Love Out Loud 5

Breaking The Ice

Inside Buuck Athletic Center, Jamie was putting her charges through their paces in the women's volleyball team's first appearance on the court since returning from the NCAA tournament last November. Freshman Maya Maxwell showed her coaches and teammates what made her such a valuable pick-up for Trinity, as her lateral movement in the back, her mixture of serving speeds and angles, and quickness of vertical explosion put her firmly in the 6-position category that the 2019 NACC Coach of the Year hoped more of her returning players could attain. During a water break, Whitney Carlson and Ashley Salcedo talked about their backline compatriot.

Whitney: The new girls are going to push us for time almost immediately. Maya's serve, speed, and ability to spike from the back row is something no one on last year's roster can match.

Ashley: No kidding! For all of her attributes and talent, Katelyn can't kill rallies from the 6 or 5 spot. We might need to be worried about getting significant time during the conference season, but knowing Coach Krueger, she is going to make the freshmen EARN their places in the rotation, like Katelyn and Sydney had to last year.

Whitney: What about Michelle (Mastroianni)?

Ashley: We have Elise (Tyson, team captain) and Paige (Montgomery) returning as setters, and there's always the BIG front row with Alanna (Kemper) and Veronica (Labelle) on the wings and Katelyn in the middle, so there's a bit of a logjam at the position. Why do you think Coach brought her in?

Whitney: Good question. Must be something to do with what she said in the end-of-year meeting about our ability to serve our way back into sets and shut down those point runs which Aurora was able to get on in our conference match last year and Claremont-Mudd-Scripps utilized in the NCAA tournament.

Assistant coach Adrienne Callen blew her whistle to signal to the players the end of break and they returned to the court to work on some front-row plays. Meanwhile, over at Schreiber Stadium, head coach Jill Logan wrapped up the field hockey team's opening training session with a brief discussion of their revamped 2020 schedule and her plans going forward.

Jill: As COVID ravaged through the country last spring, Jamie and I talked over what to do with our schedule for the Fall, since our conference matches would all take place in the Mid-South, where the women's lacrosse team came into contact with it during their Spring break trip. That, plus the suggestions you made after last season to "get us matches our parents can attend!" led me to pull us out of the SAA for the 2020 season. In place of our matches against those opponents, I went ahead and got home-and-homes with St. Norbert, Lake Forest, and Trine, non-conference matches here against DePauw and Wittenberg, the second of which coincides with the Trinity Invitational volleyball tournament, a neutral site date against Alleghany the weekend we go to Trine, and a road fixture at DePauw to wrap up the season.

Caroline Webster (team captain): So are we going to be out of the SAA for good, or is this just a one-year hiatus?

Jill: I'm hoping for good, but to do that we need to be able to build a Midwestern conference with at least six teams. We have four currently, those being us, Norbs, Trine, and Lake Forest. The athletic department has drafted Deacon Schmidt to help me with bringing this to fruition, based on his knowledge of Division III schools within the Lake Michigan footprint of Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana, and Michigan and their likelihood to sponsor the sport given their student demographics and institutional cachet. My hope is that we'll be able to invite some prospective colleges and universities to matches involving our foursome as a means of getting the discussion going and that a decision can be made to found our new conference by the time of the D-III Field Hockey Final Four.

Savannah Stark: When do the two of you plan to meet?

Jill: That's a problem. His schedule for the next three weeks or more is pretty jam-packed between Peer Ministry Orientation, services, an on-campus wedding, Synod Assembly, and another project the athletic department wants him to oversee. My BEST bet right now is possibly Wednesday since we don't have practice.