Our First SEC Weekend!

The Grove!

Wow, what a weekend!  We had our first two SEC matches against Alabama and Mississippi State, football was at home versus Vanderbilt, Alumni Weekend for volleyball was in full effect and of course, we had some great recruits on official visits!  All this happened in 3 short days and all of them, great success for Ole Miss Volleyball.

We recorded a sweep of Alabama, all matches extremely close, but you could see that the preseason paid off for our players.  All of them very calm at the end of matches and the never say die attitude on defense was awesome!  We out-dug Alabama and had 18 team blocks in only 3 sets!  That is pretty impressive!

The next day was football day!  The team had the opportunity to tailgate at the Grove and what a great experience!  It was a little hot at the game however so after the first quarter our team decided to head back to our team room in the air conditioning and watch from there.

The next day we faced our biggest rival, Mississippi State.  We ended up beating them in 4 with another 16 blocks to go along with out-digging them again! 

For her efforts on the weekend, Morgan Springer was named SEC Defensive Player of the Week.  At practice, she mentioned to the team it was a total team effort and how easy it was to play defense behind such a great block this weekend!  A total team effort!

Magnolia Invite Champions

The Rebels captured their second tournament of the year at home by beating Southern Mississippi, University of Louisiana and Samford.  Each team brought different elements to the stage and Ole Miss had to work extremely hard to win.

The first match of the day was against Southern Mississippi.  The highlights basically go like this, we were down 8-1 in the 5th set, which is only played to 15.  We switched sides and came back to get the score to 13-9, still down, and what happens.  The Rebels were never phased and came out with a 16-14 victory!  What a great job!

The next morning we faced a very scrappy University of Louisiana team that would not die.  Again, going to a 5th set and sneaking out another win.  We were only one win away from a Magnolia Invite Championship and we had to get through Samford.

Ole Miss and Samford have some history.  Dex Schroeder, the head coach at Samford, was once the volunteer at Ole Miss and he and Joe Getzin, head volleyball coach, are great friends.  The assistants Kilee and Reggie came and worked Ole Miss Volleyball camp this summer.  Plus, there are some girls on Samford's team who are very close with some of the players on our team.

Our middles stepped up once again and led us to a 3-0 victory over Samford and a Magnolia Invite Championship!  We ended the weekend with a 6-3 overall record and momentum of a 4-match winning streak heading into conference.

For her efforts, Ashley Veach was named All-Tournament.  She did a great job of coming in during each of the 3 matches and serving very well and playing some great defense!  Regina Thomas was also named All-Tournament for the 3rd consecutive weekend and coming out as MVP was Miranda Kitts, who stepped up during the end of each of the matches. 

Vote Joe Getzin!!!

Head Coach, Joe Getzin, is in a contest with Head Soccer Coach, Matt Mott to see who has the best goatee!  To get ready for the contest, Coach Getzin did a public service announcement and we got the first cut:)  I thought it would be fun to share with you.  If you haven't voted yet, we are down to the last week:  www.goforthegoat.com.  Vote Joe Getzin!!!

C-H-I-C-A-G-O!!!!

Team outside Wrigley Field

With Labor Day on Monday, we decided to take advantage of Chicago and stay all day on Sunday and fly home late Sunday night.  We had a whole day planned, but the girls had no idea how fun it was going to be.

Saturday night we went to Courtney Cunningham's (A.K.A. Ruby) house and the food was great!  Her family prepared a whole meal for the whole team and families!  It was great to see where "Ruby" grew up and spend some time with her family.

Allegra and Whit at Wrigley!

At the hotel that night, Joe decided to let the girls know what we were doing on Sunday. "Breakfast is on your own in the morning, we will leave at 11:30AM from the lobby to take the L to Wrigley Field for a Cubs game and then we will head to Michigan Avenue for some shopping."  The girls were so excited, first of all, over 1/2 of our team had never been to Wrigley Field and the ones who weren't as excited to watch the Cubs, the rest were very excited to go SHOPPING!!!!

Wrigley Field was awesome, the girls were getting into the action and although the Cubs aren't having a great year, it was good to see some offensive production out of them.  Plus, the girls just loved the environment.  They made the hot dog man and the popcorn man work really hard as I think as a team we probably ate about 25 hotdogs!  Something about those ballpark hotdogs, they are soooo good!

We headed out to take the train to Michigan Avenue.  It was fun trying to find it with a map, we definitely looked like tourists, as people walked around staring at our shirts, but I think the girls smelled the stores because we got there and they were off!  Forever 21 didn't know what hit them, our girls definitely conquered the store! 

It was a late night heading back to Oxford, but so worth it! 

3 matches in less than 24 hours...

We came into the weekend wanting another tournament championship.  We knew it was going to take some great volleyball combined with mental toughness and limited errors.  The bad news...we didn't get the championship, the good news...we saw signs of a really great team!

We started off with a strong Northwestern team.  We felt as if we matched up pretty well with them, our strengths were their strengths and it was going to be a battle in the MB position and we were excited to see it.  We didn't get the result we wanted, we ended up losing in 4.  We struggled offensively and our defense didn't step up to help out.  Northwestern played a great game and I'm excited to see how they do this season in the Big 10.

Our next match was Saturday morning at 10:00 against Utah.  Utah was struggling in the video we received and had lost the night before to Morehead State.  Our game plan was to shut down their OH's and make their MB's beat us.  Offensively, we wanted to beat their seams in transition, make them pinch in and worry about our MB's and pump the ball to our OH/RS and attack them again.  The first set, everything looked really great.  But just like every great volleyball team, teams make an adjustment and that is exactly what Utah did.  Their MB's came alive, worked hard in transition, and made us change our game plan.  They picked up our defense and we weren't ready for it.  Utah made great adjustments during the match and this is something we need to get better at as our season progresses.  We lost a tough one in 4.

Our 3rd and final match of the day was going to be the toughest.  We were going to face a very scrappy Morehead State team.  For our 2 players from Louisville, it was a huge rivalry, since they played HS volleyball against most of the Morehead team and Whitney Craven's cousin is on Morehead State's team as well.  We knew Morehead would overload zones offensively so we were going to have to play great 1-on-1 defense and have a disciplined block.  Offensively, we felt our tempo offensively was quick enough in transition to beat them.  It was a mentally tough match, with both teams going back and forth, but we were very proud to come away with a 3-set sweep. Our defense matched Morehead's scrappiness and it is exciting to see that continue through the season.

As we had our final meeting after our Morehead State match, we looked at our watch to see 6:00PM, exactly 24 hours since we started warming up for our first match of the tournament on Friday.  Three matches in 24 hours, not the results we wanted, but the finish was great to see! 

For her efforts, Morgan Springer was named All-Tournament.  She passed over 1/2 the court the whole weekend in serve receive and vocally started to take control of the backrow and played her best defense of the season.

We open up at home this coming weekend!  Very excited.  

Finding Consistency...

We have a young team and you can look at our roster to see it.  We have some amazing athletes and people in our program, all still learning what it takes to play at a high level consistently and that is what we saw this week in our preparation for the Northwestern Challenge.

We had practice Monday that includes individuals sessions, each position coming in to get some extra reps.  Then we had our usual Tuesday and Wednesday team practice and took off on Thursday to head to Chicago.  Our girls were a little unfocused all week, not giving the intensity and focus the staff wanted in each drill.  It wasn't a lack of effort, because our girls always work hard, but it just wasn't at the level we wanted.

This week at practice we implemented a new defense, worked out-of-system offense, and worked in our serve receive offense as well.  All these items we saw at our Rice tournament and felt we needed to improve on to beat the teams at Northwestern.

We left on Thursday for Chicago with a little sour taste in our mouth, knowing we needed better intensity on the court at Northwestern.  We are still young and working on that consistency, but we know we will get it before SEC starts!

Being thankful for what we have!

Helping at the homeless shelter was such a humbling experience for Ole Miss.  You can read all about our community service event at www.olemisssports.com, but here is a little inside knowledge of the event. 

During our time, I truly believe our girls did an amazing job.  They went and sat at different tables and asked people about their stories.  You could feel an energy in the air and the occasional "Go Ole Miss" always got the crowd going. 

Whitney Craven, sophomore OH, from Louisville, KY has the biggest heart on the team.  She told us she had to pull herself away a few times because she would just start crying.  She not only felt bad but continued to feel grateful for the things she has in her own life.  She sat with a client, named Daniel, for 45 minutes and they were both laughing the whole time.  It was such a great scene to watch.  She listened intently while a client sang Whitney Houston in the most amazing voice.

Everyone on the team had great stories about connections they made, but overall, I believe our players learned a valuable lesson.  We are so truly blessed to be part of Ole Miss.  We are in a situation where we can get a great education, play volleyball at a high level, and influence others. 

The best feeling was sitting in my van after the trip and listening to Ashley Anderson, Kara Morgan, and Kellie Goss talk about their experience, all so humbled and ready for the next opportunity.  All asking when was our next event and could they do that again.  We have great people in our program and I'm blessed to be a part of it!