Sacrificing for respect

and future success

Volleyball squad under new leadership dives relentlessly for balls to start climb in MIAA standings

May 20, 2008
 Jake Lloyd
Editor-in-Chief

The mop crew at Kresge Gymnasium must have had to work overtime Oct. 30. That’s because that Saturday morning there was a home volleyball match, against Olivet College. Man, those workers must be thankful the season’s over.

This season, under first-year coach David Saenz, Albion’s volleyball players flung their bodies all over the gym diving for balls, some of which not even Shaquille O’Neal’s wing span could have reached. They displayed the type of effort that has lacked from the volleyball program in the past.

Take the Olivet match as an example:

During the third game, which Albion won 34-32 to clinch the match, Albion players dove on the floor at least 20 times. One point saw Sarah Slamer, Battle Creek sophomore, diving behind the court for an errant dig. Moments later Stacey Tarnowski, Jackson junior, nearly dove into the wall for a ball.

Occasionally players saved points through their effort, and, according to Tarnowski, this helped to build team unity—in addition to helping win games.

“When someone makes a mistake and you’re able to save it, it really builds a trusting and helping relationship between the players,” said Tarnowski, who transferred from Spring Arbor College last year.

Despite winning the same number of games as last season (10), there is a renewed sense of dedication among team members, a feeling that the team may finally be on the road to becoming a respectable Michigan Intercollegiate Athletic Association (MIAA) member.

The Britons defeated Hope College for the first time since 1985 and also won at Adrian, a formidable foe. The two teams finished just a game up on the Britons, who finished 7-9 in the MIAA and in sixth place.

Although Albion, like in past years, lost in the first round of the MIAA tournament, to Kalamazoo, the feeling the players left the court with was much different.

“This year it was more of like, we felt like we gave all of our effort,” Tarnowski said. “We played really well and gave everything we had, whereas last year it was almost like the team wanted to get the season over.

“We’re really showing teams that they have to be scared to play us. It’s kind of showing that we’re not going to be easy to walk over anymore and that they’re going to have to play their best game to beat us from now on.”

When Tarnowski and Eliza Lee, Dexter junior, sat down in early August to interview Saenz for the job, they saw an intense man. They saw an experienced coach—who coaches Tarnowski’s sister during summers—who would be very dedicated to turning the program around. Once the season started, the players were taken aback by Saenz’s intensity. They’d never seen anything like it before.

“I think all of us were a little surprised by his level of intensity, but it ended up being a good thing,” Lee said. “None of us were prepared for how hard he was going to push us, but he definitely saw how good we could be and he was prepared to do whatever it took to get us to play at our potential, and he definitely did.”

Saenz came into the job believing it would be a two-year process to turn the team around and get the players to believe in themselves. He didn’t have much time to work with the players this season on fundamentals and individual skills, something he will stress during the team’s six-week non-traditional spring season, the first organized program current team members will take part in.

“It’s still a learning and adjusting process,” Saenz said. “They just need to keep getting experiences. Then they can start confidently saying that they should win instead right now they’re just at that point where they’re saying they could win.

“Right now, basically, I believe in them more than they believe in themselves.”

The team has many things to work on. “We worked a lot on team defense [this season], but even there we can work on it a lot more,” Saenz said.

But the first step in Saenz’s two-year plan was getting the women to exert the effort that involves diving all over the court and accumulating a month’s worth of bruises in a single game.

“Yeah, we were a little beat up, but it was worth it,” Tarnowski said.

Tarnowski said that in addition to the six-week spring schedule, the team will also weight lift in December and January, and in the summer team members will play in two-on-two beach volleyball tournaments to hone their skills.

These things will only prepare the team better for year two of Saenz’s plan.

“We’ll come in already in shape and ready to start at a better level,” Tarnowski said.

Lee doesn’t see a correlation between last season’s 10 wins and this year’s, and this is not only because the Britons played eight less games this season.

“It definitely feels like a turning point,” she said. “This season was intense, to say the least. You can’t really see it by just looking at the record. It was an amazing season and we got so much better, and we’re already talking about off-season training.”

Which is step two in Saenz’s process.

The non-traditional season will be held in Kresge. Hence more work for the mop crew. They better enjoy basketball season before the spring comes.