The Goshen College women’s volleyball team approaches the midpoint of their season with a record of 1-8 in conference and 6-19 overall. While the team will be looking to improve in some areas moving into the second half of conference play, they have also experienced several successes and highlights that they’ve been deliberate about working towards.
We’re working on getting 1% better in the gym every day
— Alaina Wolfe
Brown currently has the teams’ second highest stats in kills and service aces, with 157 and 25 respectively. “I think the team has been really successful in forming relationships and just really coming and bringing it every day at practice.”
Brown noted the difficulty of practicing six days a week, but said, “our team really does it, especially with the pretty heavy preseason schedule, playing multiple tournaments in Nebraska before school started.”
Being halfway through the conference season, the team will be playing each conference team one more time. This includes University of Saint Francis, the teams’ only conference win thus far. Both Brown and Alaina Wolfe deem the 3-0 sweep at Saint Francis personal highlights from the season.
Wolfe, a sophomore criminal and restorative justice major, said that throughout the season, “We really started to work on our second scorecard, which is something that our record doesn’t reflect as a team.”
The ‘second scorecard’, according to Wolfe, is based on culture and relationships within the team. “We’re working on getting 1% better in the gym every day, so whether that’s building relationships with our teammates or doing 1% better in a certain skill, we’re working on getting better every day.”
In terms of goals for the remainder of the year, Brown said, “Looking ahead, I think the team is looking to improve on offense, putting down some more balls.”
Wolfe echoes the importance of their terminating on offense, and said, “We’re going to look to improve our serve receive just a little bit. I think we’ve been struggling the last past few matches, overall as a team.”
“The big goal was the conference win, and so getting that one under the belt, and pretty early, was a big deal,” said assistant coach Wyatt Bollinger.
Bollinger noted that aside from the conference win, the team goals were “somewhat immeasurable.” Win totals or objectives on the stat sheet were secondary to the improving in parts of the game that the numbers don’t reflect: closing gaps with opponents, minimizing team errors, and team chemistry.
Bollinger felt that enjoying the game and process was paramount to what the team was about this year, saying, “we’re not the biggest team, we’re not the strongest team and we’re going to play some tough opponents, so it’s important to be able to find joy.”
When asked about his personal season highlight, Bollinger said, “It’s probably Sadie [Brenneman’s] 1000th kill, right? Who didn’t love that?”
The team’s next game will be on Oct. 12, where they will play away at #14 Grace College.
