of our conference but with them having a lot of new players on their roster and with some of the matches they had lost I felt that this could be a time to get while they were a little down. During the week of practice we tried to emphasize starting quick and controlling the serve receive portion of our game to give us chances to compete throughout the match. The first 2 days went fairly well for practice for all of the players. However, on the Friday practice only half of the team really showed up to compete in practice. I feared the worst after the practice heading into Saturday's match against Morningside. My fears held up true as nothing seemed to go right for most of the match. We missed serves, we didn't pass well in serve receive, our defensive discipline was non-existent and we had a lot of hitting errors. It was one of those matches that you swear all of the players were abducted by aliens and it was just their bodies there and not their minds, hahaha. So our JV lost quickly in 2 and our Varsity lost in 3. It was one of those days that you just hope as a coach that the players realize that your past successes only mean something up until the start of the next match. You have to give everything for every match and when you give teams that are struggling a little bit of momentum it is tough to take it away from them. It was time to refocus on discipline and constant focus.

So we had an opportunity to get ourselves back on track by hosting Dakota State on the following Tuesday. We were very confident coming in and gaining confidence with our new lineup. We did know that Dakota State was going to come in with a great amount of energy and really looking to steal a win from us. Both teams came out with a lot of energy in the match and it seemed that all the way up to the 17 point area of each of the 1st two sets that both teams were even in play but then DSU would make a small 3-4 run and separate themselves from us and go up 2-0 in the match. We went in to the intermission between the 2nd and 3rd set knowing that something was missing, not necessarily with skill and strategy but with heart and purpose in every movement we do on the court. We talked about discipline and passion during the intermission and came out of the locker room a completely different team. We came out and seemed like we could do nothing wrong offensively or defensively. Our team defensive positioning and discipline was outstanding. We put DSU away in the 3rd and 4th sets with them only scoring 14 and 13 points (complete dominating performances). So we again force another match to a 5th set and again when we started down 2-0. The 5th set started with both teams going back and forth a with points. After a few points back and forth our defense and offensive transition took over and we seemed to continually go 2 or 3 points to their one to finish of the match. It was another 5 set victory for us and we always take them. We are certainly becoming that team that no one wants to let hang around in matches because we will find ways to get the win.

The very next night we had a conference match against Briar Cliff. A team that I feel roster wise and system wise we matched up very well against. It was an opportunity for both teams to gain a spot in the standings as both of us were sitting at 1-3. We played well for most of the match but at the 15-17 point area of each of the 3 sets we played we just seemed to run out of gas a little bit. Could it have been that the 5 set comeback from behind win the night before took a lot out of us? It is possible. Again it always came down to defensive discipline as we were constantly finding ourselves out of position at key moments in each set. We also did not have an outstanding offensive showing which kept us from putting more pressure on their defense. We dropped the match in 3 but could have a small feeling of leaving the match that with how inefficient we were offensively we still gave ourselves chances to stay in each set and potentially get the job done.

We looked at the next two days of practice as great opportunities to get more in tuned with our defensive intensity and discipline. The two practices went very well leading into our match against Midland University. We left to travel to Midland on Friday night after practice to make sure that we got great rest for the afternoon match time. There was a great amount of focus in both matches. The JV unfortunately lost in 2 but it there were some really good moments in the match. The varsity came out with an unbelievable amount purpose, discipline, and focus. We came out and took the first two sets with great confidence. We went in to the next set knowing that the match was not over and that we needed to continue to raise our level of energy and play. Midland for sure increased their energy and started to really complete their game plan against us. They served aggressive and kept us from being in system to get quality swings. They had us playing very inefficiently in all aspects of our game and took the next 2 sets of the match easily to even it up at 2-2. It was kind of a role reversal for us. We were normally the team that starts down 2-0 to come back to even the match. It has never been the other way around. It was going to be interesting to see how we would respond from being so close to closing out the match early. The 5th set started with both teams trading points for nearly the entire set. Midland found a couple of times that they would pull out in front by two points, their first time was at the switch at 8-6. We were forced to make some lineup changes due to and injury and it was nerve racking because we had to bring in players that were being put into positions they don't normally play. We battled the rest of the way, eventually finding ourselves down 13-10 after being aced for the 16th time. We sided-out and found some phenomenal discipline in our defensive structure for 3 plays in a row to get us a 14-13 lead and a match point. I felt this was our moment and that we needed to finish it on the next point. Midland came up with a great play to sideout to even the score and get one of their servers that had given us trouble all match going back to serve. After that you don't normally feel comfortable about the next serve to receive. However, we found a way to pass a perfect ball and sideout on a first ball swing to tie up the set at 15-15. We took advantage of the opportunity to and won the next point which was a long rally that both teams fought very hard to win. We fortunately had the best offensive opportunity of the rally and won the point. We went back to serve and Midland's serve receive let them down on the serve as they had to chase a ball down to their bench and give us a free ball. They knew exactly what we were going to run and had 2 blockers in great position to defend the attack but our aggressive swing to the edge of their block sent the ball out of bounds to win the match for us and let the celebration begin.

We have had a roller coaster of performances during the season to this point and this Midland match was a perfect example of it. However, most of the stuff before ended with losses for us. I believe now we have a true understanding that we can still win matches when things aren't going well in a match for us. We have the talent and size to compete in every match we play. Yet this is the point in time and I think this is the match that will catapult us into a wonderful run in building confidence and putting us in a great situation to compete at the highest level of our abilities night in and night out.

We believe we are a team on the rise and team that no one wants to face because we will never quit playing hard and we will always find ways to make it difficult to beat us. We have half of the season to build on this huge win for us. The time is now to see where we can truly go.

-Coach V

Week 4/5: Days off are always great

2010-09-23T10:58:00.002-05:00

I guess when you get a few days off from playing matches you kind of let things slide. So I apologize for this update coming a little later than anticipated.

After our weekend of hosting a great tournament at the Corn Palace we had to quickly refocus and come back with a conference match against a very strong and nationally ranked (24) team in Dordt College. As we looked at film and then eventually as both teams were warming up we noticed something potentially could and would play a big factor in the match. Dordt is a very tall team across the front row all of the time. They ran a 6-2 offensive setup and in every front row position they had a not 1 player that was under 5' 11" (I think only 1 was 5'11" and the rest were all 6' and taller). We have 2-3 players with that kind of size. This was a match that we felt coming in was going to be controlled at the net and by the end of it Dordt clearly had the upper hand with their size. We did not find much success on sets to the antennaes as their double block on the right and left side was very good. However, we did have a lot of success in the middle of the court. Our middles did well when they got the ball and put Dordt in a lot of very difficult positions. If we only could have passed a little better I think we could have gotten them the ball a little more often and slowed down the speed of their blocking movements. Our success in the middle was not enough as we fell in 3 sets. Fortunately, we will get another chance to play them later next month and with our experiences against them as a bigger blocking team we will have the advantage of understanding how to hit around those big blockers and potentially how to use their size to our advantage by attacking the ball lower and off of their exposed arms to the edges of the court.

We left the Dordt match feeling that we didn't leave enough of ourselves out on the court, we held back for whatever reason. Was it an intimidation of a team that is better on paper or that we have struggled as of late and not overly confident with ourselves? We didn't know exactly what is was at the time but we knew we could figure it out. We didn't have time to dwell on it as we had leave the Dordt match behind us as the very next night we had to get right back up and play another match, this time against Presentation College.

We entered the Presentation match with the sour taste we had from the match the night before. We came out with a sense of purpose in our play at the start of the match and jumped out very quickly to big early lead in the first set. We went trying to focus on correcting the physical errors we committed the night before. There was a concsious effort put forth in making those changes. We were also fortunate that Presentation was not as big as Dordt; it actually turned out opposite as we were the team with the unbelievable size in the match. We controlled the tempo for pretty much the entire match. Presentation had a few good runs at times but never put us in real danger of feeling that we would lose any set. It was good to get the win and stop a nasty losing streak we were currently on. We still had some things to adjust and most importantly we had to build our team confidence that the hardwork does pay off.

After the Presentation match on Wednesday, we were fortunate to have 5 day period of time before our next match. We took that time to put together a new lineup together that would help solidify our serve receive passing while at the same time give us more offensive options. This was the only period of time during the season that if we were going to make any drastic changes it had to be now. It was great to get 4 practices in with the new setup and then to be able to come out and use it against conference foe Mt. Marty.

Our focus and level of energy was at a level it hadn't been all year heading in to the match on Tuesday. Dannie, our assistant coach, pointed it out to me right away as the girls were warming up, "They are here tonight focused and ready, no goofing off tonight". I looked out and saw the very same thing; It was wonderful to see 13 "game faces" on and ready to compete at the highest level. The night was ours to be had and there was no way that the team was going to let anyone take anything from them easily that night. It showed very quickly as we just came out and controlled every aspect of the game to take a very quick 11 point lead about halfway through the 1st set. We controlled the tempo of the game and momentum was all ours. Even when Mt. Marty made nice 6 point run near the end of the set to get them back to about 4 or 5 points away, we never budged with our toughness. We closed out the set with a 4 point run of our own and I believe it ended 25-17. We felt really good about things heading into the 2nd set and I think that our dominance of the 1st set gave us a little bit of a easy comfort level. Mt. Marty came out in the 2nd set and put together some nice runs to get a lead of anywhere between 3-5 points for the first probably half of the set. We then just chipped away with each serve opportunity we got. We go back and get 2-3 points while they would just side out and then lose their serve. Those little 2-3 point runs added up quickly for us and we pulled it back to even. Just before we pulled it back to even, I think we had the kill of the season so far as Andrea Johnson came on 1 foot take off "go" set out of serve receive play and just absolutely crushed the ball (I swear it hit the 10 ft line and made the line move) to short left back and bounced halfway up the bleachers on just the bounce from the contact in the court. The entire crowd gave the whole "OHHHHH!!!!!!" sound all at once. A few points later as a timeout was called Andrea was still in shock, "That is the hardest ball I have ever hit in my life". Of course my response was, "That is just the beginning for you". We battled back and forth from there on out in a tough 2nd set and had face a couple of set points and some moments that most teams would have normally folded and given the set away to come back and take the set 27-25. We didn't crack under the pressure and again our confidence and competive spirit was growing. Going into the 3rd set it was clear that we were going to find any and all ways to finish this match in 3 sets. Even when we came out slow again in the 3rd set, there wasn't the feel of "here we go again, not sure if we can dig ourselves out". It was kind of the opposite feeling in that we were going to figure this opponent out and just create small scoring runs to chip away and get us back to even where we could then show our dominance. Mt. Marty fought with a lot of hear in the last set and had us scrambling around and playing a style of play that is not like ours. At times the play was sloppy and slow with a lot of tips and junk balls sent over the net. Our team did an excellent job of adjusting and using their unconventional style against them as we turned many of their tips into quick offensive transition plays for us. Both teams battled right to the end and by the end of it we didn't commit errors while they did and we came away in the 3rd to close out the match with another 27-25 set victory.

It was great to get the victory and get ourselves comfortable with our new offensive and defensive setups. We passed in serve receive extremely well and our offense was very balanced. It looks good for the future as we progress. I truly believe that we can keep it going and continue to build confidence in each other, our system of play, and our ability to compete and beat the top teams in our conference.

- Coach V

Weekend 3:Corn Palace Classic

2010-09-13T18:07:00.003-05:00

Playing in the first volleyball ever played at the "World's Only Corn Palace" was a great experience. The tournament matches that went along with the event were all good and fun to watch. It may end up being that DWU plays all home matches there in future seasons. We'll have to see how that progresses though.

Friday was a full day of college matches that started at noon and ended around 10pm. What a long day but so much fun. Well we started off the tournament with NCAA Div II program Colorado Christian. Wow were they athletic, discipline and very explosive. They did a great job in transition turning our attacks into kill opportunities for them. We came out a little slow in each of the 3 sets played and had to play from behind each time. We couldn't rely on our comeback ability in any set as CCU was dominate in the middle of the court. They blocked and attacked well from the middle and we struggled to either block or dig them from there. We had our runs of points but their aggressive serving and quick transition plays were just a little too much for us in the end.

We came out in our next match at 8pm (the nightcap of the first day) against Dickinson State with a lot of energy and fire in our mental approach to the night. We competed very well in all of the sets up until point 17 or 18 and then it seemed that we would hit a wall. Our serve receive passing or side out ability was not strong throughout the weekend and really held us back from closing out some sets. We had a great opportunity to change the momentum of the DSU in the 2nd set. We had the majority of the momentum throughout the entire set, our attacking percentage was better than theirs, we had more aces, and more blocks in that set. Yet it came down to our inability to side-out right away; we gave a final 3 point run to close out set #2 and it really hurt our confidence for the start of set #3 as we dropped 5 straight points to open the set. We battled back but the initial start really hurt our chances to really get back into the set. It was great to see that there was some fire in us, some push. We will just need to find it more consistently for 25 points and not 18. Ashley Kley played well with 11 kills as well as Kimi Lueders who had 6 kills, 0 errors and hit .545.

The second day was the true start of the fun for the tournament. We had 3 college matches start the day on campus at DWU at 9am and then some HS matches started at noon at the Corn Palace. The noon match at the Corn Palace with Hanson facing Marion really kicked off the day as that match went 5 sets and had a lot of emotion poured into it by both teams. The second HS match of the day had Mt. Vernon facing Corsica/Stickney for the CBH Conference Tournament Championship. Corsica/Stickney got through Mt. Vernon in a quick 2 set match to win the tournament championship. The third HS match was the nightcap event and had rivals Mitchell HS against Huron HS. All expectations were that Huron would run away with the match. However, Mitchell had very different plans. MHS came out with so much energy and passion that Huron didn't know what hit. Mitchell played solid all night both offensively and defensively to take the match in 4 sets and make waves in the rivalry. Congratulation MHS. Great finish to the Corn Palace Classic.

The second match was us facing Kansas Wesleyan. We came out with great energy, focus and determination to get the job done. We battled to close victories in the first 2 sets to only lose a little focus and drop the next two sets in close fashion. We conquered the 5th set again in close manner after first pushing out to an early 6 point advantage. We managed to get it done and win the match even though not having a great offensive performance overall but we found ways to win. Congrats ladies. There were a few players that had solid matches. Brooke Warne had 32 digs to lead the team. Carina Fesenmaier had 45 assists and 21 digs. Ashley Kley had 11 kills and 20 digs. Kimi Lueders had 10 kills and only playing in 2 sets Rachel Tinklenberg played a great backup role and came out with 8 kills on 13 attacks. There was great balance throughout all of the stats and something we are hoping to continue for the rest of the season.

The last college match put DWU vs. Valley City State University. This has grown into one great rivalry. So let's set this up, these two teams have played 3 prior to this match over the past 2 seasons with each match going 5 sets and a DWU victory. Two of those victories were when VCSU was up 2 sets to none forcing DWU to come back and win the next 3 sets. Which happened just the week before at the USF tournament. Needless to say, VCSU really wanted to get the monkey off their back. They came out on fire in the first set just putting it to us 25-12. We had no answers due to our serve receive passing, setting, and hitting not being up to par. However, we would not falter to the challenge and came out to have our best offensive set of the season putting up 18 kills in the set and hitting .406 to go on and take the set 25-19. As we made the crossover to switch sides VCSU's staff and I could only laugh and say "why not go 5 and continue the streak". We all knew that the fight was on for this match. We came out in the 3rd and played a roller coaster set of play while at the same time so did VCSU, a lot of errors by both teams. We came out on top 25-22. Heading into the 4th set our players were demanding to finish this in 4; the talk was there but not the walk. We came out flat with our serve receive execution again and it started us in big hole to start the set. We couldn't quite pull it back to even and eventually lost the set 25-21. So why not a 5th set between DWU and VCSU, keep the rivalry alive. However, this time VCSU decided that they had had enough of losing these type of matches to us. They had a determination in their play that we could not match, unfortunately. I think our previous wins in the 5th set gave us a false sense of comfort thinking that they would just fold. Unfortunately we could not defend their pin to pin offense in the 5th as their OH's picked us a part to an easy 15-8 match win. This match hurt yet however gave us a great lesson in understanding that you always have to remain hungry for the victory. They just won't happen because of history.

The weekend was a success for all of the teams. I want to thank all of the volunteers that did everything from taking tickets, security duty, scorekeepers, stats, and line judging. Without all of you this tournament would not have run so smoothly. Thank you to everyone who came out to support all of the teams that played. I am sure you had a lot of fun getting to watch so much volleyball in one weekend.

- Coach V

2nd Weekend: USF Tourney

2010-09-05T19:14:00.002-05:00

Go ahead and call us the Cardiac Kids. There seems to be no deficit we can't come back from to either win or make a score close at the end. This past weekend at the USF tournament we found ourselves in a lot of trouble situations early on in nearly every set of each match we played. We left the weekend knowing that we can fight our way back into matches and bring our play to a different level even during matches we are not playing our best volleyball. We also learned that we need to develop a killer instinct during every point of a match and to value every point we score as well as give up.

We started off the weekend with a noon match against Waldorf College. A very much undersized team in comparison to us but a team with a lot of defensive fight in them. I realized it was going to be an interesting weekend from the opening set when we committed 16 errors to give them an easy first set win, 17-25. After a regrouping of our composure we went out in the next two sets to absolutely dominate play and come away with 2 easy set victories (25-14 & 25-15). We then decided that the 2 easy set wins were enough to finish the match easily, but our opponent wanted nothing to do with it. We didn't have the killer instinct to finish them off and they took the 4th set 25-21 and stole the momentum of the match right from us. So we headed into the 5th set playing a completely inferior opponent in size and athleticism but with more confidence, a clear danger zone. The 5th set started off with us jumping out early and again relaxing thinking the lead was safe. It turned into a back and forth battle from the 8 point switch with neither team backing down. I think we pulled from our previous match experience with Black Hills State, in which we went 5 sets but lost, and learned a lot about ourselves. The experience paid off as we closed out the match barely with a 16-14 win for the first match win of the season. It wasn't pretty (we committed 43 total errors in the match) or exactly as we had hoped but we got the job done. Good teams find ways to win even on bad days. There were a few players that stood out with solid games to help lead to the victory, Ashley Kley had 14 kills while hitting .344 and 9 digs; Sarah Stahlke had 9 kills while hitting .368 and 7 digs; Carina Fesenmaier had 43 assists and 10 digs; and Kayla O'Connell, getting her first ever varsity college playing time came in and had 14 digs, she was a pleasant replacement for an injury that came up during the week of practice heading into the weekend.

The second match of Friday was against Valley City State, with a new head coach who is the best friend and former teammate of my wife while at MN State-Moorhead, this match had a different feel for me as a coach. I enjoy beating my friends the most, LOL. So after winning a tight match just previously and not coming out with fire or a sense of urgency in the that previous match, one would think that you next match in that same day would be an opposite start. Well I hate to say it but I think it got worse; no emotion, no heart, no desire, and no fight to start off the match. Valley City, a team that lost to us last season in 2 heartbreaking 5 set matches was out for revenge. They played with so much passion and energy that we didn't even know what had hit us for the first 2 sets (18-25 & 13-25). It had the feeling of us just lying down and taking the beating with no resistance. The 3rd set started off and there wasn't much of a change, we committed errors and made a lot of defensive positioning mistakes; it was rough for us. I remember looking at the score with one timeout remaining (I used the first one in the first 5 points of the set) and seeing us down something like 13 or 14 to 19 or 20, some score that you normally pack it up and go home when down 2 sets to none. Yet we put together a small 3-4 point run, then sided-out quickly and put another 3 point run together. They then put a small run together and i look up and its 24-21, we are looking at 3 match points in the face and we have just finally put some passion and pride into our play. I told my assistant at this time that if we win this set we will win the match, WATCH THIS!!! All of sudden our front line decided that they would begin to own the net and or the next 3 points we had 2 stuff blocks with about 4-5 other touches at the net during that span along with a great counter attack swing from Meghan Cronberg and we have put our nose in front at 25-24. VCSU sides-out and then scores on a quick transition play to put them up at 26-25 with another match point. Normally this is the time when a some random fluke play wins the match for the team that had been playing the most consistently throughout the match. However, we found something within our blocking scheme that just wouldn't allow them to get the ball across the net easily and put together the final 3 point run to take the 3rd set. It was amazing we only played well for the final 12 points of the set and somehow extended the match. We then went on riding such an adrenaline rush from that 3rd set to just pound them in the 4th 25-12 and then carried it over to the 5th and win the match 15-6. Our blocking, emotion, and energy only showed up in the last 2 1/3 sets of the match but it was a great way to finish the day.

Saturday came rolling around and I was personally pumped for it; we just came off of some high emotion matches and great wins to prove that we are never out of a match. We faced Grandview, a very solid team that is athletic and well coached. Oh and they also have this OH that can hit every type of set and to any area of the court without you thinking that she can, she is very good and powerful. As the match starts, we come out flat again (Deja vu anyone). However, this team was not going to give anything to us. They did a great job of keeping the ball in play when they couldn't get it to their main hitters and when they did get it to them, they play was for sure over with most of the time a point going to them. They ran away with a match that was neither easy nor difficult for them. We made some runs in each set at them, of course late in each set but it was always a little too late.

Our last match of the tournament was against SD school of mines. We again came out flat to open the match. However this time we figured it out quicker that we need to pull ourselves out of the hole quicker. We were down late in the first set 22-20 or something and found a way to close out the first set 25-23. I was thinking to myself, here we go we figured out how to have the sense of urgency, that killer instinct. Set 2 was fought out well by both teams, SDMT showed some resiliency to come back and win the 2nd set after dropping the first when they probably could have taken it as well. The 3rd set comes around and 4th set and eventually think to myself that I might have spoken too soon about us getting that killer instinct as we eventually dropped the final two sets of the match but not with putting together final runs in each of those sets to put the pressure on the other team. It was a heartbreaking match and one that we won't get the chance to revenge, we let it slip away from us and we all feel it.

I think we were relying on our ability to make comebacks too much in these two matches. We talked about having that passion and emotion from the first whistle. Have sense of urgency and understand that every point does matter. We are capable of coming back but more times than not in rally scoring you will always come up short in the end when you try to do it too often.

We had some great learning moments over the weekend and made some strides as a team. The quality of playing with passion and purpose everyday and having that killer instinct has not been a part of the history of this program. It has to begin somewhere and with one group of athletes. These are the athletes that it will start with, they too are going through the growing pains right now of learning how to handle the pressures of being that group that did it first.

We look forward to this week and Tuesday we face top team Northwestern on their home court. A huge test for us. Which teams shows up? The one that waits for the end or the team that controls the match from the very first whistle. If we can dominate the net blocking and force Northwestern to have to play longer rallies because of defensive attitude then the advantage will be with us. We will just have to go out and put it all on the line and play with Pride, Passion and Purpose.

- Coach V

A Positive Weekend of Growth

2010-08-29T10:43:00.003-05:00

As outsiders (people more focused on results rather than the process of progression) may look at this past weekend as a disappointment due to the match record finishing up 0-4 to start the season. Those of us that are a part of the program and were fortunate enough to watch the weekend of play got to see a team really find their rhythm together during the second day and gain more confidence then any win over lesser competition could ever give. I am extremely happy with the effort, supportiveness, and leadership from everyone on our roster this weekend. The mental toughness that was shown from one day to the next was outstanding and a great foreshadow for the remainder of the season.

We scheduled this weekend to be tough and to see where we could potentially fit in with the national spotlight. 3 of the 4 teams we faced were either in the NAIA Top 25 or receiving votes to get in the Top 25 list. The 4th team has been a 30 win team 3 of the 4 years and formerly in the Top 25. We found out that we can play at a higher intensity level on a consistent basis and can potentially beat some very good teams within the national spotlight.

Our first match on Friday was against Indiana Wesleyan. We came out in the very first set and made great runs of points in the early part of the game and had the momentum for a vast majority of the set. Near the end of that set we faced one of the top jump topspin servers in the tournament and we struggled to keep her serve controlled to run efficient offense. We finished that set losing 22-25 and had 4 more total errors than IWU, the difference in the set. We talked about the difference in errors during the break and I think it changed our mentality in a way were not looking for. We came out in the next 2 sets playing timid and not wanting to make mistakes and our aggressive nature suffered. For the first match of the season and the first time playing against outside competition, we found out right away that we have two different speeds of play and that we don't want to be in the second one ever again. We are better when we play aggressive and fast.

Our second match on Friday was against #17 Bellevue. After watching them struggle against a Top 10 team right before our first match we had a sense of confidence that we could compete with them and potentially steal a set. However, Bellevue decided to make sure that they didn't have the same performance they had in their first match and played out of their minds defensively. We threw everything we could at them from different attack angles to different types of shots and they just dug every ball possible. We had some bright moments with some runs of points on our side that came from solid defense and good team play. When it was all said an done Bellevue flexed their muscles and proved why they were the #17 team in the nation.

Heading into the second day we may have been a little shell-shocked still from the finish of day 1. We played Jamestown first and came out sluggish. We forgot that there always need to be a certain thought process going on as we are on the court. Everything was chaotic and in complete panic for the first 2 sets of the match. During the break between the 2nd and 3rd set, we talked a lot about getting ourselves mentally reorganized and getting back to our aggressive style of simple play. The 3rd set was a complete 180* style of play from the previous matches outside of the very first set of the tournament against IWU. We played with wonderful communication and with PURPOSE. We stuck with our plan of correct positioning defensively and with a smooth offensive rhythm. We took the 3rd set to give the match a different feel and the 4th set was a battle until they went on one last solid serving and blocking run of about 5-6 points to finish off the match. We came out of this particular match learning so much about ourselves and finding the understanding of what level of energy it takes to compete at the national level.

The first 3 matches were tough matches and probably the greatest learning lessons for our team. We had to see that just going through the motions and not having a specific purpose for our movements and decisions would be detrimental to our potential success. I must say that this team full of fast learners.

Our 4th match was against a very powerful swinging, nearly every swing was as full power as they could swing, in Black Hills State. We played with PRIDE, PASSION, & PURPOSE from the very first serve of the game. Our challenges from the first 3 matches completely paid off for this match. We had a simple defensive plan and found ways to be balanced offensively and keep BHSU confused as to where we would attack and what pace we would attack. We held a 2-1 set lead heading into the 4th set, it was a battle and a back and forth set with each teaming sharing the momentum at least 4-5 times. They stole the 4th set from us (potentially due to a major scoring discrepancy in the first part of the set) and heading into the 5th set the match was up in the air. No team had a distinct advantage or the momentum. It was a great chance for us to get our first match win of the season. However, BHSU had a crucial 2 point run at 12-10 to push them to match point. We had our own 2 point run to get close but couldn't complete a block or dig against their top attacker for match point. We played wonderfully and actually gained more than just what a win could have given us.

I am going into this next week of practice feeling confident about our next tournament and upcoming matches. We have proven to ourselves that we can play consistently at the highest level of energy and focus. The season now truly starts with a complete understanding that each day we will get closer to being the high quality team we talk about being. It won't be easy but it will be worth all of the hard training and adversity that will challenge us everyday.

Great job ladies, the record to this point doesn't show what we truly accomplished. Our process will pay off, I think it will this upcoming weekend.

- Coach V

The First Weekend is Here

2010-08-27T09:04:00.002-05:00

It is finally here, the time to play against outside competition. We have an exciting weekend ahead of us. We will put ourselves to the test this weekend by playing 3 of 4 teams that are currently either ranked in the NAIA Top 25 or receiving votes to get in. Our goal is to be in the position of one of these teams. No better time than now to see where we fit in.

Not much else to say or really to prepare for. The time we have all been waiting for us here. Roll up your sleeves, put on your hard hat, and bring your lunch pail. IT IS TIME TO DO WORK!!!!!!!!

- Coach V

5 Days In and Looking Good

2010-08-18T12:54:00.006-05:00

Five days in and about 15 sessions (6-8 practices and 5-7 conditioning sessions) in I must say that we are ahead of schedule than the original plan. It is great to have the ball control of every player on the team to be at a level that will always keep a drill going to its maximum potential and not have to start over after the 2nd contact. Great job ladies, stay with the focus on all of the footwork we have taught and continually trained. It only makes it easier to be successful when you do it correctly, consistently.

Our primary defensive system has been put in and the initial stages of our offense is coming around. It is awesome to not have the feeling of needing to rebuild the team roster or teach every player the systems of play. The third season of a coaching staff is a season where we can see the hard work for those that have been with the program for that long start to sink in and pay off. Our returners are taking the leadership roles we expect from them with motivation and helping to teach the insights and strategies of our offenses and defenses to our newcomers. It has been wonderful to see the amount of teaching and learning going on every single session.

Our teams have not been divided up into JV and Varsity at this time and we most likely won't know for sure of those roster spots until after our inter-squad scrimmage on Sunday night. There are a lot of starting and roster spots open and each one has some great competition by many different players. Along with this competition the comraderie, support and positive atmosphere by the players towards each other has really helped everyone reach higher levels of play each practice.

We still have some work to do and with still more than a week of practices before our first Varsity competition we feel good where we are right now but have the understanding that there is still a mountain to climb to reach our goals.

5 days down and 4 to go of Preseason practices. We are on the verge of great things and we have not even started yet.

GO TIGERS!!!!

- Coach V

The First Day Has Come And Gone

2010-08-15T07:31:00.002-05:00

Some would say it went by fast and other say it was the longest day of their lives. I think that is about normal for most first days of practices (3 sessions a day). However the FUN has only just begun. It is on the the next day where we build on the technical skills from the previous day. It is a pattern over the next week that will build excellent habits in work ethic, physical toughness, and most importantly mental toughness.

Team support was high during the first day and the energy level was at it's peak as well. Now the challenge for the rest of the week, can we sustain the focus, energy, and high spirits for the rest of the week? We will soon find out. STAY TUNED!

- Coach V

Just Around The Corner

2010-08-05T10:31:00.003-05:00

Alright who is just pumped up beyond belief about the start of a new season. This goes for all of you, even you recruits, that are starting up with preseason in short amount of time. The anticipation of seeing what has paid off from the training, lifting and conditioning from the spring to the summer sessions. All of it coming to one pinnacle of time that all of the players are on the same page mentally, emotionally, and physically to play at a level teams only dream about.

As I have daydreamed (way too often) this about this upcoming season and smile knowing that this will be the first season that we do not have to have a full overhaul of new systems of play and players into the system. This gets to be the first season where we get to just "GO" from the very beginning with preparing to play in our system rather than taking many days to teach our system. It is definitely the cliche but "the sky is the limit" for us and this 2010 season. The aspirations and expectations are and will remain high all season. We have a lot of athletes that have the drive and just enough chip on their shoulder to make things happen.

This 2010 will have a lot of meanings to many different people. For me I am envisioning that 3, 5, 10 years down the road we will all be able to look back and say, "that 2010 team was the true start to this DYNASTY"

-Coach V

2010 Recruits and 2010 schedule

2010-07-29T23:00:00.001-05:00

We added 9 players for 2010 season and we are extremely happy about each and everyone of them. Each will bring something special to our roster. Please check out the links to see our press releases on these athletes.

April Press Release
July Press Release

We have also released our 2010 Schedule. We have had to make a few changes to the original with the closing of Dana College. We have also made some slight changes to the 2010 Corn Palace Classic. We have added some college matches to the schedule and have some local High School matches scheduled on Saturday Sept. 11. Here is the full schedule of matches:

TOURNAMENT SCHEDULE

FRIDAY Sept. 10: @ Corn Palace
12pm Dakota Wesleyan vs. Colorado Christian

2pm Dickinson State vs. Valley City State

4pm Colorado Christian vs. Kansas Wesleyan

6pm Kansas Wesleyan vs. Valley City State

8pm Dakota Wesleyan vs. Dickinson State

SATURDAY, Sept. 11:
@ DWU
9am Kansas Wesleyan vs. Dickinson State

11am Valley City State vs. Colorado Christian

1pm Dickinson State vs. Colorado Christian

@ Corn Palace
12pm Hanson vs. Marion

2pm Dakota Wesleyan vs. Kansas Wesleyan

4pm CBH Conference Championship

6pm Dakota Wesleyan vs. Valley City State

8pm Mitchell vs. Huron

Please come out a support DWU Volleyball in this potentially magical year.

-Coach V

FRESH START

2010-05-27T14:57:00.002-05:00

Oh my I did truly forget about this thing for quite some time. My apologies to everyone.
Well it is the time of the year where we all love to be outside and soaking up the sun. However, i am in my office right now writing this blog but I promise I will be outside soon. I have to enjoy the weather when I get the chance.

Well we are near the completion of our recruiting season. We have made one announcement of our 1st half of our recruiting class and are getting ready to announce our 2nd wave in the coming weeks. We just have a few more Letters of Intent to get back and a visit to complete very soon.

I'll talk about the individual players throughout my next few posts. I can't waste everything I want to talk about on my first one back. I have to leave the suspense for all of you, lol.

I am happy to announce that we will continue to have a full coaching staff for the upcoming season. I have excited about the two coaches I have helping out for the 2010 season. Jessica Lucas and Dannie Burt will give be great assets to our progress to a championship in the fall. Jessica comes to us after coaching at a few local high schools the past few years. She is going to give great balance to our staff as she has a high energy level and shares my "no non-sense, no excuses" mindframe. Dannie Burt returns as an assistant coach after taking last season off. Dannie helped out periodically in 2008 as he continued to pursue his college degree. It will be nice to have Dannie back with the staff as he is someone that has an idea of what we want to accomplish within our systems of play. Welcome aboard you to, it's certainly going to be fun.

I have enormous expectations for the Tiger VB team this upcoming fall. When I was hired on I told everyone that my 3rd year was going to be special. I feel that with the core of the team returning and some very key additions to the roster we are certainly poised to carry out our dream of not only getting into the Top 5 of the conference but winning either the regular season or tournament championship. We will all have to make some sacrifices of our personal egos to accomplish that and do everything for the good of the team and teammates. This is the moment. This is the year that DWU Volleyball gets its FRESH START.

-Coach V

Final Post for 2009 season

2009-11-23T10:44:00.002-06:00

Sorry everyone for not keeping you updated for the final part of the season. It got extremely hectic with our schedule at the end of the season with 3 matches per week. It was a season that was full of peaks and valleys, with some great set wins over some top teams in the conference and some unfortunate inconsistencies in our level of play against teams that we were evenly matched. It was most certainly clear that we are still in our rebuilding phase and right near the end of the "transition" into the new style of play. We have a majority of the pieces to put ourselves in the hunt within the GPAC, we still need to find the complete fiery competitive team-first attitude from all of the pieces to get us to our goals.

It is going to be a great progressive off-season for us coming up. We have hired a strength and conditioning coach to help bring our athletic talents to another level. We will also be putting great focus on certain skill developments for each athlete to get each individual to the next level of playing ability. We are going to have a great focus on the ability to read defensive play as well as get our attackers to be able to make different types of shots to different areas of the court. It is going to be a fun off-season and everyone is looking forward to the great progression ahead.

- Coach V

Week #5 - Recovery and Team Commitment

2009-09-28T10:35:00.001-05:00

So the illness bug has come around and hit us pretty hard the past week. We were going to through practices the past week with 8-10 people out for every practice. It was one of those moments as a coach where it is certainly the time to have your adaptability skills at their best. At the start of the we all felt great about some good performances from the weekend in Sioux City. But something was a little off on Monday as I felt a lot of our players kind of dragging and very low with energy. Then it started 1 by 1 the information kept coming me, this 2 has this illness, this 2 have this, and these 3 possibly have this. It was like it never ended, well it seemed like it because Jayna kept pretending to be sick with her fake cough (keep practicing, Neba. lol).

So Monday we tried to prepare for Dordt with what we had. We still felt pretty good about what we could do in that match. The very next day we got word that Carina was sick with something that had to hold her out for the match and not let her travel. So immediately I had to let Kalissa and Rosebud know that they would have to fill in and that our gameplan has now been switched to a 6-2 setup and our lineup would be very different than we practiced. It was hectic leading up to our arrival to Dordt. We had some people playing in the JV match that hadn't played before and made a true sacrifice and commitment to the team to get it done (Thank you Leah for stepping up all week). The JV match was a little rough as Dordt took the match fairly easily as our serve receive passing just wasn't up to par all match.

The varsity match was probably a little nerve racking for everyone as we weren't exactly sure how we would respond to the adversity we were facing with a limited roster. My only concern of the night came when we dropped 4 of the first 5 points of the match with no intensity, I had to quickly call a timeout and remedy the situation. We then came back to to the game and go point for point the rest of game. The first game even had probably one of the best rallies that any of us had been a part of playing or coaching. It lasted about a minute and included:
- First attack saved by player with over the shoulder swing with back to net and at sharp angle
- Hard swing dug and ball saved from 25ft away from court off of a light fixture and sent over as other team was celebrating
- Celebrating team saves ball and gets another attack
- Play proceeds to have 2 diving plays to the right back corner from both team's middle back players
- A sideline diving save by a libero after one of the diving plays in the right back is sent over
- A double block that is covered and continued play
- Overpass kill to finish play

I am putting this rally in a Play of the Week contest sponsored by the AVCA. Voting will begin I think on Thursday so please check out http://www.avca.org/ to vote for our play if it makes the final cut. I darn well better since in comparison to the plays from last week, this one blows all of them out of the water.

Ok, getting back to the actual playing. The Dordt match went very well. We played great under the circumstances and handled everything Dordt threw at us. We just gave away one 4-5 point run too many in all 3 games which ended up being the difference in each game. The team proved again that they are worthy of being put in to a higher category than anyone else puts them and that they just need to find a level of consistency with intensity and decision making that keeps them at the top of their game all match long. It was great to see. Kalissa and Bud deserve a lot of kudos for stepping in with basically same day notice to handle a difficult setting job against a top team in the conference.

We ended up deciding that this was going to be the week of recovery. We felt fortunate that we only had one match on Friday and nothing else the rest of the weekend. We had the confident feeling that with the one match on Friday being against Mt. Marty and that we had 2 days to prepare we could get back to healthy and not over exert ourselves as program. Our recovery was slow and we didn't get back to full strength by Friday. We came out a little flat agianst Mt. Marty with a lot of errors from our JV team in their match which ended up costing them a 3 game loss. However, Polly did play a good MH position (which she hasn't done since HS) while Rosebud and Kalissa did an admirable job of trying to put our hitters into good situations to swing at a smaller Mt. Marty block.

Carina was cleared to play but we needed to limit her involvement. Leah again stepped up to the plate and started at MH for us in place of a sick Kacie. The start of the varsity match was very nerve racking as we came out flat and committed a lot of hitting and serving errors in the first game which gave Mt. Marty half of there points for the game. We found a way to win the first game which then led into a completely dominating performance in game 2 which then allowed us to use our bench more and save energy of our sick players. It was a great team effort.

Over the week we put together two very good TEAM performances and had some people in some different setups for our lineup. The sacrifice and commitment level was very apparent last week from everyone. We will need again for the upcoming week as we are still within our recovery phase. We play at Dakota State on Tuesday and then host Morningside for our Homecoming match on Friday and then Briar Cliff on Saturday for our DIG PINK match. To support the DIG PINK effort please follow the volleyball website http://www.dwu.edu/athletics/volleyball/index.htm and click on the Dig Pink logo to get to the place where you can donate to the cause.

- Coach V

Week #4 - A Refocus on Performance

2009-09-21T09:27:00.002-05:00

Hello everyone,
This was one crazy week, with a complete collapse in our conference match with Sioux Falls on Wednesday and then taking a set away from Morningside on Friday, it is still plain to see that we are still searching for that consistent performance.

The week didn't start off very well as we approached the match on Wednesday vs. Sioux Falls as a rivalry match. The entire 2 practices leading up to it we talked about bringing every bit of energy to the match and stay focused. Unfortunately we didn't get either one throughout the match and very simply got embarrassed on our home court. After that match we had a lot of things to figure out and it seemed as some doubt may have started to creep in to the minds of the team. We began to squash that mentality right away with our focus on our responsibilities and performances on the court and not worry so much on the end result.

It seemed to pay off as we entered the weekend tournament at Morningside College on Friday with our first match being against #10 in the nation Morningside. I am not going to lie I was very nervous about this match and how the team would respond after the debacle on Wednesday. The first set of the match however, was not so great as we came out flat and seemed uninspired and again quiet on the floor and went on to lose the game 25-11. For the second set some lineup changes were made and there was an instant lift in morale on the court as went on to just dominate the game from the start to a 25-16 win. We continued to play very well the last two games of the match and the game scores don't reflect the true level of the match due to us not winning the long rallies that happened in those games and some very questionable referee calls that ended a lot of long rallies in Morningside's favor (it had to be at least 5 -7 calls per game that were questionable and went against us) but no excuses because we still made our fair share of mistakes and had quite a few hitting errors that really hurts you when you play a top ranked team. We felt good about ourselves knowing that we do have it in us to play like a Top 25 team, we just need to find the consistency in our game to extend for 3 games and not just 1.

Our 2nd match on Friday was against York College. Who we played 3 times last year and won 3-0 each time. This year was no different story as we put out one of our best team hitting performances on the year with a .340 percentage. All 15 players who travelled got into this match and made very good contributions to the great PERFORMANCE. Kalissa Wade came off the bench to add 5 assists and a service ace. Amanda Aman provided 3 kills and Cassie Brinker added 2 digs in her time on the court. We looked to continue the momentum from this match to the next morning as we looked to play Missouri Valley in our last pool play match.

We knew coming into our morning match that it was going to be a well fought match as we saw Missouri Valley the night before take Morningside to 4 games and competed with them in almost all of the games. We came in knowing that we would have to defend the middle attack extremely well (something we had not done well the entire season leading up to this match). Our focus again was just on our performance and taking care of individual responsibilities. Both teams came out ready and full of energy for the match as the points just kept trading back and forth up until we finally put our clamp on the first game with a good 4 point run to finish off the 1st game for a 25-19 win. The 2nd game saw MV take the game with a 22-25 win with a better defensive performance and them putting down a few more balls in the middle. We again refocused on defending the middle attack and we pushed to win the next two games to win the match. We got a fantastic attacking performance as a team with a .285 percentage and defensive effort that held MV to only a .085 hitting percentage. This was a complete offensive and defensive match for us. Jen Miner lead the way with 19 kills and hit .548 and 12 digs, followed by Ashley Kley with 14 kills and a .285 percentage with 14 digs. Kacie Sanderson and Jayna Morrill had quality matches as they had 5 and 8 kills and each took part in at least 3 blocks. We got the first double digit dig match out of Carina Fesenmaier with 11 digs as she also totaled 45 assists in the match. Defensively Polly Gill and Brooke Warne were fantastic with 10 digs a piece.

Once pool play was over we found out that we were going to be playing Hastings in the 3rd place match. I liked our match-up heading into this game knowing that they were much taller than us on the right side and in the middle but they play a majority of freshmen and sophomores. I felt that their lack of quality serve receive would put them in trouble and have their young players have to make big plays in tight situations. We served very well and had them out of system quite a bit but our defense against their hitters was not overly aggressive as we only forced their hitters into 9 total errors and we committed 24 hitting errors. It was the complete difference in the match, they kept plays alive and we gave away points. It was surprising after the quality offensive decisions we had had the previous 2 matches to drop back down under a .100 hitting percentage. Yes Hastings was a higher quality team than the other two but our focus on performance was better in the other matches. We're learning and still finding that comfort level with each other.

All in all it was a very good weekend for us after the shocking disappointment from Wednesday. We are truly learning more and more about ourselves everyday and continuing to get that everyday improvement. I want to congratulate Ashley Kley for making the All-Tournament Team which was voted on by the other coaches in the tournament.

We have a short week next week as we face Dordt on Tuesday and Mt. Marty on Friday. With a true focus on Performance and never say die attitude we could very well go 2-0 for the week and put ourselves back into a good place with the conference standings.

Get Better Every Day

--Coach V

Week #3 - The Roller Coaster Week

2009-09-14T10:01:00.001-05:00

It was a roller coaster week for us this past week. We had some very positive moments and some negative ones as well. The trials and tribulations of a program in transition.

We started off with a very good showing against #5 in the nation, Northwestern. We competed very well and held a few leads in all 3 games of the match. We just couldn't hold off Northwestern's fire power in the end. They are loaded with talent at every position. Game 1 and game 2 were in our grasps and we tightened up just a little at the end of each game to let Northwestern take the late momentum of each game. We forced them into some attacking situations they weren't comfortable with at first and got them to commit a few errors early in every set. We will continue to learn how to close out games against high caliber teams here in the near future.

The weekend took us on the road to North Dakota. We opened the weekend off with Valley City State. If you remember we went 5 games with them the first weekend of the season as we were down 2-0 and came back to win the match. This time we were on their turf and in some hostile confines. Their gym was a great atmosphere, it was small, very old-school with brick walls all around us, and extremely loud. It was so fun. We went 5 the first time so why not 5 a second time. Yes we did, another 5 gamer that fortunately ended with another DWU win. It was one heck of a match. Both teams came to play offensively as both hit over .200 for the match. It was a match of will power as both teams kept trading big play after big play. VCSU served extremely aggressive and kept our serve receive out of whack all match. Luckily Ashley Kley, Jen Miner, and Polly Gill were up to the challenge of attacking against a double block all night and all had great success as all 3 were in double digit kills for the night. These three plus Amye Brown were also in double digit digs for the night. Ashley led the way with 24 digs. What a great accomplishment to have 3 players get double-doubles in the same match. Congrats ladies.

After riding the wonderful highs of competing well against Northwestern and winning another thrilling match in 5 against Valley City. We headed to Mayville State on Saturday to try and start another winning streak to give us momentum into our next conference match. However, it was not in cards for us as Mayville State came in with a complete revenge factor from the opening match of the year loss we gave them in the opening weekend. MSU came out with tons of energy and a game plan that we couldn't find enough adjustments for to stop. With our execution of our game plan being on the poor end we were in a scramble mode all day and just never looked comfortable on the court. With that said we still were in every game and many opportunities to put our strangle hold on the matches but that one extra play a team needs to fully gain momentum we just couldn't make. We didn't defend well enough to win the matches. It is not all for lost though, we still had some pretty good attacking numbers and our serve receive passing was much better than it was on Friday night. It was a great learning experience for the team this weekend and we plan to move ahead with some great experiences.

It became one of those reality check weekends for us. We faced two teams we had faced earlier and beat, both of those teams came out very hungry to revenge their losses and showed us that we still have to step up our performance from the previous matches to get the next win. It is also very clear that we are as successful as our defense. In all of our match losses so far this season we struggled with preventing our opponent from high hitting percentages. Defense is a part of our signature style of play, we have slightly gotten away from that with the success we have had offensively. It is time to reset our systems and get back to fundamentals of great TEAM DEFENSE.

I am still very happy and confident with this group of talented women. We still have very positive things going on and great team chemistry. I told the team that we will go through these growing pains during the first part of the season as we try to mesh the old with the new. We don't need to be playing at our peak performance level just yet. We want to save it for that stretch run and the end of conference play heading into the conference tournament. We will make some noise and give headaches to a lot of top GPAC teams. WE BELIEVE IN US!

--Coach V

Week #2 Update - Getting Better Every Day

2009-09-07T10:45:00.002-05:00

Hello All,

Another week in the books and another solid showing for DWU Volleyball. We started the first week of September off by traveling to Aberdeen, SD for a match. Our JV team played against North Dakota State College of Science for their first match of the year prior to the Varsity team playing against Presentation College. The JV match was a little shaky but we still had some great play out of Kalissa Wade who set a 5-1 offense and delivered some great sets to our hitters. Our hitters had a small case of the yips and allowed NDSCS to get out to early leads in the 3 games. Overall it was not a bad showing for the first match of the year and we still expect great things for this group throughout the season.

The Varsity team came out a little slow against Presentation and trailed most of the first game and then decided to turn it on to take the first game 28-26 (ladies please stop trying to give me more grey hairs I already have plenty). We then went on to control the rest of the match rather easily as we cruised to the 3-0 win. It was a good match to set us up for the upcoming home tournament.

On Friday, the 4th we opened up the home tournament with a match against SD School of Mines. It started off as a relatively easy match with a first game win of 25-12 but then turned into a dogfight as we traded the next 3 games with all of them being 2 point games wins for both teams. We had a fight on our hands from a team that was young and taking every opportunity to put their mark on the match. We eventually made a great run at the beginning of the 5th game that eventually led to 15-10 win to seal the match. I think we put a lot of effort into that match and even though we did get 2 matches off before we played again we looked physically and mentally drained as we started our second match of the day against Dickinson State dropping the 1st game 11-25 and not knowing what had hit us. We battled extremely hard the next two games but offensively never got on track as the DSU block kept our LS attack in check all night and finished the last 2 games losing 23-25. It was both a positive and negative feeling after that match knowing that we played so poorly offensively yet still had chances to win 2 games and possibly change the outcome of the match. We talked about just coming in the next day knowing it was a new day.

The next day started off with an early match against Montana Western, we played exceptional during the match with relatively easy wins in the first 2 games and then UMW played well in the third to push us to win 25-23. We then had a very tough match against Rocky Mountain College, a team that is receiving votes for the Top 25. We came out very well and just couldn't finish the 1st game as strong as we started and lost 25-20. The 2nd game was similar where RMC had 1 more 4-5 point run than we did and finished us off 25-18. The 3rd game was difficult for us as we had put a lot of energy in the previous 2 games and fell rather easily to finish the match.

It was a good weekend for us and a weekend that we learned a lot about where we are as a team. We can be a very strong defensive team that carries to battle it out in games. Offensively we are getting better and more balanced with each practice and match. It will continue to be a fun year.

We head into the upcoming week with a great challenge and opportunity. We play Northwestern on Wednesday in Mitchell. Northwestern is #5 in the Nation and always a big match when they come to campus. We come in to the match very confident in our abilities and understand that it will have to be a true team match to accomplish our goals for the match. SHOCK & AWE that is what we are looking to do.

-Coach V

Week #1 Update - Great Start

2009-09-01T10:53:00.002-05:00

The first weekend has come and gone and what a great start for the program. We travelled down to Orange City, IA to Northwestern College for a tournament this past weekend. We came out of it 3-1 and feeling very good about what we accomplished and aware of the areas that we need to improve.

We found out that we are a team that will not quit until the last whistle of the match. We won our first 3 matches of the tournament in either 4 or 5 games. Our 1st match was against Mayville State, we came out very quick and explosive and put Mayville in a complete reactive mode to our style. We jumped out to a quick 2-0 game lead and then Mayville made a little push to take the 3rd game before we ended up taking the 4th game. Our second match against Valley City State was not the same as the first match, we were the ones that were not ready to play at first as we dropped the first two games of the match. We found our stride in the 3rd game with a solid showing but then came out in the 4th game a little flat and faced a 23-18 deficit. We went on to be the cardiac kids and pulled out a 27-25 game win to force a 5th game. The 5th game started out like all the rest, we were flat again, it was 8-4 at the change of side and I think it even got to a 11-5 deficit before we stormed back to battle it out for a 18-16 5th game win to clinch the match. We started the match at 8:30 and didn't get out of the gym until close to 11pm. It was one great 1st match day of the season.

The second day had some similar feeling to the first day, our first match was against Waldorf and we jumped out quick in both of the first 2 games to and took care of business. We lacked just a little bit of concentration in the 3rd and let that one get away from us before we clinched the match in the 4th game with another solid performance. Our second match of Saturday had playing against a very talented defensive team in Baker, They had us searching for ways to create offense. We started off very slow but found a way in the first game to get us in fight before we dropped it 23-25, the 2nd game was not one we want to mention, and the third we started off very slow again but found a way to battle it out again before we dropped it 24-26. In one way it was disheartening to see that we played rather poorly but exciting at the same time to know that even when we play below our true level that we can find ways to possibly pull out some wins with a little bit more luck.

This was an exciting and fun first weekend. Everyone who traveled got an opportunity on the court and a chance to contribute to our success. We use many different lineup combinations and got to see some great moments out of our players. As expected we got very good offensive performances all weekend out of Ashley Kley and Jen Miner. We also saw solid offensive contributions Jayna Morrill, Kacie Sanderson, Sarah Stahlke, and Sam Flynn. I would like to point out the great all-around play that Polly Gill provided for the team this weekend. She did an excellent job of passing, defending and providing timely attacking to our wins. Megan Cronberg found some time in the matches that gave her quality experiences and helped her get a little more comfortable with our offense.

Amye Brown and Nikki Gleich didn't wonderfully with our libero position as they both shared that role. Both provided good serve receive ball control and made great defensive hustle plays. Kalissa Wade did an excellent job with her court opportunity and being a great energy giver the entire tournament. Leah Miiller found out how truly versatile she can be as she filled the role as a backup MH successfully as well as a DS. Leah had a spectacular match against Valley City as she sparked us defensively in the 3rd game to begin our comeback win. Andrea Johnson got a lot of court experience this weekend at the MH position. She provided a change of pace for us and added a little more size to our lineup. She too helped spark our comeback match win vs. Valley City.

Our most impressive players of the weekend were Carina Fesenmaier and Brooke Warne. Carina performed very well in her first full weekend running our fast paced offense. She put our hitters into very good situations where they could have many options for their attack. My MVP of the weekend is Brooke Warne. Brooke saw limited action in every match but she absolutely played her role to near perfection. Brooke was our serving specialist for the weekend as she served and defended for one of our middles. We had our biggest runs of points while Brooke was serving. She led us with 9 aces on the weekend and had as many digs and some of our normal rotation players in about 1/4 of the court time. Great job Brooke.

We look to continue our success from the weekend as we enter September. On the 2nd we travel to Aberdeen, SD where our JV will take on North Dakota State College of Science at 5pm and our Varsity will take on Presentation College at 7pm. We then host a tournament here in Mitchell this upcoming weekend where we will have teams from ND and Montana in town to compete. Matches are all day Friday and Saturday. We look forward to our opportunities this week and invite everyone to come watch us continue our success and watch an exciting brand of volleyball.

-Coach V

PRESEASON 2009

2009-08-20T11:49:00.001-05:00

Well the time for preparation is upon us in full swing now. We have been in the gym for just over a week with gruelling 2 and 3 practice session days. The progress of the team has been exceptional. We have made a commitment to the defensive aspects of the game and have become a better defensive "team" than the year before. We had some very good defensive players last year (Dena Kopfmann, 2nd-Team All GPAC Libero), but did not have the full team aspect of defense complete. With the loss of Dena I feel that our team this season understands the need to be a complete system defensive team. By system defense I mean that we have to be very precise with our positioning on the court and have the ability to balance our positioning on our side of the court when some takes a defensive gamble with their position. Defense is and will be our "calling card".

However, offensively we have made some very big improvements as well. We have put a lot of emphasis in speeding our offense up to the left and right side antennas. Fans will see a lot more shoot type sets to our outsides this season. It is going to be a lot of fun to watch.

With the departure of 3 very good athletes from last year's squad we will be looking for a lot of different people to step in to some different leadership roles this season. Our returning seniors, Amanda Aman, Leah Miiller, Rosebud Haukaas, and Jayna Morrill will all be expected to give consistent performances on the court as well as demanding leadership to the teammates. They will be an integral part of our transition to success for the program. Amanda will look to solidify an already impressive LS attacking position roster for us. Leah is very versatile and will see the court in a variety of roles that may have her as a MH in one game and a DS the very next. Rosebud will look to solidify our setting roster as well as be a candidate for a RS in a 6-2 setup. Jayna will be expected to provide great numbers from the MH position.

Our junior class has the largest amount of athletes in it due to our recruiting from last season bringing in a few JUCO transfers. This is a class that is setup to have some great success over the next two seasons. Our returning juniors are Ashley Kley, Jen Miner, Amye Brown, Kara Robertson, Wendy Schmaltz. Ashley and Jen will be expected to carry the offensive load for us this season and with there fitness will be able to last an entire match and still be able to finish off plays to the very last whistle. Amye will be competing for the starting libero position as will Wendy. Kara will see competition for both a left and right-side attacking positions. Our transfers for this class will be expected to step in right away and learn a new offense and defensive system quickly and contribute all season long. Megan Cronberg, Sarah Stahlke, and Carina Fesenmaier will all be expected to have solid seasons. Carina will take over our setting position and make our offense more balanced and unpredictable. Megan and Sarah are tall strong athletes that will compete for our L2 position on the varsity roster.

Our sophomore class has a combination of players that got some quality time last season and others looking to break into the lineup this season as well. Polly Gill, Kacie Sanderson, and Brooke Warne headline this class as the returners from last season's varsity roster. Polly will be in competition for our L2 position, while Kacie is expected to be our M2 and provide excellent blocking numbers for the team. Brooke will compete for the libero position as well as be a serving specialist for us. Other main contributors to this class are Kalissa Wade, Cassie Brinker and Rebecca Knox. Kalissa has made great improvements from a year ago and will compete for our backup setter position. Cassie is another that is involved with competition for the libero position and Becca is working to become a solid DS candidate and serving specialist.

Our freshman class is athletic and full of energy. Sam Flynn, Andrea Johnson, Nikki Gleich, Kayla O'Connell are all true freshmen with a lot of talent and bright futures. Sam is a dominate force at the net and always finds ways to score points. Andrea is transitioning from an OH position from high school into a MH for us and has been doing wonderfully. Nikki is in the battle for the starting libero position and Kayla is full of energy and a defensive gem for our roster. Lexi Townsend has transferred in and will be considered a freshman, she will be a DS candidate for us. Two others that will be considered redshirt freshmen are Amber Turner and Kristee Horn. Both are DS's and will be concentrating on getting a feel for the speed of the game and learning our defensive philosophy.

We are overly excite about this season and will update you very soon on our upcoming weekend in Orange City. Take care and Go Blue.

-Coach V

Team Leadership

2009-07-24T09:47:00.004-05:00

This entry is not about the DWU program it is for all athletes and coaches to help get yourselves on the same page for your upcoming season.

As I have gone through my years of coaching many different divisions of college volleyball and coaching high school players at teams at summer of camps. I keep looking at some of the differences between those programs that annually seem to be at the top of their game and achieve their goals. Of course all of us know that talent and skill development are a big factor in successful programs. How do we ensure that there is going to be quality development of talent and skill? I have found that for most teams that struggled with quality development there was a lack of leadership throughout the team. This lack of leadership came from both the coaching staff and players. In recent years I have started to get rid of the phrase "team captain" from our program. I wanted it to be more specific and more responsible and accountable sounding so we call them "team leaders". We want these people to lead the rest of the team in the right direction for accomplishing all of our goals on and off the court.

However, it is a learning process for both coaches and players. There are natural leaders out there as well as those that need to be nudged into leaders but for both those leadership skills have to be discovered and then developed. One thing I am still learning is to be specific with my leaders as to what I truly want from them. What their responsibilities are and how to get them to follow through with handling their responsibilities. A lot of times us as coaches just seem to say "be a leader". I have taken responsibility for not leading or teaching my "leaders" how to lead. I look back and past seasons and sometimes realize that all I said to my team or leaders was, "figure it out" or "you need to be a better leader". Unfortunately it is not that simple (oh how we wish it were) young athletes need direction so that they can give direction.

I have put a major focus this summer in learning about how to develop great leaders for my team. I want to develop responsible and respected team leaders. Here are some of the things we will be looking for out of our team leaders this upcoming season:

* We set high standards and hold teammates accountable to follow the rules
* Inspire teammates to work hard, overcome obstacles, and stay focused
* Refocus teammates when they are distracted, down, and discouraged
* Minimize and manage team conflicts, cliques, and problems
* Encourage teammates to act responsibly on and off the court

There are many styles of leadership out there. Every single person can be a leader in their own way. It does not only have to be seniors either. The greatest quality I have seen in the best leaders is their demand (in a positive way) for excellence from their teammates on and off the court.

I wish all of you the absolute best with your upcoming seasons and I look forward to updating you on the DWU Volleyball Program as we begin our journey for a GPAC Conference Championship.

-Coach V

Summer of Volleyball

2009-07-02T10:48:00.003-05:00

Hello everyone,
I hope your summer is going well and that you are getting plenty of sun in your days. If you are getting a lot of time outside and getting a tan on a daily basis, I'm jealous of you. I have not had too many opportunities to spend extended time in the sun but when I do I take full advantage. You may be asking, "Coach why are not getting outside in this wonderful time of the year that often?" I have been coaching camps for the entire month of June and therefore have been inside a building all of the time. I have thoroughly enjoyed my time with the camps I have done so far.

My staff and I have already been to 6 high schools in the month of June teaching them some advanced methods of team and individual play. We also have hosted a Youth Camp and Team Camp at DWU in June. We have had great responses from all of the coaches and players that have gone through the camps so far. There is nothing like seeing young athletes improve in multiple areas of their game in such a short amount of time. We still have another 5 camps in July that we are anxious and excited about. With all of our camps we will have traveled to Northeast SD, Southern SD, Southwest SD, Minneapolis, MN, and quite a few schools around Mitchell, SD.

We have coached camps for a wide variety of teams this summer ranging from State champions to teams that have relatively new programs. Everyone is looking for some advantage above the competition and we given each team a little something that can focus on to help them achieve their goals. I hope all of you are taking the time to improve your personal game, whether it be physically or mentally. Being mentally tough to handle the ups and downs of a season is a very important part of being a top tier athlete.

My last part of this entry is to invite all of you to take some time and watch our USA Men's National Team compete in the World League. The USA team is the defending champions of the World League and Olympics; they are defending these titles with a relatively new team. They are going with younger new players in preparation for the 4 year process for the Olympics. They are still extremely talented and gifted as athletes and volleyball players. We are being given a great opportunity over the next few weekends to watch this great level of competitive volleyball on TV. The matches are shown on ESPN2 & ESPNU. I watched the match from this past weekend and felt lucky to see a 5 set match win by the USA over the Netherlands. This upcoming Saturday they play against Italy in an important matchup with their pool match is being shown today on ESPNU at 1pm or 3 pm and this Saturday at 11am on ESPN2. I will be DVRing it on Saturday to watch on Sunday; oh the great beauty of DVR, lol. They do show the matches in the evenings during week occasionally as well. On July 14th the match vs. China will be shown on ESPN2.

I hope everyone continues to get plenty of sun and enjoying their summer. I will be doing another post later on in July to recap our camps and setup our preseason camp for the fall season. I wish all of you a great 4th of July.

-Coach V

Summer Time in the Great Plains

2009-06-12T09:52:00.003-05:00

Well the weather hasn't really cooperated enough to have truly feel like summer all of the time but we keep hoping that turns for us very quickly.

Busy, busy, busy seems to be phrase I hear all of the time from the team and even prospects. It is interesting as we all go through the school year looking forward to the summer it ends up being that we are more busy in the summer than we ever are during the year. Yet we like that way.

At the end of May I played at the USA Adult Nationals tournament in Minneapolis. HOLY COW, it was amazing to see how many great players in this country. Getting to see the Open division of the men's and women's was such a treat. These players came from some of the best college programs in teh nation as well as some of the great professional clubs in Europe. Sometimes all I could do was just sit back in amazement at the athleticism of these players. As I watched I evaluated each team and player to figure out what made them great. I have come to 2 main things for the great ones - they have excellent ball control; ball control in many different aspects whether it only be passing or setting or hitting the ball. They had a at least 2 of those skills of excellent ball control. The other thing that nearly every top tier player had was an extremely intense competitive mind so that they could get through any mistakes they did make. Yes even the great players make mistakes. KEY: LEARN TO BE MENTALLY TOUGH!!!!

I highly recommend everyone to go to and eventually play in this USA Adult National Tournament someday.

I have been going around the eastern region of SD the past few weeks doing camps at some of the high schools in the region. It has been nice to be back on the court teaching this wonderful sport to the youth of America. In the coming weeks I will be in Minneapolis at Cooper HS and then back to Parkston, SD, after that we have our camps here on campus that starts with a Youth Camp for 3rd through 8th graders (they are so fun and eager to learn) and then have a Team Camp to finish off that week followed by a camp in Chamberlain, SD and then I get a break for a few days until I go back out on the road. I love it and would not change my profession for anything else.

About two weeks ago we finalized our 2009 competition schedule, please check it out on our website. I really like the schedule because of its balance between matches we should win and others that will really test us. We are going to have a lot of new faces on the roster next season so we will have to figure quite a few things out early in the season and make sure that our team chemistry is in an extremely positive movement. It is certainly early to predict a W/L record or conference finish without having any practices at this time but I would like to say that we have a great chance of reaching somewhere between 16 to 24 wins in 2009 because of our schedule.

The summer is an important time for a volleyball player it is the time of the year where you prepare your body for the coming challenges. Enjoy your time in the summer but understand that you are on the verge of putting your body through a highly intense time of the year.

Continue to have a great summer

-Coach V

2009 Recruiting Class

2009-05-01T12:30:00.006-05:00

It is time to chat about the great additions to the Tiger Volleyball Program.

The first thing I can say about this recruiting class is that it is overall athletic and experienced. Our goal for this recruiting class was to create a roster that rivals the look of the top teams in the GPAC. Those teams are tall, strong and athletic. Our focus wasn't necessarily to be position specific, outside of recruiting for our setter and libero positions, but to be athletic, tall, versatile, and deeper with talent and skill at every position. I am confident that we have accomplished our goals at this time in the recruiting process.

Please follow the web links provided to read the official press releases about the 2009 Recruiting Class.

http://www.dwu.edu/athletics/pressreleases/2009/feb19.htm
http://www.dwu.edu/athletics/pressreleases/2009/apr30b.htm

We decided to go through the Junior College route to get the immediate difference makers for our team.
Headlining this class is the addition of setter Carina Fesenmaier, a St. Cloud, MN native, from NJCAA Division III powerhouse Ridgewater College. Carina has led Ridgewater College to back-to-back National Championship match appearances. In the GPAC you have to have a strong offense that is consistent and unpredictable, Carina will surely provide us the leadership and decision-making that will take us to the next level.

Sarah Stahlke, native of Waconia, MN, played at North Dakota State College of Science the past two seasons. The past two seasons Stahlke led NDSCS in hitting percentage and was in the top 3 in kills and blocks. Stahlke fits the mold of our recruiting philosophy for 2009, in that she can play all three front row positions and dominate the net at each position. We are beyond lucky to have signed Sarah.

Megan Cronberg, from Luverne, MN, played 2 seasons at Minnesota West Community College where she was an outside hitter and in the top 3 in nearly every attacking statistical category. Megan is another 6' tall, athletic player that can play multiple positions. Megan will help us become a more consistent attacking team from either the left or right side of the net. She is an athletic player with solid blocking skills to go along with her offensive talent.

We continued our recruiting philosophy of athletic and multi-positional with two incoming freshmen:
Andrea Johnson, from Rapid City, SD, of Central HS is one of the diamonds in the rough. She is another 6'+ athlete that can play any of the 3 frontline positions. Andrea was one of the top attacking options for the Central HS squad this past year as well as one of their top blockers. She may also be asked to provide some backcourt stability as an all-around player over her 4 year career. Options, is the word that comes to mind when I think of Andrea. She can do so many things on the court it gives us the chance to have a flexibility to our roster.

Sam Flynn, native of Pierre, SD, of Riggs HS is again another 6'+ tall player that can play multiple positions. Sam is a dominating blocker and excellent off of 1 foot and hits a very heavy ball. She has the potential to see time in the middle or on the right side. She also has a difficult float serve that gives every passer fits. Sam is another provider of options and flexibility for our roster.

We have to replace a two-time all-conference libero for our roster next year. We have some returners competing for that position but the following recruits will also put their name in the hat for this extremely important position with our style of play:
Nikki Gleich of Rapid City Stevens HS is great defensive presence on the court. Nikki had great senior season with setting a school record with digs in a season with 770 and digs in the AA state tournament with 84. She had a career high of 52 digs in one match vs. Rapid City Central and went over 20 digs in a match 19 times with 6 of those 19 times going over 30 digs. The ability to read defenders is Nikki's greatest attribute and that shows with her great performance throughout her senior season.

Kayla O'Connell, native of Philip, SD and Philip HS, is an extremely quick and explosive defensive player. Watching her at the SD State Tournament was so much fun. She was all over the court and I think she may have gone into the other courts to save a couple of balls for her team numerous times. Relentless is the word that comes to mind when I think of Kayla's game. That is what certainly helped her lead her team to the 2008 Class "B" State Championship.

Lexi Townsend, native of Canistota, SD, is transferring from Univ. of South Dakota. Lexi took a year off from competitive volleyball and will be joining DWU in the fall to get back on to the court. While at Canistota, Lexi was named a first team all conference player. She has the athleticism to get back into the swing of competitive, organized volleyball fairly quickly. Her new found passion to play will be a huge advantage for her to get back into playing shape again. She gives us depth at a position we lost a lot of players to after the 2008 season.

Amber Turner, from Canova, SD and Hanson School in Alexandria will add a true local spice to our roster. She was an all-conference player at Hanson and will be expected to bring that experience to our team right away. Amber will be asked to pick up the new defensive system and speed of the game in a short amount of time. Amber is another player that helps add depth to our DS positions.

There are very high expectations for this particular class. We have a great balance of JUCO players to bring the immediate success and in-coming freshmen that will be important parts to our foundation for the future. We are looking to push our way right into the thick of things within the GPAC. If you are one of the best teams in this conference you are one of the best in the nation. Our goal is to take care of business everyday to improve and give ourselves the opportunities to take care of business against whomever is across the net from us on any particular night. We will make some noise in the 2009 season.

It has been a long time since there has been a recruiting class with these kinds of accolades and athleticism. We aren't done just yet though............

-Coach V

Amanda Aman - Student-Athlete: Great Experience

2009-04-17T09:03:00.001-05:00

Being a student athlete is really the only thing that I know because I have been doing this since I started sports in middle school. I really think that being a student athlete, here at Dakota Wesleyan, has prepared me greatly for my future. I feel that I very good time management. We play all year round so having work, classes, workouts, and homework can get overwhelming at times. But because of that feeling I have found ways to balance it (and yes, it does take some work). I'm going to be an elementary education teacher and I feel that I am more than ready to take on those long hours and stress.

Another thing that I think is unique about being a student athlete is that we all have experienced losing, not having things go our way, working so hard but not always getting the outcome we want, how to give and take constructive criticism, what dedication really means, and winning. This is something that a lot of people don't necessarily experience until they enter the workplace.

Overall, I feel it is a great experience and is something I wish more people experienced.

~*Amanda Aman*~

Leah Miller - Proud to be a Student-Athlete

2009-04-15T09:15:00.001-05:00

My name is Leah Miller and I will be a senior student-athlete at DWU next year. That is right, a student-athlete. Here at DWU athlete never comes before student and I have to say that I am proud of that. For me, being a student athlete is an accomplishment because not everyone can do it. Being a student- athlete makes me manage my time, which in turn, will help me in my education career that is quickly approaching. Being a student-athlete has also given me more confidence in myself by being able to multi-task. I can do homework, while folding clothes, making lunch and have that all done by 3:30 before practice. I am privileged to be able to be a student-athlete and hope that more people are able to accomplish the same.

:) THANKS

Spring Season Continued

2009-04-13T10:42:00.002-05:00

Hello everyone, it is time for another entry to update you on what has been going on for the past few weeks with the DWU VB program. It has been busy the past few weeks with the semester wrapping up and our spring season coming to a close. We have 4 practices remaining before our final spring tournament for the year. We will be traveling to Augustana College to compete this weekend. We will have the incredible task to play NCAA Division 2 powerhouse Southwest MN State as well as an alumni team from Augie that will have numerous all-americans. We are very excited for this opportunity to play against this type of competition. It is everyday you get to play against the best in the nation from a higher level of competition. We will also get to play Univ of Sioux Falls and Iowa Lakes CC. It is going to be a long day of playing and a lot of fun. Our first match will be at 10 am at the Elmen Center on the campus of Augustana College.

In the coming weeks we will have another press release on our commitments for the class of 2009.

Stay Tuned.

-EV

Spring Competition

2009-03-23T10:36:00.004-05:00

On Friday, March 20th we traveled to the University of Sioux Falls for a spring play date with USF and Briar Cliff. We had 6 team practices leading up to this competition, in which only 2 to 3 of those practices did we have our entire team together to prepare for the matches.

This was a great opportunity for us to see where we were at as a team and more importantly how far along we are with our aggressive jump serving mentality that everyone is developing in our program. I have to say that I was impressed that our serving was solid the entire evening, we forced our opponents into out-of-system offense a vast majority of the time. If I remember correctly there were only 3-4 times during the 3 matches played that we had 3 or more misses in a row, which is very impressive for this being the first time in a true game-like competition atmosphere.

It was fun to see this team on the court again smiling and competing. We used 5-6 different lineups throughout the night to get some players in different positions and others more experience with players they haven't been on the court with before. We still have many things to work on over the next few weeks as we progress to preparing ourselves for the next spring competition that is on April 18th at Augustana College. We focused a lot on our serving and offense these previous weeks to prepare for the competition over the next couple our focus will be serve receive passing and defensive positioning and movement.

We use the spring as a catapult for our upcoming fall season. This team will continue to progress and learn new things about the game everyday. I congratulate them on a successful competition on Friday and I am eager to get going again this week with a new focus on the details.

"If you want something you've never had, you must do something you've never done before"

-Coach V

Jayna's Post

2009-02-18T13:01:00.000-06:00

Hello, my name is Jayna Morrill, I am from Creighton, Nebraska. I am currently a junior at Dakota Wesleyan University, I am majoring in Secondary Social Studies Education. I have been on the DWU volleyball team for the past three seasons and next fall will be my last season as a tiger.

The transition from the past coach to Coach Viney has been a great one for me. Personally I think the team as a whole has transitioned greatly. We had to do things that we weren't use too but the results were amazing. In one year we turned around our record and people in our conference started to wonder about the new DWU volleyball team.I think our conference is one of the toughest conference. Last season we had at least four teams in the conference go to the NAIA National Tourney and did very well. As a result it makes high school athletes look at our conference as a place where they may want to further their careers.

During our off season we work on certain things that may give us an advantage during the season. Right now we are working on speed and defense, being able to react quickly to a ball. We have increased our lifting and quickness. All in all, I am very excited for our up coming season we have a great group of athletes who are willing to do anything to win.

Academic Achievements

2009-01-31T12:02:00.003-06:00

Dakota Wesleyan University and this volleyball program are committed to the academic success of our athletes. We take great pride in the achievements of our student-athletes.

The Dakota Wesleyan University Dean's List was announced and there are 13 players and coaches from this 2008 season on the list.

Players from 2008 Roster:
Maria Weineke - Jackson, MN
Leah (Howes) Miller - Tea, SD
Amanda Aman - Nemo, SD
Allison Hajek - Omaha, NE
Morgan Carlson - Huron, SD
Amye Brown - Meeker, CO
Jen Miner - Cavour, SD
Kalissa Wade - Amherst, SD
Tru Boldt - Arlington, SD
Muriel Kjerstad - Wall, SD
Brooke Warne - Rapid City, SD

Student Assistant Coaches:
Kelsie Nebelsick - Canistota, SD
Dannie Burt - Tea, SD

Congratulations to these students and all of their accomplishments.

- Coach V

The Inside Information

2009-01-18T16:00:00.001-06:00

Hello everyone, this is Eric Viney, head volleyball coach for the Tiger Volleyball program. We are entering the spring semester of 2009 with high hopes after a 2008 season of near miss wins and multiple 5 set losses by 2 points. We are looking to make the necessary adjustments to our mental approach so that in 2009 we can be the victors in those tight matches.

The Team Motto for 2009 is "IF YOU WANT SOMETHING YOU'VE NEVER HAD, YOU HAVE TO DO SOMETHING YOU'VE NEVER DONE BEFORE".

The players are still in the transition stage of becoming comfortable with the new style of play and methods of coaching. This spring season is going to be one of great improvements in a lot of areas for every athlete in our program. They have just started plyometric workouts and lifting to gain quickness and power that they have not had before. In a couple of weeks we will put a concentration on becoming a strong serving team by teaching a majority of our players some jump serving techniques. We will then start to include some defensive eye sequencing training that helps gain quickness with the mental process while playing. We are going to be able to anticipate plays on the court much faster in the coming seasons due to a true commitment to this training technique.

Everyone involved with our program is in high anticipation mode for what lies ahead this spring. We have a solid core of returners and are looking to build right away with a very talented recruiting class.

We WILL be doing things that this program has never done before.

--Coach V

2008 Season in Review

2008-12-15T13:58:00.000-06:00

The 2008 season was a roller coaster year, full of a lot of high and low moments. With the new style of play introduced in the early summer is was shown that the athletic potential for DWU Volleyball could be very good. Albeit that this would not come easy and just happen for the sake of just happening. A true commitment to change had to occur throughout the program. The season started off in Oklahoma City with a 2-2 start. The team felt that they let the first match of the year get away by not being fully mentally prepared for the match that lied ahead. We went on to win our next 2 matches to then lose to host Oklahoma City in 3 tough and well played sets.

During the next week the teams opened up conference play against Northwestern on the road. This match became a true wake-up call to the DWU Program as NWU put DWU away in 3 short sets. This is where I (Coach Viney) saw the true talent level of the GPAC and gave me goal of where our program needs to get to talent and mentality wise to be successful.

We then traveled to Omaha for a tournament where we dropped our first 2 matches in 5 and 4 sets, respectively. We played well but couldn't get that killer instinct to come out when we needed it (we searched for that killer instinct all season). We then picked up 2 match wins on Saturday to halt a 4 match losing streak and get us to another 2-2 tournament weekend.

We then visited Dordt for our second conference match. We played exceptional defense all match long but couldn't our offense to the same level as we lost in 3 sets. The coaching staff from Dordt praised our defensive ability and strategy. We then traveled to Hastings for a difficult tournament and played very well against Oklahoma City losing 2 of sets by 2 points and losing the match in 3 sets. Again that killer instinct was not able to show up as we had a few set points in the first set that would have helped us gain momentum. We struggled throughout the next few matches eventually going 1-3 on the weekend with the win being against Friends Univ. in a thrilling 5 set match.

We finally got to host a home match after the first 14 matches of the year being on the road. A conference match against Mt. Marty. Again a mental lapse came upon the team as we dropped our home-opener in 4 sets and with a bad taste of under-estimating our opponent. We then got to host our next home match a few days later as we beat Presentation College in relatively easy fashion in 3 sets. Our next match was then against Morningside in Sioux City. We struggled through a very difficult match against a very talented team and did not have a good showing. After looking back at the schedule at this time I (Coach V) had to laugh since 3 of our first 4 conference matches were against the top 3 teams in the conference. The schedule was not friendly to this first year coach, lol.

After taking the next couple of practices to re-evaluate ourselves as a team and individuals and tried to answer some difficult questions about who we are and what we need to do to be successful. We went on to win 7 of our next 10 matches which included 2 wins over Dakota State and some big home conference wins over Midland Lutheran in 3 sets and Dana College in 5 thrilling sets. We also had a 5 set win over Sioux Falls during Homecoming Weekend. Also during that stretch we played our Dig Pink Match (fundraiser for Breast Cancer research) against York College at Mitchell HS in correlation to their schedule when they played the defending SD State Champions, Rapid City Stevens. We won our match in 3 sets and enjoyed the opportunity to show our new style of play to a fan base that had not had the chance to see us play all season.
We were looking at the possibility of getting back to .500 at this time with a 13-14 record and a conference schedule ahead of us that was giving us a chance to be a #7 seed for the conference tournament. However, the cards did not play out as we wanted and went on to drop our last 7 matches of the season with 3 of them in heart-breaking 5 set matches while losing in the 5th set by 2 points in all 3 matches. Again the lack of a killer instinct from the entire team came up when we needed it most.

Congratulations does need to be given to Dena Kopfmann for being named to the GPAC All-Conference 2nd Team as a libero. DenaMaria Wieneke for being named as an All-GPAC Honorable Mention as a middle hitter. These two young ladies had wonderful careers at DWU and will be missed dearly in the coming years.

This is Kopfmann’s (Sr., Minneota, Minn.) second-straight All-GPAC selection after earning Honorable Mention recognition as a junior in 2007. This season, she anchored the Dakota Wesleyan defense and led the Tigers with 610 digs for an average of 4.88 digs per game. Kopfmann’s serving prowess was also a dangerous weapon for DWU, and she finished with a team-high 66 service aces. Kopfmann played in all 36 matches this season, and 125 out of 126 games.

Kopfmann graduates as Dakota Wesleyan’s all-time career leader in digs. She amassed 1,785 digs over her four years to break Betsy Bartels previous career record of 1,733. Kopfmann also finished her distinguished career with 263 service aces.

Wieneke (Sr., Jackson, Minn.) was the Tigers’ top offensive option this season, and she led the squad with 362 kills – an average of 2.90 kills per game. She had a .235 hitting percentage in 2008, and her 210 digs and 48 total blocks (11 solo, 37 assist) added to her all-around game. Wieneke also played in all 36 matches, and 125 out of 126 games.

Wieneke’s career numbers also put her in elite company. She ended her Tiger career third in school history with 1,171 kills, and she also joined the 500-dig club with 539 career digs, which puts her 15th in DWU history. Wieneke also had 176 total blocks over her four-year career.
All in all the season went fairly well. Yes we dropped quite a few matches we shouldn't have but that is why we play them. Paper evaluations can only go so far, we will be looking to improve in many areas over the spring to get us over that .500 mark. The potential is there but we have to make it happen, we can't wait for it to happen for us. We have learned from our shortcomings and mistakes from 2008. 2009 is a new opportunity for this program to make progress. We just have to truly commit to the changes ahead and be ready to everything it takes to become a top tier program in the GPAC.

--Coach V