The Texas State volleyball team and its upcoming opponent, South Alabama, will begin their Sept. 25 match with perfect records against Sun Belt conference competitors.
Coach Karen Chisum speaks matter-of-factly when she says her team will finish the match with that accolade intact.
“One of us will no longer be undefeated in conference after Thursday night,” Chisum said. “It’s not going to be the Bobcats.”
In their last two meetings, Texas State won the first match at home but fell in five sets at Alabama. The Bobcats committed 13 service errors in their 2013 loss against South Alabama. Chisum said errors were the culprit for the loss.
Jessica Lewis and Mechell Daniels, both sophomore outside hitters for South Alabama, tallied double-doubles against Texas State in the match.
“(South Alabama) has two young kids, Jessica Lewis and (Mechell) Daniels, super athletes, so it’s going to be a battle,” Chisum said. “It’s going to be whoever makes the fewest errors Thursday night.”
Texas State’s 3-0 record against conference competitors is two weeks removed from a 0-3 finish in the Texas Tech Invitational.
Contributions from Jordan Kohl, freshman right side, Kelsey Weynand, sophomore outside hitter, and Lauren Kirch, freshman middle blocker, have set the team in a new direction. Brooke Smith, junior middle blocker and outside hitter, feels the trio’s contributions to the team should be more noticeable than their age.
“Honestly, when we’re playing out there, when we’re all together, I don’t look at classification,” Smith said. “If you’re working and you’re out there, you earned it. Practices are tryouts every day.”
In addition to contributions from underclassmen, who recently combined for 52 kills and 61.5 points against Louisiana-Monroe, Smith believes the Bobcats had a game-changing epiphany during the matchup against their first conference competitor, UT-Arlington.
“We were just like, ‘screw it,’” Smith said. “We were tired of losing. We kind of just said, ‘why not? Lets just do it.’ We were just hungry and we ate.”
While Texas State is currently second in the conference kills per game and third in digs, Chisum has focused on refining the team’s weaknesses: blocking and defense.
“We go from being very, very good in some areas to very, very weak, so that’s why the focus was on blocking and defense,” Chisum said.
Aside from fundamentals, Chisum believes a large portion of the game is mentality. Constantly pushing for confidence and belief in one’s self, Chisum noted that Tuesday’s practice was one for the record books.
“We had, probably, one of our best practices of the year (Tuesday), and it was all about blocking and defense,” Chisum said. “We have a dig box drill, and it was as competitive as I’ve seen it in a long time. I was extremely pleased with practice.“
With competitive practice comes competitive play. Smith says the Bobcats possess a new mentality that makes the team a force to be reckoned with.
“We’re hungry,” Smith said. “We want to be 4-0. We don’t want to lose. We’re holding each other accountable, so watch out.”
This article is written by Mariah Medina and sourced from https://star.txstate.edu/node/2368
