Category: volleyball

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Had to root against my old high school (sort of)

Now that Central Bucks is split into three school districts, does anyone know where Chalfont kids go?

Tuesday night, the State College high school girls soccer team met Central Bucks South in the state soccer playoffs. State High’s goalie is my buddy Randy Woolridge’s youngest daughter Ginger. The game was played at Central Mountain HS which is about 40 miles from here so I headed over to watch it.

Ginger had a great game including a spectacular save with just minutes to go that preserved a 1-0 win for State High. It was her seventh straight shutout. They will now face a Pittsburgh area school in the state quarterfinals at 1 pm on Saturday. The game is in Hollidaysburg PA about 45 miles from here at 1 pm and I’m going to try to squeeze it in.

I say squeeze it in because the day is a very full one. Penn State hosts #4 Syracuse at 11:30 am Saturday in the opening round of the NCAA Field Hockey Championships. Barring OT, the game will end about 1 PM and I’ll be able to rush to Hollidaysburg for the State High game. That game should end about 3 PM, which will give me just enough time to get home to watch the Penn State at Ohio State football game (I’ll miss the first 15 minutes but that just means I’ll be able to skip all the commercials during the first half as I use TiVo to catch up). Then I’ll rush over to Rec Hall to catch the PSU women’s volleyball team taking on Illinois in a huge match (Illinois defeated Penn State in a match earlier this year – PSU needs the win to reclaim first place in the Big Ten). I absolutely love the opportunity to catch all these sporting events.

Note to Gary and Charlotte: The Big Ten Network will have the PSU/Illinois match on live at 6PM Saturday. Should be a good one.

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102 and counting

The Penn State women’s volleyball team racked up their record setting 102nd straight win and third straight national championship with an absolutely thrilling 5 set win over Texas in the title game on Saturday night. I also heard a rumor that they gained a new young fan from Montclair NJ.

Their championship match was one of the most compelling sporting events that I have ever watched. The girls started slow and dropped the first two sets of the match, marking the first time in the 100+ win streak that they had ever fallen behind 0-2. But they fought they way back, eventually winning the fifth set 15-13 in a set that had both teams trading points back and forth. I’ve heard from a bunch of people who just turned the game on for the novelty of the championship but were overwhelmed with the athleticism of the participants. They’re real believers now.

The match has become an instant ESPN classic and was already rebroadcast three times yesterday. It will also be shown again on Saturday at 10 pm EST Saturday (9 pm CST). It’s worth a view even though you know who won.

It’s hard to appreciate how tall and good these athletes are. I shared this photo with Gary yesterday. It shows PSU coach (and Fremd High grad) Russ Rose with his four first team All-Americans, from left to right Ariel Wilson, Megan Hodge, Coach Rose, Blair Brown, and Alisha Glass, at their All American Awards banquet Friday night. Russ is my size but he looks like a shrimp in this photo. The girls heights in order are: 6’3″, 6’3″, 6’5″, 6’0″.

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Pulled a doubleheader today

PSU had a basketball game at 1:30 this afternoon (we beat Mount St Mary’s) and I felt pretty good so I decided to take in the women’s volleyball game at 4:00.

Penn State was hosting the regional finals against Cal for the right to head to the Final Four in Omaha to defend the national championship that they won last year. Coming into the season, PSU was a favorite to repeat as champs because they returned pretty much everyone from last year’s squad. However, I don’t think anyone imagined how good this team would become. Most volleyball aficionados have labeled the team the greatest women’s collegiate volleyball team ever assembled.

The records that the team has set so far this year are mind boggling. Coming into this afternoon’s match not only was the team 35-0 for the year but they have swept EVERY match 3-0. They are the first team in NCAA history to go through the entire regular season winning every set. They had won 61 straight matches and 106 straight sets (105 this year and the fifth game of the NCAA final last year) over the last two years. both NCAA records.

During NCAA play, the gals continued the dominance that they showed during the regular season winning their first three matches handily. This afternoon’s match figured to be a different story however. Cal was the eighth ranked team in the country (PSU has been the unanimous #1 all season) and looked like a team that wouldn’t be intimidated by PSU. Cal did not disappoint.

In the first set, Cal jumped out to a 7-1 lead over PSU (a set is played to 25) which was the first time that anyone has held a six point lead over PSU all year. The Bears stretched that to 14-7, then played PSU even up over the next few minutes to take what looked to be a commanding 19-13 lead. PSU’s record 106 set streak looked to be over.

That’s when the girls reached down deep for something extra. As the 4000+ fans went absolutely nuts, PSU won 12 of the next 14 points to win the set 25-21 to keep the streak alive. To come back from that far down against a top ten team was monumental. It was probably the best women’s volleyball game that I’ve ever seen. After that set one win, the rest of the afternoon was anticlimactic as the Nits rolled, winning the second and third sets to advance to the Final Four.

Volleyball legend Karch Kiraly was in town to broadcast today’s game on ESPNU (the Final Four is on ESPN2 with PSU’s first match next Thursday at 9PM EST). In this AP story about the PSU women, Karch had a couple of notable quotes:

“I’ve certainly never ever seen something like this in volleyball,” said Karch Kiraly

“If they run the table,” Kiraly said, “they will have to be put up there with any team in any sport as the most dominant season that we have seen.”

When makes this run even more fun is that we might get to do it all over again this spring when the PSU men take over the PSU volleyball courts to start the defense of their national title that they won last year. State College is truly “Happy Volley”.

BTW – I feel pretty good even with the “doubleheader” that I pulled. No major coughing attacks to speak of.

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PSU vs Stanford for women VB title

These two were probably destined to play for the title. PSU ended the season as the #1 ranked team. But Stanford got the #1 seed in the tournament. PSU has now won 25 straight matches with their last loss coming September 15th against, you guessed it, Stanford. Stanford and Penn State are also the only two teams in the country who have made every NCAA tournament.

Stanford needed five games to win their semifinal match against USC, fighting off a match point in the fifth game to do it. Penn State, on the other hand, swept Cal in three, continuing the roll that they have been on since the start of the NCAAs. PSU got stronger in every game winning 30-28, 30-25, 30-16. Cal was actually the first team in the entire tournament to score 20 points on PSU – they have been that dominant.

The finals will be on ESPN2 Saturday night at 9PM EST. Unfortunately, that the same time that I’m having my fifth annual State College Santa Crawl (poor planning on my part). The good news is that I can maneuver the crawl so that we’ll just move from one bar to another between games so we should be able to catch most of the action anyway (weather permitting, that is, the forecast isn’t too good right now).

On a related side note, I was down at the Tavern last Saturday after watching PSU beat BYU for the regional crown when one of PSU’s players, Kate Price (Kate’s the one who went into the stands for that spectacular save that I mentioned last week), came in with some former players. I’ve known Kate for about three years now (her older teammates corrupted her and used to sneak her into some of the local taverns as a minor).

Kate begged me to show the others one of my tricks that I rarely do. It involves someone freely picking a card out of a deck, signing it, returning it to the deck, then shuffling the deck. After giving the deck back to me, I toss the deck into the air and the signed card winds up sticking to the ceiling. I don’t do the trick very often because it ruins the deck. In addition to the one card on the ceiling, the other fall to the floor and just scatter everywhere. Even if you bother picking the cards up off of the floor, they’re usually too messed up to use anymore. But it was near the end of the night, the deck I had was kind of messed up anyway, and Kate had just won a big match, so I relented.

One of the secrets of doing the trick is to make sure that you put it on a ceiling that’s high enough that someone can’t just pull the card down. The Tavern ceiling is about ten feet high so I figured I was safe. Wrong. I overlooked the fact that while Kate is a girl, she’s also 6’4″ tall and a top caliber NCAA athlete. The card stuck cleanly to the ceiling but as her girlfriends stood there staring at the card, Kate just took a running jump and cleanly picked it off of the ceiling. I was caught red-handed with wax stuck to the back of the card. Of course, they still couldn’t figure out how I found the card and got the wax on it, but a little bit of the awe and amazement was gone. Next time I need to remember not to underestimate my audience.

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PA vs Utah

Not the school but the state.

Penn State hosts BYU tonight in a regional women’s volleyball final with the winner advancing to the Final Four next weekend in Sacramento. The #17 ranked Cougars (24-7) will be looking to pull off a huge upset over #1 ranked Penn State (31-2).

Penn State has now won 33 consecutive matches on their home floor and look to be prohibitive favorites to make it the the NCAA championship semifinals for the fifth time in the last 15 years. Penn State is one of only two schools to play every NCAA tournament in the 24 years the NCAA has been hosting the VB championship. Stanford is the other and looks to be one of two schools with a chance to derail the Lions championship express (Nebraska is the other – Neb and Stan are the two schools the own a victory over PSU this season).

As good as Penn State is, they actually look to be a year away from putting their best team on the floor. They lose only one player who is a factor on this time, part-time starter and defensive player Kate Price, and have a very capable back-up already in place.

Hall of Fame coach Russ Rose has been building an incredible juggernaut here at PSU. He’s upgraded the talent on the team every year for the last five years (while winning the B10 title every year too). Penn State has now claimed the freshman of the year in the B10 for six years running. The absurd thing about it is that many of these freshman award winners have found themselves on the bench the following year because the incoming freshman have been even better. For example, the aforementioned senior Kate Price was named the B10 freshman of the year as a front row blocker in 2004. She was out of the starting lineup the next year and didn’t work her way back to the starting lineup until the second half of this season (and she’s only starting because she changed positions to a defensive specialist – she couldn’t break into the front row).

PSU’s starting line-up is now:

6’2″ Sr Kate Price – B10 Freshman of the Year (2004)

6’4″ Jr Nicolle Fawcett – National Freshman of Year (2005), 1st team All American (2005), Big Ten Freshman of the Year (2006), 1st team All Big Ten (2006, 2007)

6’2″ Jr Christa Harmotto – B10 Player of the Year (2007), 1st Team All B10 (2006, 2007)

6’3″ So Megan Hodge – National Freshman of the Year (2006), 1st team All American (2006), B10 Player of the Year and Freshman of the Year (2006), 1st team All B10 (2006, 2007)

6’0″ So Alicia Glass – 1st Team All B10 (2007)

6’2″ Fr Arielle Wilson – B10 Freshman of the Year (2007)

Coming off the bench is Sr Mellisa Walbridge who was 1st team All B10 and a 2nd team All American in 2005 but cannot break into the starting lineup now.

These girls have a good shot at a national crown this year and, barring injuries, should be an odd on favorite to win it all next year.

I’m looking forward to running between Rec Hall where the volleyball battle starts at 6:30 (ESPNU coverage for those who would like to watch) and the Bryce Jordan Center where the basketball team takes on Seton Hall at 8:00 PM (coverage on the Big Ten Network for those who might get the channel).

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Once UCLA writer has the Bruins in a walkover

Some excerpts from his article.

Irvine’s loss could become UCLA’s gain in finals

Penn State’s upset win means well-rested Bruins will face a team primed for a letdown

I had already written most of a column about how epic a national championship match between UCLA and top-ranked UC Irvine would be…But as I was finishing up, I saw the score…

that means it’s likely UCLA will win a national title on Saturday night

In volleyball, all of the elite teams in the country are in the West

Penn State has piled up wins on a much weaker schedule than Western teams

Penn State isn’t going to play out of its mind two matches in a row

This is locker room bulletin board stuff if I’ve ever seen some.

Guess what? It’s already posted on in our locker room. Here are some of the guys reading it before practice today.