November 18, 2009

#14 - Erin Kilroy, So., OH

With a great win against USD last weekend, we were feeling good, looking forward to our matches against University of Portland and Gonzaga.  Being from Portland, I was thrilled to go home!  We flew into Portland Wednesday night, and I anxiously fidgeted in the car as we sat through rush-hour traffic.  We arrived at my house where my mom and dad had prepared a delicious home cooked meal.  I was so excited to share my home with my teammates and coaches.

 

Thursday was game day versus UP.  We were all excited and ready to take on Portland.  We finished on top after battling with them for five games.  We all played well as a team and finished strong to close the match with a victory.

 

Leaving Portland with a win, we headed north to face Gonzaga on Saturday.  Again, we knew Gonzaga was a strong team and were prepared to face the Bulldogs.  We competed for another five game battle, but this time, it did not end in our favor.  Gonzaga took the win in the fifth game with a final score of 16-18.  However, this loss will motivate us to push hard this week and finish conference strong.

- #14 Erin Kilroy

November 10, 2009

#11 - Leanna Ludes, Fr., S

The results from last weekend’s loss to Santa Clara inspired us to work extremely hard in the preparation for the upcoming battles between the two top teams in our West Coast Conference.  We came into practice with the main focus of defense and aggressive serving since those hold the most impact on our play and the success of our offense.

Thursday came very quickly and we immediately rose to the challenge of St. Mary’s strong defense and took the first game.  St. Mary’s provided a strong block against our team, and kept a steady pace competing against us. The brawl continued between us as we rallied back and forth until falling just short in the next three games.

We began to re-focus in practice on Friday in preparation for our intense match against the #2 ranked team in the WCC, the University of San Diego.  We told ourselves to play like we have nothing to lose but still remain focused and determined.  Not to mention the support of fans, friends and family, the gym was roaring with excitement.  Each point of the match we came to center court, no matter what direction the point had gone. We knew we had to play and stay together as one unit in order for things to go in the right direction. These efforts along with the tenacity of every individual of the team played off in the exciting 3 game sweep over the Nationally ranked #22 Toreros!

This win was much needed and will point our strong minds and characters in the right direction for the future weekend against Portland and Gonzaga. 

- #11 Leanna Ludes

October 28, 2009

#16 - Lauren Bergold, Fr., OPP

Coming off two great wins against Gonzaga and Portland last weekend, the USF volleyball team traveled down to southern California to play Pepperdine and LMU October 22-24. I was especially excited to visit the Los Angeles and Malibu area because I knew I would get to see my family after a couple months on my own at college.

Our first match was on Thursday against Pepperdine. The team was super pumped up and we knew that we would have to play smart in order to win. The match was intense and the team fought for every point. In the end we won, 3 games to 2.  Also, we made USF history! This was the first time USF volleyball beat Pepperdine at Pepperdine! It was a great victory that we will definitely always remember.

 On Saturday, we played LMU at their home gym. We won the first game but then struggled and ended up dropping a 3-1 decision to the Lions. Even though the loss was tough and disappointing, it motivated us to give 110% in practice this coming week in preparation for our next match vs. Santa Clara on Friday.

With the second half of conference still to come, we know that we need to come together as a team and play up to our highest potential in order to rack up as many more wins as possible!

-#16 Lauren Bergold

October 23, 2009

#5 - Alycia Cox, Fr., OH

After our last struggling weekend with San Diego and Saint Mary’s, we knew this week we needed to turn things back around.  Although losses are never easy or sought after, we learned from our mistakes and our desire to win grew even more as a result.

We began the week with an exciting team bonding that involved kayaking in the beautiful Sausalito Bay. This set our minds in the right direction to act as one firm unit while still enjoying the game we love. We also had the most intense practices of the season so far anticipating how solid we needed to play in the soon fight against Gonzaga and Portland.  Even though we would have the advantage of being home, we knew it would still be a battle.

After a long and concentrated week, Thursday finally arrived.  Our start to Gonzaga was very slow and they ended up taking the first two games.  During halftime we refocused, took a deep breath, and came out much stronger in the third game.  We ended up winning the third game and continuing our rhythm through the easy fourth.  The fifth game poured passion and desire in not letting one ball hit the floor.  With a close score and supportive fans, we ended up pulling ahead and winning the match against Gonzaga.

Realizing that we needed to come out much stronger vs. Portland on Saturday, we had a very focused practice on Friday.  Saturday soon arrived and we challenged ourselves to start off strong among many other technical things.  Unable to find a complete rhythm, we rallied points back and forth but ended up winning the first two games.  They came out a little stronger and making too many errors on our side caused us to barely fall in the close third game.  Knowing they weren’t going to give up, we came out stronger in the fourth game and ended up winning our tenth straight WCC home match.

This battling weekend of success helped set the tone for what we need to do the next weekend with Pepperdine and LMU. We will need to work extra hard in the practices to come but we accept the challenge.

-#5 Alycia Cox

October 14, 2009

#12 - Leinani Keanini, So., LIB/OH

After a tough loss against the University of San Diego Toreros, we were extremely determined to go out and win our second game against the Saint Mary Gaels. Knowing that it would be a little more difficult since we would not be playing in the comfort of our home gym, we knew we would have to pull together to muster up the win.

We came back from our first lost conference game fiercer and more focused on the end all goal of defeating Saint Mary's. Not looking ahead to future games the team tried really hard to put all our energy and focus on the game against Saint Mary's. We practiced long and hard to try and execute game plans, focused on fixing errors that we had done wrong in the USD game and really tried to mentally all get on the same page. Realizing that we did not want another loss on our record we saw the game at Saint Mary's as a redemption. Our team set personal and team goals hoping that would get everyone on the same competitive level so there would be no doubt in anyone's minds that we were here to win.

Finally Saturday night came and we were so pumped and ready to get out on the court and play. We fought hard making many come backs in the game against Saint Mary's never once just giving up on plays or points. Our team stuck together throughout the game no matter what happened good and bad. We tried hard to defeat the Gaels but fell short of a win. Discouraged and once again disappointed we knew things had to change.

Although we had loss our two away games it gave us a stronger and more passionate desire to win. So now our focus will be on next weekend as we try and defeat Gonzaga and Portland here on our home court at the University of San Francisco!

-#12 Leinani Keanini

October 7, 2009

#8 - Sarah Mandala, Jr. OH/OPP

After a long and hard week of practice, USF Volleyball had a very successful week, winning our first conference game against our bay area rival Santa Clara. We swept the Broncos in three, which was a very great start for the conference season!

Since October is breast cancer awareness month, this match was our dig pink game where we raised money to help fight breast cancer.  To honor breast cancer awareness month, we wore pink shirts and encouraged those in attendance to do the same. We have never had so many fans which made the game even more exciting and fun.  I can say that every single member of our team played excellent and we worked well together as a team which is why we were so successful in this match.

-- #8 Sarah Mandala

October 1, 2009

#15 - Erin Bragg, So. MB

After a tough week of practice, Saturday afternoon came around; this meant game time against Cal State Bakersfield.  Our team worked hard all week on raising our level of intensity and competitiveness in hopes that we would have a successful match against the Roadrunners.  We really wanted to end our pre-season schedule on a high note leading into our first conference game against Santa Clara.

On Saturday around noon, our team met in the cafeteria for a pre-game lunch then headed to our locker room to get ready for the game.  We all have our little pre-game rituals so we try to give ourselves enough time to mentally prepare for every match.  A USF volleyball ‘must’ is that we always have a dance party in out locker room after we watch game film.  It helps settle our nerves and get hyped up for the match.

We started the first game with a couple of errors and were never quite able to gain control of the lead which gave Bakersfield the opportunity to win game one.  Although we lost the first game, we showed Bakersfield that we are a team who can compete and come back to fight.  We ended up winning the match in four games and Sarah Mandala scored the last point to tally her 1,000th career kill.  We didn’t realize how close she was to achieving this huge milestone and we were very excited when our coach, Gilad, shared the good news with us in the locker room after the match.

We were really happy we finished our pre-season schedule with a win heading into conference and are looking forward to winning several more matches this year.

-- Erin Bragg #15

September 26, 2009

#3 - Haley Carroll, Sr. LIB

This past weekend we faced two tough opponents starting against Stanford Friday and ending the weekend on Saturday with the University of California. Both teams were ranked top 20 and are known for their fierce competition. I will never forget the feeling I had the morning of our Stanford match. This was going to be the first and last time in my college career that I would play at the powerhouse. With my emotions running high and my adrenalin kicking in, the day seemed to fly by! Before I knew it, I was standing on the court looking across the net at the opposing team. Game one started fast and our nerves still remained. After the first game, we began to settle into our grove and focus on our side. That is when we took game two, making that the first time in USF history to take a game off of Stanford. We fought hard the whole match making every play count but ended up falling short two points each game to end with Stanford defeating us 3-1. Walking away from that game really put our team in perspective. We can play with any team as long as we play together. That was the first match this season that I have felt each player on our team was working 100% for each other, so that the team could reach our goal. Although the outcome was not what we had hoped, the character that we built that night will be the standard for our team this season.

With the emotional loss of Friday nights match, we had to get ready for another hard opponent. University of California has always been a top program and we are not strangers to each other. We have faced them the past two spring seasons and have had some success.  But with a new team on the court we knew it was going to be tough.  We fell hard the first two games but took the 10 min half time as chance to refocus before we went on to the third game. We came out strong creating a 10-1 run giving us a cushion for the rest of the match. Unfortunately that was not enough to pull out the win, but we did not give up that game. We began to show the character we had established in our Stanford match. Fighting till the end we lost 23-25 against the Bears.

Ending the weekend 0-2 may seem like nothing good could come from it, but in actuality a lot of good came from those losses. We look at Stanford match as a success because we established the type of team we want to be all the time. The Cal game put that newfound character to a test but by the end we were starting to find it.

-- Haley Carroll #3

 

September 18, 2009

#10 - Anna Berger, Sr. OH

After practicing Thursday afternoon we were off to Sacramento in three mini vans.  Gilad insisted on taking the scenic route adding a little more time to our trip but this meant we were able to go over the Golden Gate Bridge, an amazing part of living in San Francisco.  We ate dinner at one of Sam’s favorite restaurants when she played club volleyball and then made it to Sacramento. 

On Friday we woke up, had breakfast and went to Sac State to practice.  We had a lot of fun before we started to practice because something we love doing is impersonations of each other so it lightened up the mood before practice started.  After we were done practicing we were leaving and heard that the temperature of the gym was going to 80 to 90 degrees, hotter than a beach day in Orange County, and that’s hot! Right before we left for the gym Michael Jordan was getting inducted into the NBA hall of fame.  It was perfect timing right before we left because the story of one of the best basketball players ever was motivating as an athlete and inspired me to achieve at my highest potential.  Arriving to the gym we watched the end of the Fresno State and Alabama game and started to prepare for our game.  It only took about twenty-five minutes to warm up because it was very hot in the gym.  The game went well; we beat Sac State in three games straight.  Playing together as a team we finally clicked as a unit and we were able to accomplish our first goal of the tournament.

On Saturday we woke up at 7:30 in the morning for breakfast.  After finishing late from our game against Sac State we were all a little tired.  As a treat we got a wakeup call from Gilad at 7:00 AM, mine was “Berger, are you up? Take a shower and be ready to go!” We watched film and were off to the gym to play Alabama.  Our trainer Edgar is a big Michigan fan and the football game happened to start at 12:30 and Edgar doesn’t ask for much but his only request was to win in three games so he could make it back to watch the game, of course we made him wait it out!  After 5 games we beat Alabama.  This showed the team’s character and it helped up dig deep to win at the end of a long match.  We went back to the hotel, rested, watched more film and let Edgar tape us at the hotel so he could see his alma mater beat a rivalry.  Our next match was against Fresno State at 5:00.  We beat Fresno in 3 straight and won the tournament.  Overall it was a fun weekend on and off of the court and we are looking forward to learning and growing from this experience to become a better team as a whole.

September 8, 2009

#6 - Alaina Sully, Jr. S

Looking back on Labor Day weekend, we had four matches that were tough but ones that have showed our team what we need to work on. Every game of every match was competitive and had us all fighting to finish out each one. Though we only won one out of the four, this weekend really showed our character and made us realize that we have a lot of fight in us. We will be working hard this week in practice for our upcoming tournament at Sacramento state. It was great to see that our team already has good chemistry on the court and that all of us are competitive players that want to win.

A highlight of the weekend was the reception with all the players, coaches, family, staff, and friends of the volleyball team. We really got to see how many people support our team and the people who we can depend on. It is really nice, coming from a student-athlete's point of view, to see that there are so many people that are there for you and are excited to come watch you compete. We love all the support!

Overall, the weekend was tough but there were definitely some great things that we can take away from it. Next weekend we will come to Sacramento fighting for some more wins.

- Alaina Sully

September 4, 2009

#13 - Lauren Quach, Sr. LIB

As a new member of the USF Volleyball family, I was very anxious to begin preseason. After getting a taste of spring season, I knew it was going to be tough, but rewarding. It was so much fun getting to know all the girls at Sam's parents' house. They were so nice and the BBQ was delicious. The warm weather made for a relaxing afternoon. We were all lounging in the living room while the coaches and spouses mingled on the patio.

The first day of preseason was definitely a challenge. Testing meant lots of running and lifting. Everyone did really well and I was proud to see how hard my teammates worked. There is very little downtime during two or three-a-days. My teammates have become my best friends and are an amazing support system throughout every practice. Every time I hear "Go Quachie!!!" I am motivated to work hard not only for myself but for them.

These past few weeks have been so rewarding. I feel as though we are ready to represent San Francisco at the University of Oregon in our matches against University of Oregon, Missouri State, and Eastern Washington.

-Lauren Quach