The many hours of hard work put in by the Gannon University women’s volleyball team over the past few weeks paid off Saturda
The team, coached by Matt Darling, consists of a mixture of returning players and new additions. Darling began his coaching career in the early ‘90s, and has been coaching volleyball at Gannon for the past sven seasons. Darling is accompanied by two assistant coaches, Bouaketh Chanthavisouk and Jenn Davis.y with back-to-back wins against Roberts Wesleyan College and Walsh University of Ohio.
“Every team has its strengths, every team has its weaknesses, and we are just going to have to map that out,” Darling said.
While the team may have lost some valuable players, the Knights were able to start the season off with a clean sweep against both Roberts Wesleyan College and Walsh University of Ohio.
The players worked well as a team and the communication between them was phenomenal. One of the big players in this match was freshman outside hitter Jordyn Thiery. While she may be a freshman, Thiery brings a lot of experience to the court; her senior year in high school she was awarded with the District 16 All-City Team. She was also chosen to play in the 2011 OVR High Performance Championship Team and a Gatorade Standout player as a freshman. In Saturday’s game against Walsh Thiery had three kills back to back.
“A goal I have for myself is to make sure I work hard for my team every day,” Thiery said.
Another standout player from Saturday’s game was junior setter Megan Wendel. Wendel was awarded with All PSAC second team her sophomore year, All-Atlantic honorable mention accolades her freshman year, and broke Gannon’s single-season assist mark with 1,276 sets. She had 62 sets in Saturday’s games alone.
“I felt pretty good about the outcome of Saturday’s games,” she said. “Previous practices have been a little shaky and we weren’t sure how we would do this weekend, but we went out there and played Gannon Volleyball and that took care of things.”
Wendel also mentioned that each week at practice the team works on a new a game plan, which was executed Saturday and seemed to work quit well.
The Knights will be participating in the Wisconsin-Parkside Tournament Friday and Saturday in Kenosha, Wis., where they will participate in four games over the two-day period.
The next games will be held Sept. 20-21 when the Knights will participate in the PSAC/Mountain East Crossover Tournament hosted by Gannon in the Hammermill Center.
KRISTEN MARINI
