Week 1 of the season

Wow! What a whirlwind start to the season! We opened at home against Emory on September 1. As expected, Emory was an extremely worthy opponent, and our fans were treated to some great volleyball! Although we came up just short in each of the three sets, it was obvious that this young team was up to the challenge of playing the number three ranked team in the country, and that was after what I hope will end up being the saddest part of our season. During hitting warm ups only minutes before game time, one of our players, Jenn Tinnell, suffered what turned out to be a season ending injury. So, the fact that the team overcame their emotion over seeing their teammate in pain and several people being put in positions that we had not practiced says a lot about the resilience of this group. It is still not easy on any of us to have Jenn on the sidelines, but she has been working diligently at rehab and is by far our biggest fan right now! Here are a few pictures from the match.

This team has a lot of fun together!

Sarah with one of her 7 kills

Kristin, Erin, and Claire preparing to receive serve

While the Emory match could have been a full week in itself, that was only the beginning. We hit the road the next night to play at Covenant College. After a winding drive up to Lookout Mountain (if you want entertaining stories, ask Claressa's grandparents about their drive in their motorhome or Stephanie's mom about the curvy trip to Wendy's), we brought home the victory in four sets. Back to the gym for one day of practice, and we were on the road again!

On Saturday and Sunday, we played four more matches (Piedmont, Birmingham Southern, Rhodes, and Sewanee)! Six matches in one week is definitely not the norm, and our bodies felt it by the end. We ended up beating Piedmont and Sewanee and losing to Birmingham Southern and Rhodes. Rest for the weary was warranted, but we only had a day before we would hit the road again to face Brenau.

The match against Brenau turned out to be a thrilling five set victory with great passing and great offensive production from all of our hitters. It made for a late night getting home, but we were all happy to bring home the "W"!

In addition to all of the great volleyball, we were fortunate to see a number of family members at our matches this weekend including at least three players getting surprised by their parents' efforts to make it to matches. We are so fortunate to have such great support by so many!

Now, we get to play at "home sweet home" again this weekend with five matches in our beautiful Cage Center! We would love to see you all there!