First Tournament Preparation

After a long day of playing with my men's team consisting of mostly B-W Alumni, it is time for our first tournament of the year. We play at the All-Ohio which brings the best teams from around the state to compete each year. Stay tuned for updates and highlights.

2010

Whew! I cannot believe our winter break is over, those four months went by quick. We began practice after a few weeks off and now are ready for the 2010 season. We will play a pretty competitive schedule beginning with the All-Ohio Classic at the end of the month. Over the break I took some time to enjoy the holidays, work on some projects around the house and even catch-up on some volleyball recruiting (spent a few days in Chicago shopping and watching some guys in Naperville). Hope everybody enjoyed their holiday break!

Home Tournament Sunday

The Baldwin-Wallace College Men's Volleyball Club ends the pre-season Sunday as the B-W Men take on some USAV Adult and College Alumni teams from greater Cleveland. The 8th annual Winter Warm-up Tournament hosted in the Lou Higgins Center on B-W's campus is a great fundraiser, but also serves up great competition. The men leave campus for winter break after the tournament and will return to campus in mid-January to begin the regular season. Stay warm!

Pre-Season Volleyball Tournament

We began preparation for the MIVA Conference play and the NCVF Nationals at the annual pre-season tournament at Grove City College. After a slow start versus Gannon University (split matches), we beat a talented IUP team in the first game and lost a thriller in game two. The third game was a test against some talented GCC alumni and one of our former alumni, Kevin Moskal (1st team All National Tournament in 2009). After splitting the first two games and needing a third game to decide who will advance to the playoffs, the Yellow Jackets stormed to a 15-7 victory behind the excellent serving of freshman, Eric Potapenko. Next weekend the men will play a home tournament against some local USAV teams and our own alumni. Stay tuned as the Men's Volleyball Club prepares for the 2010 season.

Happy Thanksgiving

I hope everybody had a good Thanksgiving and enjoyed their time off from work and school! Our season begins this weekend with a pre-season tournament so this week of practice will be trying various lineups that will enable us to be successful as we prepare for the season. It will be a good test against some quality clubs and alumni teams and should give us a better idea of our talent level. We played our alumni and won two games and lost three, but showed a lot of promise for the season. Stay tuned for comments and photos from our tournament this weekend.

Alumni Scrimmage

Last night was a chance to play a competitive set of games versus the alumni (including me). Very eye opening and an opportunity to see where we need to improve as well as what we do well. When we practice and play hard, we are very difficult to beat given we have a tremendous amount of talent, but when we take points off and decide not to play to our potential, we cannot compete with our alumni. They beat us the first three games, but then we rebounded to win the final two games of the evening. Highlights include tough jump serves and somewhat scrappy defense that will get better as time goes on and we passed decent out of serve receive throughout the night. There is no doubt we miss our 1st and 2nd team All National Tournament Team selections, but we have talented guys to step in. Back to practice this evening to work and improve our skill level.

Brown and Gold Day on Campus

Today is brown and gold day on campus as the pep rally is this evening in the gym. The President, winter sport student-athletes, Athletic Director, cheerleaders and students will all be in attendance for an evening of dunk contests, shootouts and night of school spirit. In regards to volleyball, we continue to work hard on the fundamental aspects of volleyball in each practice which is permitting us to progress quickly as a team. We need to continue to work on serving and serve receive, but that all will come with time. Beautiful day on campus, not like being in Florida which is where i was for a week, but I will take this in November.