After a weekend together, the volleyball team has a better idea of who they are and what their season is going to look like.

The Lady Wolfpack came back from the Millsaps Tournament in Jackson, Miss. with a 500 record, winning two matches and losing two.
Tommy Harold, women’s volleyball head coach, was pleased with his team’s performance.

“They put a good effort into it, we’re still trying to learn the system and be focused,” he said.

“We’re a young team, so we’re going to have some growing pains but at the same time, I saw some very encouraging things this weekend.”

There was noticeable improvement as the games progressed; however in the first match against Union University, Loyola lost in straight sets.

 If there is a bright side to this, it’s that they lost all three games by four points or fewer.

“It was a good start. It’s what we expected,” Gina Gill, psychology sophomore said.

 “We played really hard. We came across a big team in the first match; we tried really hard, but just couldn’t pull it out.”

From there they went on to win their following two matches, against Rhodes College and Piedmont College. They won these with relative ease, both with marks of 3-1. Their final match in Jackson was against the host, Millsaps College.

Despite facing a team who had the crowd behind them, Loyola made it tough for them. They went down in five games, and almost won the deciding game, but fell short 17-19.

“Certainly we would have liked to come out 3-1 or 4-0 but a two point loss to Millsaps, 19-17 on their court with a young team, isn’t a discouraging result,” Harold said.

This sentiment seemed to be shared by others on the team too.

“We’re happy with our performance. We have at least four freshmen on the court. It’s a new team, a new year, and I think we’re coming together pretty good,” Amanda Oldani, marketing sophomore said.

The abundance of freshmen and lack of seniors on the team has left a gap in the leadership role and after the first games of the season, some have an idea of who might step up.

“We still have to find that one person that’s going to step up, but I think it’s slowly starting to come out, on and off the court, but we’ll find it, no need to rush,” Gill said.

Both Gill and Oldani agree that what they need to improve is the team chemistry; something they believe will improve over time, and once the starting line up is set.

“We need to work hard on practice, to find that connection between us, we don’t have a set line up yet, but once we do, we’ll get a better feel for things,” Gill said.

Oldani agrees with Gill that the talent is there.
“I think, individually, we’re really solid. I think we need to take that and come together. We need to have more chemistry to connect on the court, chemistry off the court is great, it’ll come,” she said.

After the tournament, Harold was able to evaluate their performance, and was pleased with the overall results and is optimistic about the future.

“The talent is there. We’ve got to learn how to play at this level,” he said.

“At times we’ve got four freshmen on the court that this is all new to, so you expect some adjustment time, but I expect us to do that relatively quickly and get after it,” Harold said.

Now Harold will focus on specific things he believes the team needs to address in order to contend for the conference championship, something he thinks is well within reach.

“The kids are athletic enough that when they’re in position to make a play, they can make a play, but it’s being disciplined enough and focused enough to get yourself in position every time,” he said.

Harold said they will work on serving and receiving serves; however, he was pleased with the team’s performance in these categories.
“We served better than our opponents this weekend, we passed slightly better than our opponent, but there’s still some work to do. I think we can still improve,” he said.

The fact that they are a young team, and don’t have any seniors on the team is not something that worries Harold. This also doesn’t mean that he expects less from them either.

“I expect us to be competitive in all of our matches,” he said.
“I don’t think there’s anybody on the schedule that we can’t compete with, and it’s going to be a matter of can we be disciplined enough, can we be focused enough to make the plays when it’s crunch time.”

Wolfpack volleyball has a tradition of being successful and Harold doesn’t plan on breaking this.

“It’s our goal every year to win the conference and I haven’t seen anything that would tell me that we can’t do that,” he said.
“I think we’ve got some work to do, but no more so than any other year.”

Eduardo Gonzalez can be reached at [email protected]