Those of you who listened to the June 10th edition of Terp Talk might have heard Bruce Posner and I briefly talk about the success of Maryland’s move to the Big Ten and the benefits the athletic department has seen in as the first year of this new relationship draws to a close. I have a story on that in the works that should run next week and that I think many of you will find interesting.
For now, I’d like to write about one sport where simply entering the B1G put the Terps at a significant competitive and cultural disadvantage – volleyball. At most schools and in most conferences volleyball is little more than an afterthought. The B1G takes volleyball seriously. How seriously?
Over 543,000 people attended home Big Ten matches and, in total, over 1,000,000 fans saw B1G teams play in the 2014 season. Nine B1G schools occupied top 25 spots in national attendance. For comparison, the home attendance for Big Ten women’s basketball was a bit over 900,000. How seriously?
In April, the conference announced its plans to send a team of athletes – one from each conference institution – on a competition and goodwill tour to several European countries. Rising sophomore Hailey Murray represents Maryland on the Big Ten European Team headded by Northwestern’s Keylor Chan.
But first, a few words about Maryland volleyball
The first indication that Maryland intended to fit in to this new culture came in January of 2014 when director of athletics Kevin Anderson hired Steve Aird, then an assistant for the legendary Russ Rose at Penn State, to replace the departed Tim Horsman as the Terps’ new head coach. Not only did Aird bring knowledge of Big Ten volleyball, he also brought the cachet of a championship pedigree coming from a program that had won five national titles in the last seven years.
In one of his first meetings with his squad, Aird tried to make them understand the level of work they would need to put in if they planned to be competitive in the conference. It took them a while to get it. The Terps would finish their first season with an overall record of 10-21 and 3-17 in conference play with two of those wins coming against the other conference newcomer Rutgers.
Meanwhile, rather than looking for immediate short term gratification through free agency (e.g. transfers), the coach and his staff looked to build a program through the “draft.” They hit the recruiting trail with exceptional vigor where they have met with unprecedented success landing their first big coup in June of 2014. Beginning in 2016, Maryland will see a stream of players and athletes onto their volleyball team unlike any they have seen in program history.
Aird also made it a point to have a high profile on and around the campus know that he had to raise awareness of the volleyball program. And here, he had immediate success. Despite charging an albeit nominal admission for the first time in program history, the Terrapins saw their attendance jump from 336 per game in 2013 to 1,539 per game in 2014 – a 450 percent increase that made Maryland one of those nine Big Ten schools that finished in the top 25 in attendance.
Jetting off to Europe
The Big Ten announced the roster for its European team on May 27. Murray joined five other sophomores, four juniors and four seniors on the squad. She’s one of three pure middle blockers on the team along with Northwestern junior Maddie Slater and Ohio State’s Tayler Sandbothe also a junior. Iowa sophomore Jess Janota, who a hybrid middle blocker and right side hitter, will also likely see time at the middle blocker position.
The squad left on Saturday June 13th and made it first stop in Slovenia. The tour also includes stops in Croatia and Italy. Over the course of nearly two weeks they will, according the the B1G press release, “take part in competition on the court, participate in community service initiatives and experience new cultures in some of the world’s greatest cities.”
As I write this on June 17th, the team has split a pair of matches with the Slovenian National Team and is preparing for their match this evening with the Hungarian National Team. Tomorrow, the team will visit a local school in Slovenia for community outreach activities with the students, before a final evening match against the Hungarian National Team in Slovenia.
As for the young Ms. Murray
Although streams of the matches have been available, (go to www.bigten.org/sports/w-volley/spec-rel/061315aaa.html for more information) my schedule hasn’t permitted me to watch. Looking at the box scores from the first two matches, it appears that the tour will a learning experience for Hailey not just culturally but on the court as well.
She struggled with her hitting in the first match with two errors and no kills on four attempts but improved her attack in the second match when she registered two kills also on four attempts and had only one error. Murray has picked up seven block assists in the two matches accounting for about one-sixth of the team’s total blocks.
Coach Chan has also sent Murray into the back row to serve which is something she didn’t do as a freshman at Maryland. If I were to hazard a guess, I’d say that this decision is taking the athletic but still somewhat raw Murray several steps outside her comfort zone. I’d also guess that wherever he might be, her coached is pleased to see her being pushed in this way.
And the on cultural side of things
Here, I’ll let Murray speak for herself. She contributed this entry to the team’s journal as it was published on the Big Ten’s website:
This morning we started the day off with an early breakfast in the hotel. After breakfast we had a brief morning practice before embarking on the day’s adventures.
We had the opportunity to visit a local preschool, where we shared books, games and the English language. Upon our arrival to the school, the children sang us a couple of songs, one in Slovenian and another in English. We then sang them a song, the ABC’s, however; we did not sound nearly as cute or harmonic as the kids did.
After the initial greeting was over we split into smaller groups to run stations of activities and games with the kids. The stations included a reading stop, where girls read books in English to the kids. It was surprising how much English the kids actually understood and could speak. The other stations included teaching the kids volleyball, playing tag and hide and seek, and interacting with the kids using basic English.
After we left the school we went atop a ski course for lunch. We took the chairlift up, which gave us the opportunity to see Maribor from a beautiful angle. We had lunch at the top of the mountain where we were served cevapcici, a type of Yugoslavian sausage.
To come back down the mountain we took a cart attached to a rail that was almost roller coaster like. It was called the Alpine Slide. I definitely had some reservations about speeding down a mountain, but each of us did it. In all the day was full of fantastic experiences that I will remember for a long time.
Look for one more update as the tour progresses.
No comments have been posted yet, be the first!
Post a comment by filling out the form below.
