Northern volleyball aims to carry over last year's late-season success

Coming off a season with only three wins, most volleyball programs would not have much to hang their heads on as they head into their next season. However, Montana State University-Northern volleyball head coach Jerry Wagner is optimistic for this fall season as the Skylights played their best at the end of the season, including a postseason victory on the road.

"My expectations are really high and that's built off of who I know is coming in and who I know I already have here. So they're very high," Wagner said. "The veterans coming back have been through thick and thin. Came together and we culminated in a real bright spot at the end of the season."

The Skylights will begin their fall camp Tuesday, just a few days after the Frontier Conference released its preseason coaches poll. With eight points in the poll, the Skylights were picked to finish fifth out of the conference's six teams. Last year's regular season and conference tournament champion, the University Providence, was picked to finish first again with 25 points, including five first-place votes. Montana Tech was picked to finish second with 20 points and one first-place vote.

Rocky Mountain College was picked to finish third with 20 points and Carroll College was picked to finish fourth with 14 points. Picked to finish last in the conference behind Northern was Montana Western with seven points.

This past spring season, the Skylights finished 3-19 and 2-18 in conference play. However, they defeated Carroll College, 3-2, in an upset win on the road in the Frontier Conference postseason tournament. Along with a strong finish to the season, the Skylights will bring back all their seniors to play another season.

"They're going to bring experience. They're invaluable because they were such great leaders," Wagner said. "Those guys are great leaders; they work hard. They've been out on the court and they were among the better players in the conference."

While Elissa Lind, Shania Neubauer and Rylee Burmester will be able to play this fall season, Tammy Maddock hurt her knee in the postseason back in spring and needed surgery before this season. Wagner believes that the program's newcomers can make an immediate impact to make up for the loss of Maddock.

"They're all very high-level players and they're actually going to be able to play their positions," Wagner said. "They are bringing good depth and good athleticism to the team and in many cases, some very good court awareness for somebody going from high school to college. They're going to really be a bright spot in the program."

As they head into fall camp, Wagner hopes to get the veterans and newcomers to gel as a unit before their season begins later this month. He also hopes to get the team playing better offense than they did last season.

"I felt last year we were pretty good defensively, but we have to work on our hitting percentage, our side out, our offense. We've got to improve that number, it's not close to where you can be winning on a consistent basis."

But Wagner sees many positives from his team that he hopes to build on in fall camp before the season begins.

"I love the way our ball handling was all last year," Wagner said. "We brought in ball handling, we brought in some offensive players so I like our defense, I like our mentality and I like our ball control."

The MSU-N volleyball team will hold an alumni match Saturday at 5 p.m. at the Armory Gymnasium before starting their season with the Ouaz Volleyball Tournament Aug. 20.