Friday Musings

We are one week out folks! Student-athletes have reported. Practices have started. Heck, scrimmages have started. We have over 400 DIII teams that have at least a glimmer of a thought that they could win the national championship this year. I am here for all of it.

Good news for those concerned that I never heard back from Dallas Head Coach Alexis Emanuel. I finally emailed her into submission and got a reply. Still, so happy for a former high school player of my daughters to be coaching in the area.

I’ve been working on my retention article that goes through every West team and looks at last year’s roster versus their new one. For the first time ever, I reached out to the SIDs of the schools that didn’t have their rosters published. I was able to get a few published or sent my way from that effort. Thanks to all for putting up with my annoying email. As I write this, however, there is still one school that has not responded and have not put their 2025 roster on their website. You all know me and I don’t like to single anyone out for criticism but I do believe that namesakes Meriwether Lewis and William Clark would be disappointed over the developments. Oh, and congratulations to C2C and SAA for becoming West conferences as far as the website is concerned.

Speaking of namesakes, is it kind of crazy that Virginia Wesleyan University is changing its name to Batten University next year? If I were a former student, I’m not sure how I’d feel about that. Feels like a different university. I guess the Batten family is a big donor to the university. In Texas, if they did that, there would be about 6 schools named for Red McCombs.

Shoutout to the SAA, by the way. I was looking at the conference schedules and theirs is, by far, the best of the six West conferences. They have video and stats link to almost all of their matches already posted. A lot of work went into that and I just wanted to say it’s appreciated.

The reason I was looking at conference schedules is that I know I have to change my approach to my Match Day articles. Normally, I list all of the West matches with video and stats links. I then update the results with the box scores. That’s a lot of work normally and with the C2C and the SAA coming over to the West, it’s a bit much for me to handle at least through the first 3 weeks. Unless the Latvians can automate something, I think I’m going to just link to the NCAA Scoreboard. I’ll provide conference breakout links to help a tad but I’m probably out of the listing of all of the matches. I’m thinking I’ll definitely highlight some matches and this would be on a national basis. My normal “Update” section where you have me rambling about the day and the “Random Thoughts” where I’ll go into West matches prior to them being played will still be a stable of the article. I reserve the right to change my mind and I think for the midweek matches, I’ll use the old format. The big loss in my mind are the individual stats and video links. I’ll try to provide enough information where a reader can find them with only an additional click or two. Whatever happens, please feel free to let me know your thoughts once we get there.

I mentioned in a past article that UC Santa Cruz had applied for their regional exemption so that they can play more teams out-of-region. That got me to thinking about Trinity and Southwestern and how that works as they were not applying for the exemption despite playing in a conference that the NCAA has in Region VI. (Evidently not getting the memo that they are in Region X now per…me.) A helpful coach explained that a game being in region is not defined by the 10 regions setup in volleyball. There is actually a different map that is used (one that has Wisconsin and Texas in the same region so I’m told). There is also a 500-mile rule where any team within that distance is considered in-region. Anyway, something that is interesting to me and not fully understood at the moment.

Some retention spoilers:

• I count 20 schools in our 6 West conferences with a roster of 20+.

• Only 2 schools in the SCIAC are not at that number.

• Only one team actually improved on their statistics lost numbers due to a super senior. (Yes, a few schools still had one of these although Trinity had none so color me shocked.)

No word on when the NWC Preview article is coming out. I did confirm that coaches had been asked for their predictions so it should be coming out next week if not later today. The SAA article is due out on the 28^th. The commissioner’s office said it was to build up anticipation for the year. I had no idea that anticipation feels like annoyance! Oh well. I guess I can wait.

With regards to the NWC, I feel like that conference is really wide open. That conference is basically run by Whitworth, Pacific Lutheran and Puget Sound with a dash of George Fox thrown in. Each of those teams is losing over 40% of their stats from last season. Puget Sound had the largest roster and will be returning the most players while Whitworth returns the least number of players. (Not really…George Fox returns the same number and Willamette actually returns one less. It just sounded good when I wrote it.) If I was made to pick an order, I’d go PLU, Puget Sound, Whitworth and then George Fox. BUT!!! This NWC season will really come down to which teams gets the most from their recruits.

UPDATE – Just got the final Puget Sound roster. I only had their returners. They will return a 5th year senior (Mackenzie Leith) who had an extra year of eligibility due to a past injury. (Missed her.) So they will be only the second team to improve on their statistics loss. Also, with this change, I’ll take Puget Sound over PLU in the NWC this season. Small margins in this conference.

In addition to the Retention article coming out next week, I’ll also have my Preseason All-Region Team. Oh…and a couple of Match Day articles!

Alright. Time to refresh my Lewis & Clark roster again.