Sept. 11, 2008

As one of the four new faces on the team this year, I had no idea what to expect when I arrived here on August 8th. It was exciting - getting all of our equipment, having our first team dinner, our first team meeting... although not so exciting waking up for testing the next morning. But preseason is over, and somehow we've already had two tournaments. Last weekend we ventured to North Carolina to participate in the Carolina Volleyball Classic where we faced Davidson, UNC, and Missouri State.

Our first matchup was against Davidson on Friday night. We beat them in three, our play getting better as the games continued. We had studied their bizarre serve receive patterns, learned the tendencies of their primary attackers, practiced defending against their plays, and it paid off. It was great to see us put all of that information into action through our win.

Next up was UNC. Not a bad team, by any means, and unfortunately, they came out on top. Although, I think we'd all agree that we didn't play our best against them. I personally believe that we are very capable of hanging with teams like UNC; I think we could've won. The next game was the most exciting by far. We were down by at least 8 points, possibly 9, late in the game, and came back to win 30-28! It was amazing, seeing us push back, fight back, point for point to pull out a victory. As we switched sides to prepare for game two, no one could stop smiling - the energy was palpable. However, that fire that had pushed us through the previous game did not transfer to the following three. Although we were 1-2 on the weekend, I was still very proud of the effort displayed on the court. No one gave up. And we did a lot of great things and congratulations to Kit Niesen, our senior middle blocker. She made all tournament!

Looking ahead to this weekend when we host our own tournament, we're practicing hard, determined to continue playing at the high-level we have been. I'm excited to play at home, and hope that lots of people come out to support us!