Sunday Musings

I’ve got a few important notes out there that I wanted to get to the masses that I didn’t want to wait until next month. I also am working on a National Power Index (NPI) article for this week and some NCAA items needed to be made clear before that comes out.

I think the most important volleyball item is that my son made the Pokémon World Championships. I will not attempt to explain what this is but he’s currently in the Top 100 in the United States and Canada and has earned enough points to participate in the championships that will be in Honolulu in August. The (hot) wife and I will definitely be on Waikiki Beach a lot that week. To put this in volleyball terms, he has earned a Pool C bid for the NCAA Tournament.

The real volleyball news that will be important to everyone is that NPI has been approved by the President’s Council and will be used for the upcoming season. This means that there will be no human element to Pool C (at-large) bids in the future. They will be determined by computations. The NCAA has not announced what settings they will use and this is a very important aspect of the computations. We should expect an announcement on this in the next month or two. It was also noted in the same meeting that Pool B bids are eliminated. There will no longer be a bid or bids reserved for independent teams when there are enough teams to warrant it. Independent teams can now only achieve Pool C bids. I personally don’t have an issue with this because I think it diluted the NCAA Tournament but it goes against a core DIII philosophy of access to all. Finally, there is a note that for the 2025 Convention that legislation will be proposed that will remove cannabis from the Banned-Drugs List. I don’t go to the convention normally, but the end-of-convention celebration probably shouldn’t be missed.

You can find the President’s Meeting notes here.

Again, I’ll have more on NPI later this week. I will say that I’ve had quite a few coaches reach out to me regarding this change and the problems with NPI. If anyone else wants to reach out, please do.

I had a nice email recently from Latvian Izzy Lipacis. She’s not on the hacker team but we’re always looking for new blood. You should know Izzy from Colorado College fame as a wonderful outside that has driven daggers into my heart every time she played Southwestern. Well, she let slip that she’ll be using her 5th Super Senior year at WashU. That’s a big get for that program. Colorado College had three seniors this past season and all three will now be playing a 5th year. Keeley Kandziora will be playing at Chicago while Jenny Jenks will be playing at Pomona-Pitzer.

Another 5th year senior is returning and this is another favorite of mine (although I’ve never met her). UW-Oshkosh Riley Kindt announced she’s returning and I love her because she reminds me of how I use to play. Well, how I think I use to play. Well, she’s better than I use to play but I don’t hold that against her. This is the final year for those Covid Kids as the Super Senior status will be done after this year (except in a really rare case). I tweeted this earlier but I think this 2024 DIII season could be the best ever just based on the number of outstanding seniors coming back for another year.

I was looking at the CMS coaching page the other day because I have no life and noticed that only head coach Kurt Vlasic remains. It turns out Melanie Hughes accepted the Head Coaching position at Lake Forrest. Congratulations to her and that’s a wonderful hire by that program. Dani McCree is going back to school and long-time assistant Morgan Coberly is engulfed into the real world fulltime now. I am, of course, expecting a request from Kurt to be his new assistant any time now but I think my demand of being a remote coach may be a stumbling block. This is certainly going to be an interesting season for the Athenas as they lose a couple of top players (Jenna, that 5th year at Southwestern is still available) and a lot of talent from their coaching ranks. Programs like La Verne, Pomona-Pitzer and Cal Lutheran have to be eyeing this as a big opportunity to take the SCIAC title away from them in 2024.

The last thing I wanted to discuss was the recruiting by Occidental. This is probably a topic that really only interests me but I was somewhat surprised to see all of the recruits signed by this program this past month. I think I have them with 8 although I haven’t updated the Recruits Page with two of them, yet. I think they only had 11 players on the roster last season and 4 of them were seniors. They need a lot of players just for training purposes but the fact that they just hired a new coach (Emily Foster) makes getting that many recruits really impressive to me. I reached out to Emily and she explained that the program had done a good job locking in some recruits before she arrived and then she scrambled to lock up the rest as soon as she was able. This was all done without an assistant coach. I guess if you are an aspiring coach in the SoCal area then get with Kurt and Emily as soon as you can as there are openings. Tell them I sent you. Hey Kate Mitchell! You out there?!? You’d be wonderful at either school.

Look for my NPI article later this week and if anyone wants me to scout Hawaiian players in mid-August, let me know.