The SUNY Plattsburgh volleyball team had a week off from competition while preparing for the upcoming home games against Oswego State and SUNY Cortland.
After winning the last two matches, the Cardinals took the weekend off to recharge and get back into training this week.
Head coach Matthew Lein said the team is riding up the energy from the win last week and thinks it’ll fuel energy for the conference matches on the weekend.
“We always show up for our conference matches ‘cause those are the ones that are most important to us. Especially, we really feel like we owe these teams a little bit of revenge from last year,” Lein said.
Junior Allyssa Rock said it is great for the team to be able to take a break from back-to-back games before diving into the conference matches this week.
The Cards had to exchange scouting reports for the teams to know what they’re going against. The coaches looked them over and the Cardinals have been working on speeding up their offense for the week so the offense players can run faster while the defense players are prepared.
“We know that we’re going to play against a couple of really good teams this week even though we have this long stretch, which is nice but can get boring,” Rock said. “[We’re] just trying to stay focus[ed] with all those practices, and we have to be ready for the matches for a good chance to win.”
The Cards are excited to play home games again this week. Rock said it’s always exciting to have the home crowd cheering for them.
“We love playing on our home floor. It’s helpful to be somewhere where we know and be with our home crowd and have people cheer us on,” Lein said. “Hopefully we play well and give everybody something fun to watch.”
For all the games that the Cardinals play, the coaches record it and post it on video exchange so the team has access to it later. The Cards will review their performance at their weekly meeting and the coaches will correct them on things they can improve on.
Lein said the films are great teaching tools as they can go back to watch how they did and make adjustments to perform better for the next game.
Lein said with only two games this week, it helps the Cardinals to prepare better to go against both the teams this week. Lein wants the team to play to their full potential and not regret later on things they could have done better.
The new change in rotation for the team was still an adjustment for the Cards. Rock has not played in the front row before, so it was a learning experience for her. She said the team is getting more comfortable with the 5-1 system and putting the rotation in action for the games last week definitely helped the Cardinals play smoother.
“Just making ourselves proud of what we accomplished and making our coach proud is enough for us,” Rock said about the team’s expectation. “Just try new things and succeed in new things instead of just doing the same thing we’ve been doing and just showing improvements, in general, are going to be our goal.”
