With the exception of three players and head coach Whitney Shaw, the 2017 iteration of the Allen Community College volleyball team is doing a hard reset on the roster that brought them a 5-25 2016 campaign.
“Turnover is part of the game at junior college so this isn’t the first year that we’ve had a low number of returners,” Shaw said. “We’re looking to improve on last year. We compete in the toughest junior college conference in the nation when it comes to volleyball. We haven’t gotten off to the best start but we have played tough competition. We’re hoping that we can get a couple under our belt here soon and move forward.”
The Lady Devils return three sophomores but outside hitter Callie Watson is missing the season to recover from a torn ACL last spring leaving defensive specialist Samantha Gulley and outside hitter McKenzie Kueker as leaders of the pack this season.
“Kueker and Gulley are trying to take the reins and move people along,” Shaw said. “They share a lot of the leadership responsibility as our returners.”
Even with being short- staffed in the experience department, Gulley feels the new additions to the team have a chance to get the Lady Devils back to being competitive.
“I feel like we have so much more potential than we did last year and it’s just a matter of putting it all together,” Gulley said.
The youth have stepped up as well as freshmen Kirstin Vincent (defensive specialist), Bhana Gony (middle blocker) and Uniontown’s Holly Shinn ( outside hitter) have all shown some leadership and promise.
Allen County has had a rough go of things early in the season as they’re 0-5 so far but Shaw is hopeful that her team will find themselves as they get further into their schedule.
“Right now we’re kind of in an improvement phase,” Shaw said. “Last year it seemed like we started off with a bang and really connected and then fell apart as the season progressed. This year I hope we wait until the end of the season to peak. We’re still trying to work a lot of stuff out. We haven’t perfected a rotation yet and we haven’t perfected our connection yet so we’re hoping that comes with a little more time.”
And Shaw and her team hope that improvement manifests itself in more wins and some postseason play.
“We want to improve upon our record,” Shaw said. “No matter how little or how big, we only want to go up. Also we have a tough conference and a tough region so I want to get back to the regional tournament. We have to beat out three of the teams in our conference with our record to do that so hopefully we are able to get back there this year.”
Allen County will hope for their first win of the season tonight as they take on Coffeyville Community College in their second home match of the season at 6:30 p.m.
Lady Devils bank on new blood for 2017
