Penn State Sports Magazine
Issue link: https://comanpub.uberflip.com/i/1030409
T his is a milestone season for the Penn State women's volleyball team, as coach Russ Rose is in his 40th year run- ning the highly successful program. So how are the Nittany Lions celebrating? By treating it the same way they've treated the previous 39 seasons: as a chance to compete at the sport's highest level. Coming off a 2017 season in which it reached the NCAA semifinals, Penn State is looking to follow a fa- miliar template by fo- cusing on steady improvement in the hope that its me- thodical approach will find the team in peak form when the postseason arrives. The Nittany Lions' ambitions are not ex- actly surprising; they have won seven na- tional crowns under Rose, which is tied with Stanford for the most in NCAA Di- vision I history. It would be a surprise if they didn't see championship contention as the end game. But this year's team is very different than the one that fell to eventual national champion Nebraska in five sets on the first night of last year's final four. Gone are first-team All-Americans Haleigh Washington and Simone Lee, along with five other seniors and two players who transferred out. To fill that void, Rose signed a seven- member freshman class that was rated the nation's best and also brought in transfers Taylor Leath, a former Atlantic Coast Conference Player of the Year at North Carolina, and Bayleigh Hoffman, formerly of Louisiana Monroe. With standouts Bryanna Weiskircher, Nia Reed, Tori Gorrell and Kendall White re- turning, the Nittany Lions have reason to believe that they can compete at the level to which they've become accus- tomed. "I don't see why we shouldn't continue to have high expectations," Rose said at the start of the season. "There are a lot of unknowns when you're playing with so many young people, and I think one of the exciting things about coaching is to see how that comes together." The Nittany Lions' potential was evi- dent at the Big Ten/Pac-12 Challenge earlier this month, but so was the size of the obstacles they'll face as they venture deeper into the season. Against a veteran Stanford team led by last season's na- tional Player of the Year, Kathryn Plum- mer, the Nittany Lions faded at the end of the first set, then dropped the next two, as the fourth-ranked Cardinal completed the sweep at Maples Pavilion. But the next night, facing an 18th-ranked Oregon team that was coming off a 3-1 upset of No. 1 Minnesota, the Nittany Lions put together a sweep of their own. One of Penn State's new players came up big in the team's split at Stanford. Kaitlyn Hord, a 6-foot-4 middle blocker, led the Nittany Lions in kills (3.83 per FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH A new-look Penn State women's volleyball team follows a familiar path to improvement | HORD JOE KRENTZMAN & SON, INC. • Buyers and Brokers of Steel, Iron and Nonferrous Metals • Industrial Scrap Buyers • Container Service Available • Large Service Territory Since 1903 Lewistown, PA • Hollidaysburg, PA • DuBois, PA (800) 543-2000 • www.krentzman.net F irst i n S cra p VARSITY VIEWS