If you don't want to get SLU volleyball player Megan Boken mad at you, it's best not to say her team is going through a rebuilding year after losing four starters from last year's NCAA squad.
"I feel like it has the connotation that we're taking a year off," she said, "that we're not going to be good this year. It gets under my skin a little bit because I think we have the talent. We did obviously lose our core. We lost a great setter, a great outside (hitter), a great right (-side hitter), a great libero, but we have people here to fill the spots. There's a whole new dynamic now."
Whether you want to call it rebuilding, reloading or something entirely different, the reality is that this year's SLU volleyball team will look vastly different from the ones that reached the NCAA tournament the past two seasons and last year was ranked as high as 16th nationally. Gone are Sammi McCloud — a third-team All-American who's now playing in Europe — Bridget Fonke, Whitney Behrens, Whitney Roth and Sally Warning, who were fixtures in the SLU lineup since arriving in coach Anne Kordes' first recruiting class. Most of them were pressed into service as freshmen and became the heart of the emerging Billiken program.
They're now gone, leaving Boken as the lone senior, one of two returning starters and one of the few players on the squad to have seen significant action. The dominance of last year's senior class was such that it was hard for the team's youngsters to get much court time.
Now, there's no one to stand in the way of a group that Kordes thinks is very talented — the incoming freshman class was ranked 18th by one publication — but obviously still learning.
"We're going to have a team out there where the majority are freshmen," Kordes said. "But the way our recruiting has gone, we've been able to get some of the top recruits in the country to come to SLU. With so many young kids on the floor, we're going to learn a lot throughout the year. We'll be doing a lot of learning even during matches. We have to get ready for a lot of battles."
That was evident last weekend, when SLU went 1-2 in a tournament in Fort Wayne, Ind., with the two losses going five sets. SLU opens its home season tonight with the Marcia E. Hamilton Active Ankle Challenge at Chaifetz Arena. The Billikens play Creighton at 7 tonight, then Wake Forest at 9:30 a.m. and Iowa at 7 p.m on Saturday.
Despite having eight freshmen on the roster — and potentially starting four — SLU was still picked to finish second in the Atlantic 10 and got some votes in the preseason coaches poll. What experience the team has is on the outside, with Boken and junior Alyssa Deno, the other returning starter. Kordes has given the keys to the offense to a freshman setter, Hannah Kvitle, just as she did with Roth in 2006. Freshmen Andrea Beaty and Carly Schumacher started last weekend. Another freshman, Lauren Baumet, an outside hitter from Indiana, was projected as a starter but tore an ACL in the preseason and is out for the year.
"We can be just as good as we've been in the past," Boken said. "We're not going to lay down and die. We might have to fight a little harder for wins, but we definitely are going to work for it."
