Excited Skylights open NAIA season today in Great Falls

The Montana State University-Northern volleyball team has been together since the beginning of August. The Skylights, who are coming off their best season in a decade, have been through two-a-day practices, conditioning and hard work. They’ve been through an intra-squad scrimmage and a team retreat.

Today in Great Falls, however, the Skylights get to try something new in 2013 — they get to play a match against a real opponent.

Northern opens its season today against Midlands University of Nebraska. The match is part of a two-match night as the University of Great Falls will also face Midlands tonight at the McLaughlin Center.

And while MSU-N head coach Bill Huebsch says practice has gone extremely well so far, he’s curious and excited to see how his talented team performs in the opening match of the season.

“We’ve been practicing like we’re in midseason form,” Huebsch said. “It’s gone really well. Training has gone really well, and the girls are playing really good volleyball right now.

“But that’s practice and that’s against each other,” he added. “We need to get out there and face an opponent and really see where we’re at. The girls are excited for this first match, and I’m really excited to see how we do right out of the gate.”

Northern, which went 10-6 in the Frontier Conference, and 18-10 overall in 2012, is hoping to build on the momentum it created during a magical ride to the Frontier title match last November in Butte. And while the Skylights have already done that by completing a successful training camp, today marks the first real test in what has the potential to be a very exciting season.

“We’re going to get tested right away,” Huebsch said. “Midlands is a very good team. They have a lot of height. They are young, but very talented and they are big. We don’t know a lot more about them, but we understand they will be a very strong opponent.”

Indeed, Midlands is picked to win the Great Plains Athletic Conference this season. The GPAC is a talented league when it comes to volleyball, so the fact the Warriors were picked to finish first says a ton about the team the Skylights face in their opener.

But Northern figures to be formidable, too. The Skylights return core group of very talented starters, including First-Team All-Conference standout Abby Nicholas (6-0) who played mostly in the middle last season and racked up 379 kills, 69 blocks and 45 service aces in a breakout campaign. Also back for Northern is outside hitter Kelsey Williams (5-10), who will start for the third straight season. Williams totaled 286 kills during a strong junior season. Two of Northern’s floor generals return as well. On the defensive side of the ball, senior Holly Cartwright will start for the third straight season at libero, while senior setter Joni Nagy is back for her second season at MSU-N. Cartwright racked up 552 digs a year ago and made a strong case for the libero of the year award, while Nagy totaled 883 assists last season to along with 161 kills. In the middle Haley Russell (5-11) returns after earning 59 blocks a year ago.

With a talented returning group, as well as a lot of depth, and excitement surrounding the program at an all-time high, the Skylights are ready to get things off to a great start.

“This team has high expectations,” Huebsch said. “They have set a lot of goals for themselves. They know they can be really good this season. But we have to stay in the moment. We can’t look ahead. We want to keep getting better each day. This first match will tell us a lot. But we also realize we’ve got a really tough schedule ahead of us before we even get to conference play.

“But we’re really excited to get out on the floor against an opponent, to play someone other than ourselves,” he added.

Today’s match between MSU-N and Midlands starts at 3 in Great Falls. The Skylights are back on the road next week, visiting Spokane for the Cascade/Frontier Challenge.