The Blugold women’s volleyball team will take little personal credit for the success of their season. Coach Kim Wudi said she has no problem saying it is because of all the hard work the girls have put in.
“I think the success that we had this year is a credit to the fact that they decided in the spring that they were going to work hard in the off-season and they were going to come into this season ready to play,” Wudi said. “We have great juniors and seniors who are great leaders on our team. I think the success of the season has been a credit to their leadership as well.”
The Blugolds won the Wisconsin Intercollegiate Athletic Conference this past weekend for the first time in program history. This win earns the team an automatic bid to the NCAA Championship beginning Nov. 8.
The Blugold women beat UW-Whitewater 3-1 on Friday and their success continued Saturday when they beat UW-Stevens Point 3-0.
The match against Stevens Point was close for all three sets, but senior Amy Bomgren said that after winning on Friday the team felt confident.
“For some reason we had this feeling before the match,” Bomgren said. “We were really calm about it. Nothing really fazed us during the match. We just kept playing and we did our thing on our side of the net and we got it done”.
The team had lost to both Stevens Point and Whitewater earlier in the season but Wudi said that at this point in the season the girls had enough self-motivation to keep them playing hard.
“I just tried to keep them focused on one point at a time. We needed to make sure that we’re scoring points, but we can’t get into a situation where we’re trying to force ourselves to score points,” Wudi said. “I was trying to keep them confident.”
The Blugolds’ record is 22-11. Junior Kelly Schuh said that much of the season’s success can be attributed to the closeness of the team. All of the players wanted to win for each other, not for themselves.
The Blugolds will play seven teams at the St. Thomas
Regional (Minn.). The ladies are practicing and getting ready to play against the best teams in the region. Schuh says their whole season has been practice for the team.
“We haven’t changed our game plan or anything,” Schuh said. “We are just working on what we do best to beat the people across the net from us.”
The Blugolds will play Wartburg (Iowa), St. Benedict (Minn.), Dominican (Ill.), Northwestern College (Minn.), Stevens Point, Cornell College (Iowa) and St. Thomas (Minn.). Of the seven, the Blugolds have not played Wartburg or Dominican yet this season.
Although they will be playing some talented teams, they have confidence in themselves and their team.
“If we just play like we did this last weekend, I don’t think we’ll have a problem,” Bomgren said.
If the Blugolds win this weekend, they will join the other eight regional winners from around the country and play at Hope College in the city of Holland (Mich.) for the final rounds.
