Volleyball club still improving

The University of Tennessee women’s club volleyball team will head to Kansas City, Mo., April 14-16 to play in the NIRSA Collegiate Volleyball National Championship with aspirations of continuing its successful season.

Despite playing with 11 freshmen, Tennessee has finished in the top five in four of the five tournaments in which it has participated this year. The only tournament the team didn’t place in was at Kentucky. That tournament, however, wasn’t a total loss after they split two games with No. 1-ranked Missouri, thanks in large part to a talented group of freshmen.

“It seems they have been playing for two years now,” team president Julia Stoll said. “They have come so far.”

Indeed they have. In the first tournament of the season at Washington University (St. Louis), the team played with six players — Stoll and vice president Lauren Franklin were the only players with any previous collegiate experience — and still finished third.

As the season has progressed, the team has been able to add experience to the mix through recruiting players that have competed on the team before. Five players with previous experience joined the team during the middle of the season, with middle hitters Amy Eckerly and Amy Cotter leading the way.

Armed with this self-proclaimed “dream team,” Stoll said she thinks the team has the ingredients necessary for a strong showing in the national tournament.

“We are hoping to do really well, because we’ve had a lot of players from past years return during this semester that we didn’t have in the past tournaments,” she said.

Combine these players with new coach J.D. Williams, who has emphasized fundamentals and training since becoming the coach, and the team has ample reason to believe it can do well in the tournament.

“He focuses a lot on conditioning and a lot on the basics,” Stoll said. “He wants our basics to be really strong, because essentially the good teams at nationals are the ones with really strong fundamentals.”

Although the team has high goals for the tournament, if it wasn’t for the hard work of raising the necessary funds, they wouldn’t be able to travel to Bartle Hall Convention Center and take part in the 80-team field.

Each year UT allocates a certain amount of money to the team and the rest they have to earn through fundraising, Stoll said.

Also, they work varsity volleyball matches in order to raise more money.

But regardless of the financial situation, the team feels like it is ready to compete for a national title.

“We can already tell from all the running, we’re getting stronger and we’re getting faster,” Stoll said.