On Labor Day, the 2015 Colorado College volleyball season debuts with a home match against Johnson & Wales University. But for the players, the season and the labor began weeks ago. It began on Aug. 18 with days of training, working to build a formidable team for the new school year. As the team practices their ball control and defense, the coaches strategize to create the right line-up to capitalize on the players’ talents. This season boasts a large number of new freshmen joining the program and the coaches have to, as Head Coach Rick Swan puts it, “find the right mix of kids that fit best together.”
Swan sees the amount of incoming players as a positive sign for Colorado College. “We tend to always bring in a pretty big class,” he said. “This class is little bit larger than most, but there’s just a lot of really good talent out there. CC’s a really hot school right now, and kids are wanting to come here and playing volleyball is also a really big attraction too, so there’s more interest in the program for sure.”
Fans will get a chance to see this new talented class for themselves on Sept. 1. Colorado College played Johnson & Wales University twice last season and both matches resulted in a CC victory of 3-0. But the Tigers are not going into the match up cocky.
“You know, Johnson and Wales has a new coach this year, not sure what their recruiting’s been like,” said Swan of the likelihood of a third straight win against the team “They actually open up this weekend, before we do, so they’ll have a few games under their belt, which will give them a little bit of an advantage I think, but we’ll be ready for them. We’re excited to get on the court”.
The last time the team was on the court was the previous season’s regional semifinal of the NCAA Division III Volleyball Championships. Colorado College, for the second year in a row, played against Claremont-Mudd-Scripps. In 2013, CC defeated CMS 3-1 to move on in the tournament.
Unfortunately, last year, CC did not repeat their victory against CMS. In an incredibly close match, CC lost 2-3, ending their run in the tournament. The Tigers finished last season with a 30-9 record, which was the fifth time in six seasons that the Tigers finished with 30 or more victories.
“I think the biggest thing for us last year was we faced a lot of adversity through injuries and were constantly using a different line up,” said Swan. “From week to week, somebody was out. We lost two kids with major season-ending injuries. And another one of our key starters lost six to eight weeks on an ankle injury so by the time we got to the NCAA tournament we were kind of piecing things together. We had a strong line up but we had kids playing different positions that they hadn’t played throughout the season. So I think, you know, Claremont was a great team…We had our opportunity to win in that match and just weren’t able to put it away and come out on top.”
Despite the flood of injuries, CC still had an impressive record last year and Swan is definitely optimistic about this upcoming season. “I think going into this year, we’re healthy, and we plan to stay healthy,” he said. “I think that we have goals of first winning our conference championship and then making a deep run into the tournament. I think our strength right now is that we have the most depth that we’ve ever had in the program which I’m hoping this year will give us an advantage so that we can rest players more and give more kids opportunity to play.”
The season gets off to a fast start with the Colorado College Classic beginning just three days after the upcoming Johnson & Wales match. The team will quickly have to set the tone for what will hopefully be an exciting and successful season for the Tigers.