Wichita State volleyball and cross country teams both adjust to postponed seasons
In a normal year, Chris Lamb would be busy this week breaking down film and statistics from the opening weekend for his Wichita State volleyball team.
But 2020 has proven to be anything but a normal year and concerns over the coronavirus pandemic forced the American Athletic Conference to postpone volleyball’s season until next spring in a decision made last week.
“It’s not about starting the season, it’s about completing it,” Lamb said. “I felt like there were a lot of questions that weren’t answered. Once students get back on campus, how are we going to do this and sustain it? What happens if someone gets sick on the road? How do you bring them back home? Little things like that and you start adding them up and you start wondering how this is supposed to work.”
While a final decision was made by the AAC last week for volleyball, the conference didn’t make a final decision to postpone the cross country season until Tuesday — just days before the Shockers were scheduled to host their annual season-opening meet, the J.K. Gold Classic, on Saturday.
In its announcement on Tuesday, the AAC said the cross country season would be postponed “until a later date.” Postponing the cross country season is much trickier than postponing volleyball season because cross country runners also compete in indoor and outdoor track and field during the winter and spring seasons. If the season does not occur, the NCAA has stated that all cross country runners will be granted another year of eligibility.
The American’s decision to postpone the cross country season is in line with the majority of Division I conferences throughout the country. Before the decision was made on Tuesday, Hunter said his team was “100% on board with having a season.”
“We missed one season,” Hunter said earlier in the week. “We don’t want to miss another.”
Lamb said he would like the WSU volleyball team to play a non-conference match or two this fall, but realized that may not be a possibility. He said it is more likely that the team’s training schedule will be flip-flopped: the typical spring work will now be done in the fall, while the more intense practices will now occur in the spring before conference matches are played.
Currently, Lamb and his coaching staff are still able to work up to 20 hours per week with the team, although that figure is expected to be lowered soon by the NCAA since there are no matches this fall.
Flip-flopping the training schedule is easy for the fall, but Lamb has concerns for the spring.
“A lot of my girls schedule their classes around having a season in the fall and then load up in the spring,” Lamb said. “It’s not as easy as you think finding a two-to-three-hour time block to practice around my athletes’ schedules.
“I don’t know what kind of practice routine we’ll be able to put together. That’s a huge question, but we’ll do the best we can and take all of the crazy stuff as it comes in the spring.”
Neither Lamb or WSU athletic director Darron Boatright said they were surprised by the AAC’s decision to move the volleyball season to the spring last week.
“Pushing the season to the spring semester was dictated by the NCAA’s decision to move the championship portion of the season to the spring, so really we’re just mirroring the decision they made,” Boatright said. “We wanted to be consistent across the board with all of our sports since we had done the same thing with golf and tennis and baseball and softball. We just wanted to send the same message with volleyball.”
In the August practices, Lamb said he was encouraged by what he saw from the Shockers. After a 9-19 season, Lamb reloaded his stable of hitters and said that Morgan Weber and Marriah Buss, a pair of outside hitters, have looked strong early on. He also complimented the growth of a pair of sophomores in outside hitter Sina Ulauve, who registered 148 kills last season, and 6-foot-3 opposite hitter Sophia Rohling, who had 71 kills.
“The young Shockers are talented,” Lamb said. “It’s been very fun and refreshing to be in the gym the last few weeks and see the athleticism that we have here now. There are a couple of new players who are no doubt going to make an impact from the early going. There’s a lot of bright spots. I’m very excited about what’s going on in the gym right now.”
This story was originally published September 1, 2020 at 8:48 AM.
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