The Elizabethtown College volleyball team lost in the semifinal match of the Commonwealth Conference tournament Nov. 2 against Messiah College. The Falcons defeated the Blue Jays 3-0.
Although the Blue Jays were not able to make it to the championship match, their season was vastly better than that of 2011 – the women won 12 more matches this year. Four Blue Jays also represented Etown on the All-Conference teams: seniors Lindsay Palm and Holly Bubb, junior Carolyn Lukiewski and sophomore Kelci Scannapieco. Palm’s 200-kill season attributed to her First Team appointment, while Scannapieco made Second Team after leading the conference in blocks for the year. Lukiewski and Bubb both were Honorable Mentions.
Earlier in the season, Messiah also defeated the Blue Jays. On Oct. 25, spirit rang through Messiah’s Brubaker Auditorium. Shouts echoed off the walls. Screams of encouragement were offered across the course. For Blue Jay supporters drowned out the sounds of the Falcons and their fans at the final conference game for the team.
“It’s a huge adrenaline rush, naturally, and when it gets really rowdy and it’s a long rally, you just get into the zone,” senior captain Meg Kenneweg said.
The support of the crowd proved a motivator for the women to push for a 25-20 win in set two. However, the team did not beat Messiah. The final score was 3-1.
“Volleyball is 80 percent mental and 20 percent skill. We struggled with the mental aspect of the game. It’s Messiah — our rival—and I think that sometimes when you get on the court and you are in the moment, it does tend to psych you out a bit,” Kenneweg said. “I think that was our biggest weakness and our biggest struggle tonight.”
The team had prepared for a hard game during their practices, knowing that Messiah always puts up a good fight. Randall Kreider, head coach, explained that practices are “competition oriented” and the goal is to put the women in game-like situations to prepare them for the teams they will face. Likewise, practices for the game against Eastern University were intense, as their previous experiences suggested necessary.
Despite the preparation, Saturday held a similar fate for the team, closing the regular season, with two more losses. The Rockvale Invitational pitted the Blue Jays against Marymount University and Eastern. Having never played Marymount before, the team did not know what to expect going into that match. In contrast, the girls knew the skill level they would need to bring to the game against Eastern to win.
While their plan to have “two more undefeated home games,” may not have come true, the invitational provided the underclassman players with experience to bring with them into the next season. The games ended with Marymount winning 3-1 and Eastern winning 3-0.
Still, the team worked hard at practice to prepare for playoffs. “We go hard at practice and we play as if it is a game,” Scannapieco said.
Practices are held every day that there isn’t a match, except Sundays. A usual practice consists of many different elements: running, stretching, ball handling, three on three play, specific drills to prepare for the upcoming game and scrimmaging. Each of these drills is intended to simulate game play so that the team is always thinking about the situations they will face in games.
“The goal [at practice] isn’t what drill will we do next, but what game are we going to play next,” Kreider said. Kreider added that much of the work that the team focuses on is improving the strengths that are already present in the group.
“[Our greatest strengths are] working hard at practice, having good connections on and off the court and believing that we can win,” Bubb said.
They also scout and prepare for certain situations “on the other side of the net,” on some occasions. For new teams and those that have proved hard in the past, this tactic is beneficial for the Jays.
“I don’t think we ever get scared,” Bubb said. “We get more excited to play the better teams.”
Kreider and many of the women on the team commented that a strength that the team used to their advantage this season was the close relationship that the girls have formed. They are friends on and off the court, which helps them to communicate while playing.
A disadvantage that the team is trying to counteract is “overall team confidence: the ability to trust in themselves and trust in each other to play at a confident level 100 percent of the time,” Kreider said.