Player Blog - Off the Court
Stacey Bennett:
Why did the volleyball players line up from shortest to tallest?
Coach asked them to go from a 5-1 lineup to a 6-2.
Monday, September 15
Well, another season of WOU volleyball is underway. We have successfully come through our pre-season with a 7-1 record and only an exhibition match against a Chinese team left before we start our conference play against St. Martins on the 18th. In our recent practices, we have been focusing on our weaknesses in defense and offense and we are finding it is very difficult for opponents to put the ball down on our side of the court. With our group's sense of humor and enthusiasm for the game, anyone from the stands can see we are having fun on the court and I encourage everyone to come out and see us in action and say hi after the game; We won't bite. Keep Monmouth Classy!!!
Tuesday, September 16
Around noon today, we hosted our Chinese opponents at lunch in Valsets. The Chinese team had two translators with them as none of the players spoke any 
English but we learned from them that hot dogs are American food and no one in China really eats them. :)
At the game tonight, gifts were exchanged between our teams and the Wolves gave out t-shirts and received bracelets. After the game both teams went to the President's house for pizza and to receive a gift for our university that was a beautiful scroll mural. Lots of pictures were taken and the Chinese girls seemed particularly interested in Kirsten's blonde hair and making peace signs in pretty much every photo. While no one understood each other, laughter is universal so we were able enough to entertain each other enough until the Chinese had to return to their bus. We are already looking ahead to Thursday's match against St. Martin 's. Bring it on.
Tuesday, September 22
Hey Wolves fans! After our game with St. Martin 's, where everyone was able to lend a helping hand in the win, we enjoyed a couple days off. This weekend off will probably be our last of the season as we will be starting our regular Thursday and Saturday matches. I think this coming week will one of the tougher weekends with away games at Northwest Nazarene and then Montana State Billings. We had a talk today about winning games on the road and we will be putting up a good fight this week to prove we are capable of winning on the road as easily as at home. Come see us play, or if you can't make the trip, check us out online with the live feed. GO WOLVES!
Wow. What a weekend! We started off at Northwest Nazarene with a win in a game to five and closed with a victory over Billings 3-0. The funny part was that NNU did everything they could to get in our heads including playing Enya during our warm up time and their 500 fans heckling us from two feet behind our bench, and we still managed to win. I think at this stage in our careers we are grown up enough not to be offended when we are called a "dude" or told to go back to our home states. At Billings , the crowd was quite different. We had all of three fans there (thanks to Sharon being from Montana ). We waved at the video camera instead of the crowd knowing our true fans were watching at their computers back home and we won it for them. For a weekend where we traveled for more than 16 hours by plane and van and only played volleyball for maybe 4 hours of that, we can't complain with our two wins on the road. Come check out our games this week against the AKs at our home gym in New PE . Go Wolves!
It seems as though our volleyball team really enjoys coming from behind and winning matches. Both matches this last weekend, we lost the first sets and then came back to win the next three. We will see the two Alaska teams again when we travel up there over the Halloween weekend. In addition to volleyball this week, we just finished our first week back at school. A lot of the girls are excited to have a consistent schedule in place while others would rather it stay summer forever. As far as I can tell though, when it comes down to play time, everyone is focused on the task at hand: Volleyball. We play at SPU on Thursday but we have a home match this Saturday against Billings . Everyone make sure and come out to see us (facial/body paint optional)! Go Wolves!
For the first time in years, WOU volleyball has beaten SPU at SPU. There was an extra sense of success in that win due to the victory being a first experience for everyone. We had a little bit of a lineup change due to an injury so things were a little different than our usual, personnel-wise, but we managed to come out on top at SPU in the end. We spent Thursday afternoon being tourists in Seattle . We took a ferry over to Bainbridge and visited a bunch of little shops and took pictures and in general, just enjoyed time off the court together.
Our home game against Billings on Saturday was not just a little different like at SPU, but a lot different. We went away from our traditional rotation and tried out some new stuff. We had middles subbing with the setters and the libero coming in for outside hitters in the back row. It was weird, but apparently worked well enough to beat Billings 3-0. Our opponents might be trying to scout us, but depending on the game they watch, they won't have a clue which system we are going to run. They won't know who is going to play and where they will play. As a matter of fact, we might not know who is going to play on any given night either, but we pride ourselves in our team's depth and versatility.
Up next is St. Martin's on Thursday up in Lacey, Wash. , and then we host Central Washington at NPE. Be there!!! Go Wolves!
Another 2-0 weekend for the Wolves! We drove up to Lacey, Washington the day of our match on Thursday and won in three against the St. Martin 's Saints. We made a late night drive home but the drive wasn't too bad with pizza and some good company. :) Last night was a different story. We won our game against Central Washington but it was a brawl. There is a concept of "ebbs and flows" that our team talks about on a regular basis that basically means every team has times where their performance dips a bit (an ebb) and then flows together, playing well. The goal is to never have ebbs and to flow all the time. Last night we ebbed and flowed but I feel be flowed for longer and more frequently than our opponents so we pulled away with a win. We are 9-0 in conference now and we play last year's conference champs WWU on Saturday at WWU. Come support your WOU Wolves!!!
Monday, November 3
With our last big away trip done with, we are preparing for what might be the toughest end of the season I have seen in all my four years. We play Western Washington this Thursday and Central on Saturday. Then our final week is NNU and then SPU.
I will say though that our trip to Alaska was no walk in the park. We started out with Fairbanks at negative five degrees Fahrenheit that first morning; we struggled to maintain our body temperatures but managed to win 3-0. Then we flew back to Anchorage on Halloween and wore costumes through the airport in celebration. We weren't allowed to wear our masks as we went through security but other than that, our costumes were a hit. The English family hosted us for a Halloween dinner of yummy homemade stew and then we all found our musical side and played rock band. My personal favorite of the night was Stephanie on vocals. :)
Anyways, so then we played Anchorage on Saturday and just about buried ourselves with a deficit of 8-3 in the fifth set, but somehow crawled our way our of the hole we dug and closed it off with a W. Then we proceeded to eat at Moose's Tooth (which was awesome) and then made it to the airport for our flight at 12:50 am. Everyone was home and in their beds around 6:30 Sunday morning and exhausted, but no one complains with a win like Saturday's. I am still replaying our big points during that game in my mind. I think now we are ready to see WWU again. Check us out Thursday as we fight for the conference title against our rivals. Go Wolves!
Sunday, November 9
After another successful weekend with two wins, we have now earned ourselves a conference championship. While our conference season is not over, due to our record and the records of our opponents, we are guaranteed to at least tie for the conference if not win the title solo.
Walking into the gym on Thursday, we knew that WWU would not be handing over the match to us so we had to be on our 'A' game. WWU has been one of biggest rivals ever since I have been here and probably longer just because they are always a strong opponent, so we are glad we were able to come away with a win at our home court. We had nearly a thousand fans in attendance so thank you for all of your support Wolf fans!
We went to CWU last night and won in five long, hard-earned games. We made things tough on ourselves in many aspects: missing serves, hitting errors, and letting Central make runs of points on us. On the positive side, we were able to come back after a couple of deficits and came out with a win in the end, showing the Wolves are a finishing team. We are now looking ahead to next week and Regionals. Come cheer us on as we break records!
