| Laura Neugebauer-Groff welcomes back five retuning letterwinners for the 2007 season. |
Coming off a 2006 season that saw it post a 19-13 record, the UTSA volleyball team will have a new identity this fall. Five seniors ? Meagan Daniel, Brittany Hildebrand, Erin McMillan, Connie Picard and DeeDee Strickland ? have moved on and just a quintet of letterwinners return. Coupled with eight newcomers, this year’s group will be looking to lay a foundation for future success. Head coach Laura Neugebauer-Groff recently took some time to discuss this past spring’s workouts and what she expects from her club when they report in early August.
After losing five seniors from last year’s team, there obviously was going to be a transition this past spring. Talk about what you wanted to accomplish.
“I think the main thing was to have our younger players that didn’t get a lot of playing time in the fall to start feeling good about themselves. Now that we’ve had the turnover of losing five seniors, they need to know this is now their team. One of the first things they said to me during their individual meetings with me was they were ready to take on that challenge. They want to prove to people that we will be competitive even though we lost Meagan (Daniel), Dee Dee (Strickland), Connie (Picard), Erin (McMillan) and Brittany (Hildebrand). At the same time, since we only had seven kids this spring, it was a great opportunity for them to excel has individuals. From a coaching standpoint, our main goal was to make them better players, which in turn would make us a better team.”
How did you go about meeting those goals?
“With so many voids in the lineup, we had to move some people around. Most of them were playing in spots they normally wouldn’t play, so in that sense it was difficult to try to work on team-building drills. Therefore, we focused on making each player better as individuals by breaking the game down. The challenge was to make them better by improving their weaknesses. Before camp, we sat down with each girl and asked them what they thought they needed to work on to become a better player and earn more playing time in the fall. At the same, we told them what we, as a staff, thought they needed to work on. We also discussed the incoming class and that this was their opportunity to show us they belong on the court this fall.”
Did anyone in particular stand out?
“I think everyone improved in certain areas, and if they didn’t, we didn’t do our job as a coaching staff. I thought Shannon (Walker) did a great job of hitting the ball hard all spring and that was impressive. That was an area where she wasn’t very consistent last year. I think she now knows she can’t pace herself throughout a match. Audrey (Hiser) has always done a great job of making what I call ?crowd-pleaser plays,’ but she hasn’t always done it consistently. She did a good job of improving that and I think one of the things that helped her was the fact she got many more reps than she has in the past.”
Did you see anyone take over the leadership void left by the seniors?
“I did. I challenged them to step up and fill that void and saw a couple people trying to do that. I think Becca (Hrapmann) did that, although it was in a quiet way. She took the action of making sure everyone was where they were supposed to be on the court. Vic (Prior) did a great job of making sure everyone was supportive of one another, even when mistakes were made. She is a natural fit to fill that void because she is in her fourth year with the program. I think she wants to fill that role.”
In what other areas did you see improvement?
“In the weight room, from a strength and conditioning standpoint, everyone improved tremendously. All the players understand success and consistency on the court at this level is directly tied to being stronger and fit.”
How do you think the team fared in the tournaments you played in?
“I thought the tournaments were ok. We got into some competitive situations, which will benefit us when we get to the fall. We did some good things against some very good teams like Houston, LSU, Texas A&M and Texas State. I used to base my spring success on the win-loss record, but I’ve come to learn you can’t do that because the teams you play are made up differently based on what they lost after the fall. Overall, I thought they did a good job of competing and hopefully that will continue in August.”
What would you like to see when the players report in August?
“I want to see all of them in great shape. I told each of them they need to take the offseason seriously, especially since we have so many new people coming in this fall. If they’re not, it’s going to set us back when they report and, with such a young team returning, we will not have the time to get into shape after reporting, especially since we have just two weeks before playing at Boise State.”