Youthful spikers gain experience at Utah
SALT LAKE CITY – Despite a loss to the No. 22 University of Utah Utes, a young Utah State women’s volleyball team had a chance to learn Tuesday.
“Our kids have a lot to learn,” said Aggie Head Coach Burt Fuller. “What they have to learn, what they will learn, with experience and time, is when you’re out there and you’re playing against a good opponent, when somebody pushes you, you’ve got to push back.”
This season the Aggies only returned six players on a team of 15, five of them freshmen.
The team is starting three freshmen and has four new players seeing considerable time on the floor, Fuller said.
“We just have to remember how young and new we are on the floor, ” he said. “One of the newcomers is middle blocker Jenna Jordan. Jordan had seven kills in 32 attempts against Utah.
“Jenna Jordan is taking rips on the outside,” Fuller said. “She’s not out there saying, ‘Let me hit into the block.’ She wants to put the ball away. She’s going to get that experience by being out on the floor.”
The experience of Utah made much of the difference in the match, Fuller said.
“They’ve got good kids on the other side and we’ve got young kids on our side,” he said. “We’ve got some growing up to do.”
Serving for the game
Utah’s first serve of the match was an error while the Aggies’ first serve was an ace.
The Utes would go on to make six more service errors in the first game but the Aggies were unable to capitalize.
“I don’t think we capitalized,” Fuller said. “We didn’t capitalize on a whole lot tonight.”
In the match Utah committed 13 service errors but had four aces. The Aggies had eight errors and two aces.
“They were serving pretty tough and when you do serve tough you’re going to get more serving errors, that’s just kind of how it goes,” said Aggie middle blocker Rickie Rigby.
Several times in the match Utah would make a service error only to have it followed by USU a service error.
“Those are the types of things that I think you can’t do as an underdog if you’re trying to come up with an upset win,” Fuller said.
Rigby said, “When it gets tight and we need to make a run, we need to keep the ball in the court. Sometimes we just kind of gave them something to run out of and they went from there.”
Player Diversity
Not only have the new players on this year’s team brought height and youth, they have also brought
diversity.
Last season the Aggies had six players from Utah, six from California and one each from Hawaii, Wyoming and Nevada.
This year, Utah State still has five players from Utah and three from California, but also has players from Florida, Montana, Arizona, Illinois, Wyoming and two from the Czech Republic.
With players from so many different areas, Rigby said it can be difficult at first for the team trying to play together, but there are advantages.
“It’s harder as far as team chemistry goes, but once it clicks, it clicks,” she said. “Bringing that much diversity and having that many new faces is definitely a challenge, but I think that it brings a lot of different skills and attitudes that are all
helpful.
Rigby said, “It helps us kind of look at things differently. The challenge is to try and get us all on the same page and take things from certain people and feed off of them.”
By the numbers
45 – Defensive digs by the Aggies.
29 – Attack errors by USU.
14 – Kills by Utah’s Kim Turner.
13 – Service errors for the Utes.
12 – Years since Utah State has beaten
Utah.
11 – Kills by USU leader Erin Cartwright.
10 – Consecutive victories by Utah over
USU.
8 – Service errors for the Aggies.
5 – Sweeps by an opponent of USU this
season.
4 – Service aces for Utah.
-slbk5@cc.usu.edu