Continuing to Improve

Having this past weekend off was exactly what our team needed. Our practice on Monday was so energetic and fast it was like we were a new team. It’s amazing what a little rest and relaxation can do, not to mention every person on our team was having withdrawals from volleyball. We couldn’t wait to play Smith on Tuesday and just get back in the swing of things, and that’s exactly what we did.

I had an interview with Jimmy Kelley from the Springfield Student newspaper this week (pretty awesome kid) and when he was asking me some questions about myself and the team, it made me think a lot about how far we’ve come.

He asked me how I thought the team had felt going into this season after we had gone so far in NCAA’s last season. It made me think about everything we have achieved as a team and everything we have overcome.

Going into this season I think that most of us were wiping the slate clean and ready to start a new journey with Coach Long. However, we had no lack of confidence or belief from what we could achieve. It has been our goal since day one to go farther than we had last year, achieve more than we had a season ago, and to make sure that this would be anything but a rebuilding year.

Most people in the volleyball world probably assumed we were going to collapse considering we lost three All-Americans and our head coach. Well to those people I would like to politely say, “NOT UP IN HERE.”

We bought into Coach Long even before preseason started and now, only a month later, it’s like we’ve known her for years. We have players on our team that stepped it up so much it’s easy to wonder why they were never playing before. You look at Mary Consol, who had to fill some seriously big shoes and start for the first time in her career at Springfield. Now all of a sudden, she’s leading the NEWMAC’s in blocks and is nationally ranked in blocks per game. It's players like her that makes Springfield a consistently good team and program.

We have a big tournament coming up this weekend here at Springfield and we are expecting all four games to be very competitive. I have complete faith that we will continue to get better every day and prove to everyone that we deserve to be 17-0 and #20 in the country.

I love this team.