WEST PLAINS, Mo. – The Missouri State University-West Plains Grizzly Volleyball team will take a 2-2 record into the Salt Lake Community College Invitational Tournament Friday and Saturday, Aug. 29-30, in Salt Lake City, Utah, after opening their season at the Dana Hatch Invitational hosted by Tyler Junior College this past weekend, Aug. 22-23, in Tyler, Texas.
On Friday, the Grizzlies, ranked No. 12 in the National Junior College Athletic Association (NJCAA) preseason poll, defeated North Central Texas College of Gainesville 25-22, 23-25, 25-19, 23-25, 15-13 before falling to No. 1 Blinn College, Brenham, Texas, 16-25, 22-25, 17-25. On Saturday, the Grizzlies downed No. 20 Temple College, Temple, Texas, 25-14, 25-15, 14-25, 26-24 before losing to the host team, ranked fifth in the nation, 18-25, 13-25, 25-23, 28-26, 10-15.
“This was a good tournament for us to start with,” Grizzly Volleyball Head Coach Paula Wiedemann said. “We saw four tough teams, and our players’ response to the whole weekend was what we wanted it to be. I was hoping our players would see the intensity level we need play at every day in practice during this tournament, and they did. You can talk about it, you can get out there and have those moments, but until you play the competition we play, you don’t really get it. Now they do.”
Although unranked, North Central Texas proved to be a tough first competitor for the Grizzlies’ first match of the season, but the defending national champions really woke the Grizzlies up to the challenges ahead this season, Wiedemann said.
“Our match against a good North Central Texas team was as tough as it could get for our first match, and we fought through it. And then we got a taste of a national championship caliber team in Blinn, and they haven’t missed a beat. Blinn’s ability to run the offense they want to run is there. They have excellent setters. We had some very good moments against them, but they really woke us up,” the coach said.
The Grizzlies found their footing again against Temple on Saturday. “We went at them like Blinn went at us,” Wiedemann said. “Then we got too relaxed and Temple started coming back at us. Set four, though, was an excellent set. Winning that one gave us some momentum to go up against Tyler.”
The Grizzlies finally started showing the intensity the coaching staff wanted to see against the host team. “Tyler came out really strong and took the first two sets, then we started playing with the intensity we wanted to see from our players. We fought for every point the rest of the way. We were not happy we didn’t finish off the fifth set and were mad we didn’t get it done. There are definitely things we can work on to impove how we go about playing at that intensity, though.”
Offensively, the Grizzlies were led by freshman outside attacker Penny Liu, who recorded 37 kills with four errors on 73 attempts for an attacking percentage of .452. She was followed by freshman outside attacker Gabby Edmondson with 29 kills, freshman outside attacker Breanna Taylor with 28 kills, sophomore middle attacker Lee Lee Barrett with 26 kills and freshman right side hitter Mikala Hicks with 12 kills. Freshman setter Susannah Kelley and sophomore setter Brianna Zebert shared duties in that position with Kelley picking up 75 assists and Zebert 65. Kelley also led the team in service aces with five.
Defensively, Barrett led the team at the net with 11 blocks, seven of which were solos, and sophomore libero Alyssa Aldag led the team in digs with 81. Barrett led the team in points earned with 37.
Wiedemann said the Grizzlies will continue to work on their intensity level and several other things the next couple of days as they prepare for Salt Lake, where they will meet the No. 6 team in the preseason rankings, Western Wyoming Community College of Rock Springs, and North Idaho College of Coeur d’Alene on Friday and No. 2 Iowa Western Community College, Council Bluffs, Iowa, and Casper (Wyo.) College on Saturday.
“I really think we will keep getting better each and every week. We have a group of players who really want to get in there and fight and see what happens. What you get from that attitude is great matches against great teams.”
For more information about the Grizzly Volleyball team, visit the team’s website at http://wp.missouristate.edu/grizzly/vb/. Complete team statistics can be found at http://stats.njcaa.org/sports/wvball/2014-15/div1/teams/MissouriStateUniversityWestPlains.