At the end of last season, volleyball fell short at the Western Athletic Conference Tournament. This year, they plan to win it all.
Head Coach Ijeoma Moronu Alstrup is entering her third season at the helm of the Wildcats and said she always prioritizes fundamentals in her coaching style, but this year’s team takes it a step further.
“We always focus more on the process,” she said. “But I think this year we’re just not afraid to say we want the win, and we’re gonna do whatever we can to do it.”
Hannah Gonzalez, junior middle blocker from Lucas, said the team has lacked a competitive drive in her previous two seasons but now sees a big difference in this year’s roster.
“We’re bought in,” Gonzalez said. “We talk about winning a WAC championship every single day. We make sure we talk about it because if you don’t talk about your goals, you’re never going to achieve them.”
The roster is more experienced than it has been in recent years, but two new freshmen have joined the team and helped increase the competitiveness. The freshmen are Aliyah Jowers, pin hitter from Abilene, and Hadlee Welch, pin hitter from Lubbock.
In addition to the new freshmen, four transfers also hope to make an impact on the team: Becca Siedenburg, senior setter transfer from Gardner-Webb, Aubrey Beaver, junior outside hitter from Cal State-Fullerton, Erika Gustafson, sophomore middle blocker from Montana State, and Brennan Ramirez, redshirt freshman libero from the University of Texas.
“A lot of them will make a big impact on the court in a lot of different ways,” Moronu Alstrup said about the new freshmen and transfers. “But they’ve done a really good job of coming into the culture, accepting the culture and then making it better too.”
The Wildcats will open their season with a home tournament on August 29 and 30, when they host the University of Incarnate Word, Missouri State and the University of Oklahoma.
“We’ve been driving the spirit of ‘We can be on the top, we can be a championship team, we can be a winning team,’” Gonzalez said. “So when we play against OU, just having that mentality of ‘We are not like the underdogs. We are meant to be here and play with this level of team.’”
