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St. Cloud State University
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Sports
Volleyball faces daunting challenge over weekend
By Ben Dunsmoor
Published:
Thursday, September 26, 2002
Close but no cigar. This four-word clich� sums up the way SCSU’s volleyball season has gone thus far.
The Huskies, who are currently 3-8 overall and 0-2 in the NCC, have only lost their match games this season by an average score of 28-24.
“I think that our record does not show how close we are to winning games,” third-year hitter Jane Backes said. “It’s frustrating sometimes because we play really well, we come close, and we still go away with a loss.”
The first two games of NCC play were not easy on the Huskies. Not only did SCSU have to travel halfway across the country and back in two days, but they also had to face the University of Northern Colorado, who is currently the sixth-ranked team in the nation, and a tough South Dakota team. SCSU lost their three match games against UNC and USD by an average of only eight points.
Head Coach Dianne Glowatzke was pleased with the Huskies effort against UNC.
“I thought last weekend against UNC we played quite well,” Glowatzke said. “In the third game we forced them out of a set they wanted to make, and we need to do the same things against both teams this weekend.”
“We did really well against UNC,” setter Kari Turkowski said. “But it came down to the final point where we let them get ahead of us, and the mistakes just kept building because our confidence level went down. We just have to stay confident.”
Confidence is one thing that the Huskies will have to pick up for the matches Friday and Saturday nights at Halenbeck Hall against conference powerhouses Augustana and South Dakota State University. One thing they will have to leave behind them is inconsistency.
“We’re up and down, and we need to stay consistent,” Backes said. “We need to play intense for the whole 30 points, because as soon as you let up on any team in this conference they’re going to take advantage of that, and they’re going to pound it at you.”
Playing the top teams in the nation, and in the conference, doesn’t intimidate Backes. Instead it pumps her up, and she feels that this will carry over to the rest of the team.
“It really fires me up to play a really good team,” Backes said. “It’s such a good opportunity, and I think that our team will come out a lot harder knowing that the teams we are going to play are really good. I think that we have a lot of respect for teams like Augustana and SDSU.”
The schedule won’t get any easier for the Huskies. The only way to get prepared for the tough NCC teams is to put the past behind them.
“We can’t think that we’ve already lost two games,” Turkowski said. “We have to think that these are only two games, and that there’s still 90 percent of the season left. Anything can happen.”
