Weekly Wrap-Up

Welcome to the Weekly Wrap-Up. Have you ever lost a large amount of work that required you to start all over? This hasn’t happened to me in a long time because Word has improved so much over time but an unexpected reboot last night seems to have eaten my unsaved first attempt at the Wrap-Up. My fault for not saving but when I do save, I end up with a lot of useless articles sitting on my hard drive once I’ve moved them over to the website. Enough of that. Time to reconstruct. Maybe this version will be better, but I honestly believe my previous attempt was the best stuff I’ve ever done. Oh well, your loss. I weep for you.

We start the Wrap-Up with a look back over the week that was. I published the West Region Top 10 on Wednesday. This was a difficult article to get through as it was so tough to find the 10 teams. It got rougher when I realized how many really good players had left due to graduation and then, when going through the teams again, how many really good players had decided not to return this year. Regardless of my ordering, after Trinity I think the end-of-the-season ranking will be skewed greatly to those teams that got the most out of their freshmen. I mean think about the fact that the returning players haven’t played volleyball in over 400 days while most of the freshmen had some sort of club play. They really have an advantage to start the season that they normally wouldn’t have. This week also saw two Match Days and the official start of the NWC conference play. Of course, we also saw our first West Region cancellation of matches due to Covid. I’m not sure if the specific issue was due to something that occurred with Whitman or Whitworth but maybe this will become clearer this week as both are scheduled to play. As a reminder, the “Match Day!” articles will have write-ups of the teams that have yet to play this season. Each article will also have links to the video and the live stats if I can find them. If I’m able to watch the matches then I’ll update with comments. My parents often call these comments “comedy gold” while my wife calls them “stupid”. I’ll let you break the tie.

For the second week in a row, I missed the ASC Player of the Week announcement. This past week it went to Howard Payne’s Mya Ross. She hit 0.329 while getting 35 kills over their two matches against Jarvis Christian. Congratulations to Mya!

Before I get to my review of the West Region matches, let me turn my eye nationally. The Heartland Conference continues to play and we saw defending conference champion Transylvania sweep their double-header with Hanover. They are still undefeated on the season and actually play this afternoon for those that need a sports fix. It’s kind of sad but there really are no sports on television today as far as I can tell. The SLIAC started play this week with Greenville beating Spalding in four-sets.

It was interesting to see the announced attendance nationally for the DIII volleyball matches. Zeros are common and a 15 number would be considered large. And then there were the matches in Texas where 50 were announced for the ETBU/HSU match and 100 for the LETU/HSU match. Watching those matches and then watching the Puget Sound/Pacific Lutheran match really showed a contrast. More distancing at PLU and just cardboard cutouts in the stands. Not trying to make a political comment, just interesting to see the differences in the state Covid protocols.

Not to delay things much longer but I’ve got a pet peeve. Can all of the schools get together and decide what to call this season? Is it 2020? 2021? Or is it 2020-21? Everyone seems to have a different title on their roster and schedule pages. I think it has to be 2020-21 just for consistency but I’m fine if everyone else wants to be wrong as long as we can be the same.

One more thing. I fell down into an Annika Canaba (Sul Ross State) rabbit hole the other day. I saw a tweet announcing that she was on the ASC softball watch list. I thought it was strange that there were two students with the same name at the school as Annika Canaba is also a really good volleyball player. Yes, I’m dense. They are the same person. I then thought that Covid has made it interesting to those two-sport athletes and created conflicts that have never been there before. I thought I would reach out to the coach at Sul Ross State to see how he handled these conflicts with the softball coach. I then remembered that he coaches BOTH teams. As I wrote his name into my email it then occurred to me that Coach Troy Canaba was probably not only her coach but also her father. At that point it occurred to me that this seems like a cute story to write about if only there was someone that covered DIII volleyball.

Alright, let’s take a look at the West Region matches this past week. We had to wait until Friday but we got some in-conference out-of-division matches in the ASC when LeTourneau hosted Hardin-Simmons and ETBU drove over to also play HSU. HSU ended up dropping both matches (in 5-sets to ETBU and 4-sets to LETU). They were led by Alicia Becerra who had 30 points over the two matches and was definitely the go-to player for the Cowgirls. They ran two setters (Huckabee and Calhoun-Rivera) and saw some nice play from senior libero Karlie Knapek (5.22 digs/set). I was really impressed with sophomore Hannah Langerman who hit 0.333 and seemed unstoppable on slides. The team did seem a little small especially when I later watched the Puget Sound/PLU match and this will be a problem all season. ETBU got to play their first match of the season and it’s always nice to win those 5-setters. Still, I thought HSU played better at times with ETBU benefiting greatly by the HSU errors. ETBU, for the most part, played two setters (freshmen Johnson and Smith) and also had a freshman libero (Lillie Hill). Offensively they didn’t have a hitter reach 10 kills but received contributions from a number of players. Hope Shipp led the team with 11 points and tied Allie Fennell with 9 kills. In the end, ETBU were just too consistent for HSU in their match. With the 4-set win over HSU, LeTourneau moved to 3-0 on the season. LETU hit 0.198 in the match and held HSU to 0.040. Kianna Crow led the team with 12 kills and 13 points (also had 15 digs). Skylar Fowler was nearly flawless as she had 11 kills with only one error for 12 points on the night. Samantha Winkel led the team with 16 assists while libero Courtney Edge led the team with 23 digs.

I mentioned the Covid postponement between Whitman/Whitworth, which left only “The Battle of the South Sound” match between Puget Sound (UPS) and Pacific Lutheran. These schools are only 10 minutes apart and are one of the really good rivals in the West Region. Both of these teams are in my Top 10 and I came away impressed with the power on display from both teams. If you look at the box scores, one thing jumps out and that is I think everyone played from both teams. Heck, I think I may have been listed with a kill (and three errors) on the UPS box score. I saw an interview with PLU coach Kevin Aoki and he said (paraphrasing) that win or lose they are just happy to finally be playing. I’m not sure if these coaches just wanted to get everyone involved that they could with these matches or not but special shoutout to the scorers in this one. I know UPS worked in all four of their setters in this match while PLU had Emily Dulaney running a 5-1. That’s a big advantage for PLU and it had to contribute to their 4-set victory. UPS was led by Jordan Holman (played 3 sets) and Jena Williams (played 2 sets) with 6 kills. Katherine Carley led the team with 8.5 points. I didn’t specifically watch the libero position for UPS but no one had over 6 kills so I have to assume they were swapping out that position, too. Just an interesting thing to do but you have to admire getting everyone touches on the volleyball. PLU were led by freshman Sianna Iverson with 18 kills and 19 points. Believe me, when she attacked the ball, you took notice. Dulaney had 43 assists and was 3 for 3 on her attacks. She also had 4 aces on the evening. Halle “Pong” Hetzler had 22 digs in the match. The next night saw a rematch between these two teams and PLU came away with the sweep. UPS actually played less players and focused on just two setters (Blumenfeld and Ayau). Chloe Akiona-Bannan played libero after only getting in one set the night before. Just too many attacking and service errors in this one from UPS to put up any real challenge on the night. Lauren Wilson led the attack for PLU with 12 kills and 16 points in this match. Wilson also tied Hetzler in digs with 12.

Some general comments from my Match Day article on Friday that I thought I would repeat here:

• Really need to get Live Stats working from the start in these matches. It really hurts my viewing and reporting. Remember, it’s all about me.

• Kind of cool that the first all DIII West Region match went to 5-sets.

• The not changing sides is a little weird. Especially in the fifth-set. At one point in the PLU match the announcer (and me) couldn’t figure out if PLU won or had just taken a timeout.

• Why did the Friday PLU/UPS match get started so late? You are 10 minutes from each other!!!! (Update: Received word the UPS bus broke down.)

• The PLU/UPS announcer actually claimed that there may have been 7 players on the court when he didn’t see that a late touch had been called. 7 players!?!?

• Quite a few times a freshman would roll the ball back to the server not realizing that we don’t do that in college.

• PLU had cutouts in the stands but they don’t pull their curtains far enough to the side to let them see who is serving. Seems kind of rude.

Looking forward we’ve got the official start of the ASC and the SCAC this week. On Tuesday McMurry will host Sul Ross State while Howard Payne will host Mary Hardin-Baylor. Both will be double-headers. Friday sees the start of the SCAC as St. Thomas will host TLU for two matches, Southwestern will host Dallas for two and Colorado College will be at Schreiner for one match. I know that the SCAC will not have fans in the stands but it seems like media members should be allowed to attend that Southwestern match. Heck, I’m 20 minutes from the University of Dallas. Can you guys just pull the bus around to my house and pick me up on your way down? The NWC continues their play with the Washington State schools in action this weekend. I think the Whitworth/Puget Sound match should be really telling. Whitworth lost the most statistics of any team in the West Region this past season but always seem to do well. I think that Southwestern/Dallas match is the only one during the week that has two teams from my Top 10 list.

That’s it for the Wrap-Up. Lots of West Region volleyball this weekend that I hope you can enjoy on the stream or in person.