Smiling from ear to ear I went into Coach Courtney Draper's office Monday night to interview her about the straight sets victory against the Bentley Falcons that had just ended moments prior, the week that was, and the forecast for the rest of the week. Very proud of her nationally-ranked team, Draper expressed “When you can limit your errors, you're going to win more games, it's pretty simple. Hitting a .364 for the night, I couldn't ask for anything more.”
The Eckerd Tritons women's volleyball team has finally been proving, with their back-to-back wins, that they are statistically a better team. After such a devastating loss to the University of Tampa, losing all three sets, it took a whole lot of resiliency to rally the team and bring it together for the match against Barry University in Miami Shores.
“We had a few days to prepare for Barry, it wasn't as quick of a turn around as say Bentley was tonight after Barry, and so after a couple of days the wounds kind of heal a little bit better.”
Finishing up the first round of Sunshine State Conference match-ups with a 4-4 record isn't too shabby. While it may not be the winning record Coach Draper was hoping for, she knows that the second round is looking a little brighter. With the opportunity to play every team at home and on the road, this time around the Tritons will be playing 6 of the 8 second round conference matches at home, and only 2 will be on the road, Draper sees that this “will probably be in our favor because our girls just tend to play better when they are in their comfort zone at home.”
Before jumping right into round two of SSC play, the Tritons get a little break this weekend with non-conference matches against Arkansas-Monticello on Friday, October 16 and North Alabama on Saturday, October 17. While these may not be conference matches, they are still region opponents and thus crucial wins to obtain an advantageous seed in the NCAA tournament at the end of the season.
The match against Arkansas-Monticello will be a home game played at McArthur Center at 7 p.m. Not only will it be an exciting match, but the evening will be fun given that it is the Tritons "Dig Pink Night," where they will be promoting funding for Breast Cancer research.
Coach Draper states that “our girls are really excited, they will be in pink jerseys and we are hopefully going to have a lot of fans, so I think it's going to be a fresh, fun, new look.”
After that matchup, the Eckerd volleyball team will travel to Tampa the very next day to take on North Alabama, who, historical, has had a very strong program. Though the team typically tends to not play back-to-back matches during the middle of the season, they did become accustomed to it in the first several weeks. Draper is confident in her team's ability to play well in neutral territory, however she knows that they are going to have to prepare hard for UNA considering “we played them last year in a very tight match and came away with a victory, so I know they are going to want to pay us back.”
