Women’s volleyball is officially back on campus. After going 2-2 this past weekend at the Viking Classic, the team steps onto the court this fall with a new identity: young, gritty and determined to grow. After graduating several seniors over the past two seasons, the Vikings enter the year with fresh new faces and a shared goal of not only winning, but building something bigger than themselves.
The rebuilding process started this past summer. Athletes followed strength programs, logged conditioning runs and even jumped into sand volleyball leagues to keep their skills sharp. They also prepared for the grueling preseason “300 test,” a sprinting drill designed to mimic the physical demands of long rallies. Junior Alyssa Millan has gone through three 300 tests and knows the importance of training for those long rallies that are inevitable as the season progresses.
“It’s the endurance of pacing yourself,” Millan said. “You’re going to get exhausted when there’s really, really long rallies, and how are you gonna come back and slow down your heart rate when you’re immediately having to go to the next serve?”
The training has been crucial for this young roster. Many positions are open to the first-years, and the team is learning how to play together as a unit with these new faces. While the team is still in early stages and experiencing some performance fluctuations, the freshmen are able to bring something new that this team is desperately looking for.
“It’s only been a couple of weeks–that’s why it’s kind of been up and down,” senior captain Alexis Richards said. “We’re just in the beginning stages. And it’s so great because everyone is so versatile. You could be in this position one day, another day you’re going to be in the opposite spectrum, almost.”
They have not only been training for the game physically, but in their minds as well. One of the biggest challenges so far has been the team’s mental game. Volleyball is just as much a mental challenge as it is an athletic one, requiring focus, resilience and quick decision-making under pressure.
Varsity competition comes with that pressure, and the team has had to learn how to maintain confidence through tough matches. In early tournaments, the Vikings posted promising wins, including a 2–0 day in Springfield and a 2–1 finish at the Lady Blue Challenge, but they also dropped back-to-back matches to No. 13 UW-Platteville at home and unranked Coe College soon after.
“We realized that a lot of us have our confidence from each other, but we also need to have that more within ourselves,” Millan said. “So kind of just change the mentality of not so much focusing on the loss, but what we learned.”
To meet those challenges, the team has leaned into its culture. On the court, their culture is defined by two words: unit and grit. Both mottos are emblazoned on practice gear and woven into the team’s identity. The team’s culture prioritizes unity, hard work, mutual support and collective growth, with a strong emphasis on working together towards shared success.
“It’s not playing that individually because obviously we all have individual goals,” senior Mallory Coley said. “I think it’s just that unit play of making everything go together to make one big collective working machine. You could put that in terms of making sure that all parts are turning the correct way, and just putting it all together.”
Growth is the central theme for this season. With a young roster, new leadership and a challenging schedule, the Vikings see this year not as a rebuilding season, but as a foundation for what’s to come.
“I think we’re only going up,” Richards said. “Even though we have lost these past two games, you can ask our players, our teammates, our coaches, every single time we were getting 1% better, every single day.”
