The Flyers have been cruising since A10 play started. One of those victories was a dominant win over rival St Louis. This week the Flyers play Xavier on a rare Monday evening match. When I asked Kelly about the progress the team has made since A10 play began he responded:
　
“I like coaching this team a lot. First of all they love the game. It sounds pretty standard, but believe me, it isn’t. There are people that show up to practice and put their work in. And then there are others that enjoy and look forward to practice and enjoy the training and repetition that goes into being really good. I think most of the players on this team really enjoy that aspect. We also have players that will come in and watch other teams play on tv or come in and grab a DVD of two other elite teams play a match from the night before. As coaches and fans, we are really passionate about this game and it’s really fun when the players have an even deeper love for the game. Other than that, I know this, the things we are working on in practice and the things we are measuring statistically, we are getting better at. We are better at generating offense when we are out of system, we are adding shots to our repertoire, we are closing holes in our passing patterns, we are becoming a better blocking team, and we are learning where to put people (from a coaching position and set distribution) in order for players to be successful. We haven’t played a lot of match volleyball. So many of our matches have been 3-0 and I’ve stayed away from weekday matches. There’s good and bad with that. The good is that we are spending a lot of time training. It’s unbelievable to see that a team like Fordham has played almost 40 more sets of volleyball than we have!”

Isolde has shown tremendous improvement since last season. What did Kelly say about Isolde’s improvement?

“Obviously Z has ridiculous upside. She’s gotten a lot stronger physically and has learned what her body can do and how much it can do. She’s gotten a lot better technically and she’s learned to think quicker out on the court. Isolde is an analyzer. If I need a problem solved, she’s the first person I would go to, because she would either already know or be able to find the answer. But on the court, things happen really, really fast and sometimes there’s not time to stop and analyze what needs done. She’s had to learn, as far as on the court goes, that she has to think a lot quicker and move on to the next thing quickly. She has gotten a lot better at this. She’s a 5’11 middle blocker that is lining up against people that in some cases are closer to a half a foot taller than her. She’s also the first freshman to start at middle blocker for the Flyers in more than a decade. It’s a very difficult position to learn because the game is coming at you so fast and, for the first time in her career, the opponents are bigger than her. As a competitor she’s also taken a pretty big jump. I couldn’t be more proud of the progress this kid has made. We’ve asked a lot out of her and she steadily just keeps getting better and better”.

Serving is always important in a match but against Xavier it is even more important. Xavier runs a very very fast offense with low sets. If you serve them tough and their passing isn’t great it changes how they set the ball because if the first pass is off the net it is much more diffiuclt to run those low sets.

Enjoy this weeks match! The Flyers need to win a five set match in preparation for the ncaa tournament but I hope they win in three sets this week.