The Official Newsletter of Guilford College Volleyball
by Trevor Hewitt
September 12, 2005
Important Dates
9/13 @ NC Wesleyan 7:00 PM
9/15 @ Washington & Lee 7:00 PM
9/16 @ Virginia Wesleyan 4:00 PM
The Good…
On Monday, September 5th, the Quakers traveled to Salem College for the season opener. While it wasn’t pretty at times, the team was able to defeat Salem 3-0 (30-25, 30-15, and 30-20). Becca Jones spread the offense to all hitters, finishing with 31 assists. Jessica Smith and
Brittani Leathern (Wilmington, DE/ McKean) finished with eight kills apiece, while Jenny Conner chipped in with seven kills. Meagan Tucker and Emily Becher chipped in five kills each.
Although Salem didn’t run much offense, the Quakers did get to play some defense. Becher led the defensive effort with 6 digs. Tucker was a close second, with four digs.
At the net, Leathern, Becher, and Tucker each recorded solo blocks.
On serve receive, the team as a whole passed at a whopping 2.54 clip. An explanation of serve receive numbers can be found below.
THANK YOU to all the parents/fans who were able to make it to Salem to support the Quakers. We just about out numbered their fans!
The Better…
On Wednesday, September 7th, the Quakers hosted Peace College in their first match of the 2005 season at the Ragan-Brown Field House.
In perhaps a foreshadowing of what the future holds for this young volleyball team, the Quakers bent, but did not break, as they rallied from a 2-1 games deficit to defeat Peace 3-2 (20-30, 30-25, 18-30, 30-25, 15-13) in a very exciting 5 game match!
Once again, Jones directed a much more fluid offense tallying a career high 48 assists. The beneficiaries of those sets were Leathern, who posted a career high 21 kills and Becher who had a career high 18 kills.
On the defensive side of the ball, libero Kaci Loeffler posted 24 digs. Becher notched 15 digs while Smith and Conner had 9 apiece, followed by Taylor Brown and Jones with 8 digs each.
The home crowd definitely helped this young team fight to the last point. Thanks again goes to the parents who made it to the match, but more importantly THANK YOU to the members of the football team who got VERY loud in the fifth set, helping the Quakers prevail in a very close 15-13 game!
The Not So Good…
Illness and injury. Those words best describe the weekend of September 9th and 10th for the Guilford Volleyball Team, as the Quakers faced Meredith and Emory & Henry Friday night, and host Greensboro Saturday morning in the Greensboro College Volleyball Tournament.
The Quakers began play with an uphill battle as the team learned that Jones would not be available due to a sinus infection and a very sore back. Taylor Brown and Jessica Smith stepped in to run Guilford’s offense. These were just two of our team’s players that played “out of position” for most of the tournament.
Uncomfortable at best, the Quakers managed to win just one game during the weekend’s three matches, as they were downed 3-1 by Meredith College and 3-0 by both Emory & Henry and Greensboro.
Every cloud, as they say, has a silver lining, and some good was to be found in the play of the Quakers. Brown led the offense, setting for the first time in several years, and collected 38 assists versus Meredith and another 11 against Emory & Henry. Casey Lockhart, a libero for the Quakers saw action in 10 of the weekend’s games and contributed 10 digs, four assists from five sets, and four points from the service line
Both Courtney Lute and Jennifer Treiber saw their first action in college during the tournament. Lute registered her first collegiate kills, solo block, and dig against Greensboro.
Treiber, playing libero against Emory and Henry, was perfect from the service line, tallying an ace, as well as collecting two digs.
Staying Healthy
We as coaches try to preach it almost everyday—you’ve got to eat healthy. Your parents are not responsible for feeding you anymore, so you must take the initiative to eat right. As the legendary WWF wrestler Hulk Hogan says “Say your prayers and take your vitamins.” Ladies, please, please, please eat right, drink some
OJ, get some sleep (but as I learned, college is a four year exercise in sleep deprivation) and maybe even get some vitamins. It is getting cool at night here in Greensboro, with temps dipping in to the 60s. Dew is forming on the grass and car windshields, and now is the perfect time to get some
warm(er) clothes from home!
Serve Receive Rating
As promised above, here is the low down on the serve receive rating system we use here at Guilford.
We rate passes from the opponents’ serve on a 0-3 scale. A ‘zero’ pass is when our team is aced or the pass is shanked out of bounds so that no other teammate can make a play on the ball.
A ‘one’ pass would allow the setter to have one offensive option, i.e. she could only set one hitter. Likewise, a ‘two’ pass would allow the setter two offensive options and a ‘three’ pass (also known as a perfect pass) would allow the setter to dish the ball to all of her offensive options.
The system is purely subjective to the statistician tracking the passes (me), but allows for a very good analysis of who is passing well out of serve receive.
Each pass receives a numerical value (0 for a zero pass, 3 for a three pass, etc…). The total number of each pass is multiplied by it value (5 three passes have a value of 15 [5 * 3]) and the total pass average is determined by dividing a players total pass value by the number of passes (i.e. a total value of 15 from 5 three passes would have an average of 3.0 [15/3]).
For a team to give itself the best chance to win, it really needs to pass at an average of 2.2 or higher per match to allow the offense the best chance to score.
Website
As always, please follow all of the Quaker Volleyball news on our website. Dave Walters (Sports Information Director), Matt Grasso (Assistant SID) and company are doing a great job in keeping up the website. New pictures, which were taken at the Peace match, have been added to both the Athletics Front Page and Volleyball Page, and look for more from this past weekend’s action! Here is just a small sampling of those pictures.
Until next time…
Nickname
From now on, until I get tired of saying it, Leah McKinney will be known as “Tannenbaum.” German for “Christmas tree,” she unfortunately earned the nickname during Friday’s match against Emory & Henry. For those of you who were there to witness it, McKinney was hit in the face by the outside hitter for Emory & Henry. Luckily for Guilford, McKinney is one tough cookie, and not only laughed off the blow, but had to serve the next point as the ball glanced of the antenna as it traveled towards its unknowing target.
