Volleyball needs consistency for success

"‘Stronger for longer' is this team's motto."

So says Suzie Fritz, head coach of the K-State volleyball team, talking about her team's need to shed the recurring roller-coaster style of play during matches in favor of more consistency.

One minute, the team will be up by 10 points, enough to make any school lose faith, and the next minute, the team will be dead even again, fighting once more to win the match. Even scarier is the reverse, when K-State will be in a deadlock for the win and then all of a sudden drop a cluster of points to fall far behind.

This apparent lack of longevity is nothing new to the volleyball team. Last year, nearly every post-match press conference seemed to revolve around the team's inability to string together enough success to gain that oh-so-valuable momentum. This year, however, things are certainly looking up, but they have yet to strain their symbolic necks.

One of the biggest momentum busters of last year's team was the net's apparently magnetic threads. Time and time again, the ball would sail straight into the barrier during a serve and drop down on K-State's side, shifting the advantage to the opponent. And, as Fritz would often mention last year, it would happen at the worst times: when the Wildcats were just starting to put together a run that rallies the team and begins a cyclical motion of earning points from high enthusiasm and feeding off that energy.

But this year, the serving ability is greatly improved, and coach Fritz will frequently make note of an individual player's performance from behind the line and how much that bolsters the team.

Plus, the team has experienced longer sessions of consistent play, which has led to some of the best first and second games, the team has said. The big challenge this year is being able to keep up the dominating play after intermission — the time when K-State has faltered the most this year — giving up huge momentum builders and restoring the hope in the opponents that they have a chance to come back and win.

With the conference portion of the season just starting to ramp up, it is anyone's guess as to how much this will be a factor in the team's performance. Going off of what we have seen so far this season, I have a good amount of confidence that, in a few matches, we will start to hear much less about momentum halters from the team. For Fritz, however, the best offense against stagnation is a good defense.

"I don't ever know if anything is going to happen," Fritz said when asked if late comebacks from opposing teams will occur again, like they did in the match against Texas Tech. "The only thing I know how to do is just prepare to the best of our ability and hope that that puts us in a position to be successful."