The Season Begins!

Volleyball season started up this week for the USU Aggies! It has been so much fun already. We started double-days on monday with outsides having practice at 9 am. It was so great to get back in the gym and play some volleyball. Everyday we have practice from 9am to 9:45 and then we get a little break until lunch, except for on mondays, wednesdays, and fridays when we have lifting at 11:15, but we all go to lunch together and then get an hour or so off before we have our afternoon practice at 2:30. This practice lasts between 3-3 1/2 hours. Day one was amazing. We obviously are a little rusty in the techinical areas, but already our fitness and desire to be on the court is way past where we have been in previous years. Our team has to pass a beep fitness test every year that is more intimidating than it is difficult. The Beep Test is a shuttle test where you have to run about 20 meters and touch the line by the time this cd or recording of the test beeps. It is really slow at first, but gradually you get up to a running pace. We have to touch 80 lines in order to pass it. I remember running this test last year and it was SO much harder for me. This year I ran 82 lines and felt like I could have ran 10-15 more lines. I owe my fitness this year to our strength coach Dave. He would have us run these 20 yard shuttles for 260 yards 5 times and this really helped me to be prepared for the beep test. If you dont pass the first time you have to come in the next day at 6:30 am to run it again. I did NOT want to wake up that early so I was really determined to be in good shape.

Practice has been really fun and we have such a great team this year. We were picked to finish 5th in the WAC, which I believe is really underestimating our team. We have so much talent and only lost 2 seniors last year. I know we are much better than 5th but, to me, none of that preseason stuff really matters. It is the outcome that is important and I am so pumped for our matches to begin. Today we took pictures for our webpage and our bio's are still being written, but everyone should check out the new Utah State Volleyball team. We have such a great lookin group of girls and if you can, maybe even make it out to one of our games. We have a really sweet schedule with BYU up first on the 27th of August at 7 pm in Provo, Utah. We are really looking forward to this match and love playing against our in-state rivals.

I am so excited to get playing against other teams. We only have two weeks of double-days because we start school earlier this year, but 3 weeks until our first match. We have a lot to work on, but the competition in our gym is really really good and I have a feeling it will only get better. Stay tuned for more updates on the volleyball season and for sure make it out to one of our matches. We have lots of games in state this year including BYU, Utah, Utah Valley, and Weber State if you dont want to make the drive up north. Check out our schedule and definitely come cheer on the Aggies! We are going for first place this year and want to be the ones carrying that huge trophy home from Hawaii. GO AGGIES!