Aaron Vehling

While most students were packing and heading back to school, the Blugold volleyball team was training and preparing for a new season and the chance to improve its fourth place standing in last year’s WIAC.

This weekend the Blugolds hosted the Labor Day Tri-Meet and finished with a valiant four-game victory over Hamline University (Minn.) and the University of Minnesota-Morris.

The tournament not only gave the team a chance to bring its competition to the table but also to show some individual skills the girls had been working on this summer.

Senior Brooke Wozniak-Schmidt said the women have been working hard to create a strong team.

“We have been working on a lot of different options within our offense to become a stronger team,” she said. “We have been emphasizing strengthening our defense and using it to create our offense.”

Wozniak-Schmidt showed her part in making the team strong during the Labor Day Tri-Meet where she led the team with 23 kills and only three errors, giving her a .435 hitting percentage.

Overall, there were four players who entered the realm of double-digit kills.

In the mix of those leaders was sophomore Molly Menard.

“In the beginning, we worked on conditioning and our fundamentals, like serve-receive and making transitions from defense to offense,” Menard said. “Now we’ve been putting it all together in scrimmages in order to develop team chemistry.”

With confidence in the team’s individual performances and the confidence they possess as a group, Wozniak believes the Blugolds will be able to top last year’s performance.

“With a strong group of returners and some very talented newcomers, I think this UW-Eau Claire volleyball team is the most talented one I’ve played on,” she said.

This year, one of the team’s many goals is to make it all the way.

“The main goal is a conference championship and NCAA berth,” Wozniak-Schmidt said. “I have not reached these goals in my past three years and I think this year those goals are definitely not out of reach.”

Menard agreed.

“I think we are definitely a contender for the conference championship,” she said. “This year we are very athletic and have a lot of returners with game experience, along with a very strong freshmen class.”