Unlikely champs play with nothing to lose
There was a moment in late October when it looked like the season had passed the women of the Utah State volleyball team by. A month of close losses and questions of “what if” yielded to feelings that a season begun with great expectations was coming to an abrupt and disappointing end. An end not with the “bang” of a conference championship that the team’s four seniors would have wanted to end their careers on, but a whimper of woulda, coulda, and shouldas.
A month later, that whimper is little more than a distant memory, as the four seniors of Utah State’s volleyball team (24-8, 9-7) have rallied their team to win nine of the last ten matches, in the process shocking the nation by winning the Western Athletic Conference championship with an upset over No. 3 ranked Hawaii. Christine Morrill, Chelsea Fowles, Shantell Durant and Katie Astle helped to not only snap Hawaii’s winning streak of 62 straight sets and 23 straight matches, but qualify their Aggies for the NCAA tournament.
“It’s a great capstone for our seniors,” said Aggie head coach Grayson DuBose. “They’ve come in and have played a lot of volleyball here and had a lot of success over the years, and it’s nice to see their hard work get rewarded.”
Senior libero Christine Morrill said the last month of play will go a long way toward solidifying the reputation of Utah State volleyball.
“I think for us as seniors being able to go (to the NCAA tournament) this year is really going to end things the way we wanted to coming into this program. Being here for all four years and just seeing it rise like this is really emotional, and I think being able to go is just really exciting for us.”
Those seniors almost didn’t have the chance to end on such a high note, despite beginning the season strong. They jumped out to a 13-0 record, in the process defeating in-state rivals Utah, Weber State and Brigham Young. The team garnered national attention and received votes in the Top 25 poll, and was poised to break into the ranks of the national elite when the school played host to a regional tournament in late September.
But an upset loss to Utah Valley began the Aggies’ midseason slide, as the team lost six of the first nine matches in WAC play – including two straight set losses to nationally ranked Hawaii. With their season, and their careers, coming to a rapid conclusion, Utah State’s seniors weren’t about to let their legacies slip away, however, and rallied their younger teammates in an improbable late season run.
“I wouldn’t say there was a spark or a moment, but I just think that we have just really come together and are really confident in each other right now,” Morrill said of the past month of play for USU. “I think realizing that it’s our last moment as seniors, and since there’s four of us on the court, it’s just showing.”
DuBose said, “I think our seniors just started to figure out, ‘hey, this could be the end, and lets see if we can go out with a bang.'”
The entire nation had a chance to see USU’s renewed confidence last Wednesday night, when the Aggies went into the WAC Title game as a heavy underdog to No. 3 Hawaii. Playing with what senior Chelsea Fowles described as a “relaxed” disposition, USU rattled the Rainbow Wahine, outhitting the girls from the Islands .301 to .235. It wasn’t just the four USU seniors getting in on the action either, and according to Fowles, the renewed sense of confidence has had the greatest impact on the team’s younger players.
“We were so relaxed,” Fowles said. “Everyone thought we were going to lose that match. And we should have – technically speaking, we should have lost that match. But we were so relaxed, and I think that’s a big deal with our team because we have a lot of young girls on the court. It helps a lot for them knowing they can play relaxed and it’s not a huge deal if they make a mistake because we were supposed to.”
Of course, it’s easy to believe you can win when you’ve done it before, and despite losing to Hawaii in both match-ups this season, USU’s seniors knew all along that the seemingly unstoppable Rainbow Wahine could be stopped. After all, they had beaten Hawaii on the road as freshmen in 2007, and knew the Aggie team of 2010 was even better than the one they played on back then.
“We knew it was possible and I feel like we have a better team this year than when we beat them when we were freshman,” Fowles said. “We’re a lot more developed as seniors now, and I just think that we didn’t spend too much time dwelling on the whole thing. It could have been our last match and we wanted to play well and it worked in our favor.”
Having played so well during the last month, Fowles couldn’t help but speculate how high the team could have risen in the national rankings had the girls played with the same sense of urgency all year. But what’s done is done, she said, and the team isn’t dwelling on the past. With their eyes now turned west toward a Friday showdown with seventh seeded and No. 4 California, the four seniors of USU will look to harness their renewed sense of confidence and turn it into another upset victory.
“It’s just so exciting,” Fowles said. “Everyone thinks that we’re going to lose in the first round, but if we played like we played against Hawaii, we won’t.”
Utah State will play California at 8 p.m. MT. The game will be streamed for free at CalBears.com.
– adam.nettina@aggiemail.usu.edu