Lady Oiler Volleyball looking to continue success

Colchagoff and company ready to improve their 2021 resume

By Collin Frazier

frazierc@findlay.edu

@Collin_53

As the fall season is in full swing, the University of Findlay volleyball team has had a hot start with a 11-3 season. According to Head Coach Wick Colchagoff, the team’s success is not only impressive, it’s historic.

“We’re doing several things really well that bode well for the future,” Colchagoff proclaimed. “Our hitting percentage as a team is pretty high historically for the program here, and hitting percentage correlates really well to winning percentage in terms of volleyball. We also are a tough serving team. We’re second in the conference in aces per game and when we had teams that have done that over the years, they have been very successful too, and our defense is really one of the better defenses we’ve had in the last 10-15 years.”

Of course, even with this amazing start to the season, there is always room for improvement.

“One of the things that coaches always say to their teams, if you watched any of the Olympics coverage whenever they had a microphone in the huddle or talked to the coaches before, they talk about winning the serve and pass game so always need to work on passing,” Colchagoff explained. “We’re serving very well. Our serves continue to get better and so that’s something we want to keep improving on as other teams will keep improving on it during the course of the year.”

“Teams get better at their ball control as the year goes on and we certainly need to do that too,” Colchagoff continued. “The other thing we’ve been working really hard on the last two weeks is being a better blocking team. Blocking is one of the last components that we’re trying to really focus in and refine our technique in because it’s an important part of the game, but it’s not important as a serve and pass. So we worked really hard in the preseason and now we’re starting to focus a little bit more on our blocking and we think we have been coming around.”

One standout player this season is Freshman OH Journey Blevins, who earned G-MAC Player of the Week honors two weeks in a row for the weeks of September 13 and September 20. Although this is an impressive accomplishment, Colchagoff feels this is a team effort.

“It’s a tremendous accomplishment regardless of whether you’re a freshman or senior to get it two weeks in a row,” Colchagoff commented. “One thing I’d like to point out, and I point this out to the team every time we get a player that wins player of the week, they don’t give the player to the week to a team that performed really poorly, so it’s almost like a team of the week performance as well.”

“While Journey was outstanding and led the team in kills those weeks and hitting percentage one week and it was a tremendous individual accomplishment, she didn’t accomplish that by herself. She accomplished it because the team performed at a very high level that week, so we’re super excited that we had a freshman Journey win those honors, but we’re also excited because that meant the team is playing very well in addition to Journey just being an all-out great hitter”

The Lady Oilers completed a big win over Ohio Dominican which is making its mark in the G-MAC.

“Ohio Dominican is an up-and-coming program in the G-MAC,” Colchagoff stated. “They changed coaches a couple years ago. The coach was a successful Division I coach, and because of family reasons, she relocated to Columbus and got the job there in Ohio Dominican. So, she’s been doing a tremendous job with that program.”

UF beat ODU 3-0 on Oct. 8 but lost to Cedarville University on Oct. 9. They play again this weekend at the Midwest Crossover in Indiana. The next home game is against Tiffin Oct. 22 at 7 p.m.

 

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