This is a big weekend for Dayton Volleyball. The regular season is winding down with a big match at Xavier on Friday. Yvonne Marten has been a great player at UD and will be celebrating senior day on Sunday.

I will be writing a senior article on Yvonne but I will start by saying that she epitomizes what college athletics is about. She is very intelligent, very talented and very very very determined. I wrote an article last year on Yvonne’s injury struggles and will repost that early next week. I will then follow up with a new article which includes comments from the coaches and players.

Last weekend UD played Charlotte and George Washington at the Frerick’s Center. Both matches were won convincingly by the Flyers at 3-0.
On Friday against Charlotte the Flyers outhit Charlotte .442 to .011 which signals total domination. In probably the most important statistic the Flyers dominated the sideout percentage. In set 1 UD had a 92% to 51% advantage, in set 2 UD had a 78% to 41% advantage and in set 3 UD had a 92% to 47% advantage. Charlotte only scored five points while they were serving in the entire match. That is great stuff that Kelly and company must feel really good about.

On Saturday the Flyers won in three straight sets against George Washington but it wasn’t as dominant as the previous night. The first set went to 26 points with the Flyers winning 26-24, the second set was 25-19 and the third set was 25-10. In this match the Flyers hit .215 which is much lower than we are used to but they held George Washington to .028 while getting 15.5 blocks. Megan Campbell was held to a .000 hitting percentage and Shayne Brown was held to -.091. They have recently been hitting about .400 higher than those percentages. Rachel, Yvonne and Hannan came through with good offensive games to carry the Flyers.

Against GW the sideout percentage in set 1 was very close 70% to 65%. In set 2 UD had a sideout advantage of 64% to 50%. In set 3 UD had a sideout percentage of 100%, the second time they have accomplished this in 2011.
On thing that has impressed me about this team is their focus on every match and continuing to improve as the season goes on. So I asked Kelly if he can tell us why this team appears to play more consistently than teams in the past?

“I don’t want to get into comparing teams. We’ve had some great teams over the years and this one is trying to be remembered as one, as well. I will tell you this, all season long, this team has been moving in the same direction together. Anybody that has been involved in coaching will say that is incredibly rare. We have a lot of players who will tell you the highlight of their day is being in Frericks. They look forward to practice! And the crazy thing is, I believe most are telling the truth! As Yvonne was telling me today, there is not a single player on this team that has their self agenda ahead of their team agenda. Players came into this season trying to prove that they were a good team, and winning hasn’t affected that one bit. The other thing is, this team might embrace challenges more than any team I’ve seen. You might say, “how do you know when you’ve been beating people 25-14?” It doesn’t seem to matter where the challenge comes from. It can be a close set/match score, or a goal that I put in front of us going into a match, or a drill that we have in practice – the harder it is, the more fun they seem to have. Now as a fan you sit back and say, “yeah, don’t all teams like challenges?”, and I will tell you, no…. I don’t think most do. Maybe after the fact but not while they are in the moment. They don’t embrace those moments and put all of their energies in the right place. Most will spend too much energy thinking about consequences, blame, or the previous play. This team, so far, doesn’t do that at all! This team also gets genuinely excited for each others accomplishments. They see players like Isolde and Angel improve dramatically and they get fired up for them. They see the confidence that Paige or Sam has and nobody is threatened by it or tries to knock them down. Everyone is moving forward – together”.

This week the Flyers play Xavier on Friday and Fordham on Sunday which is Senior Night.

In the previous match against Xavier the Flyers lost set 1 but then won the other three sets convincingly. As the 2nd set ended I told the people sitting with me “I don’t see us losing if we continue to pass the ball like this”. Yvonne, Rachel and Paige passed the ball really well except for one short period in set 1.

I still feel the same way. If the Flyers pass the ball well they have more firepower on offense than Xavier does. This does not mean it will be an easy match. Xavier played well in the last match and I expect them to do the same tonight. They will have a great crowd on hand for this match. If their passing is good then they are a tough team to block and dig.

With Xavier’s quick offense good passing is even more important than a team with big outside hitters. So I mentioned the Flyers’ serving in the previous match and asked if this would again be a key to the match.

“In volleyball it’s a key in every match. We’ve gotten a lot better as the season has gone on. Sometimes our passers don’t feel like they are getting that much better because we are putting up some really high goals in practice and we put some really good servers opposite of them and tell them to go and hunt them down. But our four primary passers – Paige, Ally, Rachel, and Yvonne are at a totally different level than they were in August individually, and as a group they are starting to work very well together. With that said, when we go into those droughts when we are not passing that well, our outsides are able to carry the load. Offensively we are as strong on the antenna’s as we’ve been since I’ve been here. All three players can score when we are out of system, without making a ton of errors. That really relieves some pressure on a team.”

“We served pretty well when we played them earlier. But we also realize that one of the players that we were putting the ball on was a player who just came back from an injury and was out for a couple of weeks leading up to that match. We are not going to have the luxury, this time, of having a target out there who has had very few passing reps leading up to this match. That had them out of system a lot more than they probably would have been otherwise”.

On Sunday (senior day) the Flyers face Fordham who they previously defeated in straight sets 25-16, 25-13 and 25-15. Let’s give Yvonne a great sendoff even though she has games remaining at the Frerick’s Center.

And thanks to Brian Karst who has been gathering answers from the players this week. It will help me write a good senior article on Yvonne, an article on the freshman and probably one other article.