Volleyball Player Blog

Entry #10, Jolene Slagter (Jr., Roseville, Minn.)

This was a very busy week for USD women’s volleyball team. After a weekend in Iowa, we were back in the gym on Monday to prepare for our game against Kansas State the following day. Our match against Kansas State was a bit of a rollercoaster. We would play really good one game and then have a bit of a let down in the next game. We did end up losing in four games, but are proud of ourselves for taking a game from a team that has had a lot of success over the years. Overall our match did build confidence, because we did do some really great things against them. On Wednesday we practiced for our game against Milwaukee on Friday. We felt that we were prepared and ready to play when we stepped on the court in Milwaukee. However, when we started our game most of the players were not playing to their potential. We were not playing together, holding ourselves accountable for the way we were playing, and we had no leadership on the floor. It was the worst performance we have had yet and ended up losing in three to a team that we should have beat. We played again in a couple of hours and after our coach gave us some inspirational words we were determined to play to our best of our ability and strive towards competitive greatness. We decided to not focus on the outcome of the game but on competitive greatness. We played Marquette next and put together a much better performance, but lost in three. We still had many things that we needed to improve on and we were determined to put together an even better performance the next day in our match against Western Michigan. We knew that Western Michigan would be a tough team to beat, but we knew we were going to put ourselves in a position to win. We lost in four, but we were very pleased with our performance, so it did not even feel like a loss. We had fun while we played and we played as a team instead of as individuals. We are now excited to win some home matches!

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