After a season filled with adversity, the Grand Valley State University volleyball team has added seven freshmen with hopes of them making an immediate impact. The Lanthorn had a chance to catch up with head coach Deanne Scanlon to see how the team was prepping for its upcoming season this fall.

THE LANTHORN: Last season your team faced a lot of adversity, something many in the program were not used to because of past success. What did you learn from it?
SCANLON: It humbles you, for sure, going through a 14-13 season. When you go through a lot of adversity there is two ways to go. One, you let it split the team and it just becomes one problem after the other. Or, the other way where you bond closer together and kind of form this strength through what you are going through and for as young as we were — that’s the direction the team decided to take. A lot of times it was them reassuring me like, “Coach, we are going to be ok.” Carrying it into the offseason, I can see a commitment and intensity level from these kids that they don’t want to experience what happened last season as far as wins and losses.

THE LANTHORN: Eno Umoh will be the only senior on a very young squad this season. What will be her role and the expectations she faces as the coveted “senior leader?”
SCANLON: She has been elected one of our team captains. When talking to Eno about her role, I said first and foremost, your No. 1 role is you have to perform. You have to lead by example and be that go-to person. All the off-court stuff is what you need to rely on your other captains and work with them and figure out what everyone’s strengths are. What we need her to do is be the best player in the conference, which she definitely can do.

THE LANTHORN: Seven true freshmen will be highlighting the roster this season. With such a young team, what do you see as important in maintaining focus and supporting growth?
SCANLON: This is a very talented freshmen group that is coming in. We are in the middle of camps right now so we had all of our team back here for the last week. The energy level was just great. We have never really done that before where we have everybody back and we thought with seven true freshmen coming in, we didn’t want the first day of preseason to be the first time where everybody is really meeting and interacting. The returning players can see the value that these kids are bringing as far as their talent. It is exciting because you are going to see some of those younger players out on the court, but at the same time we can’t get too overexcited because we know freshman can be freshman and you are going to have to live through some growing pains.

THE LANTHORN: Who can we keep an eye on as someone you expect to come into their own this season?
SCANLON: I think Abby Aiken. She was someone who came in as a freshman and we changed her position. She played middle (blocker) in high school and was learning the outside hitter position. She has a competitive drive, no-nonsense type of work ethic — she is one of the most competitive kids I have ever coached. And now her knowledge of the game and the knowledge of her new position has matched her competitiveness. I think she is someone that you are going to see step up even though she is just a sophomore.

THE LANTHORN: Is this going to be a rebuilding year or do you expect to get back to the national stage?
SCANLON: All of the tools are in place as far as the talent, but it is going to be a lot of those intangibles that we are going to have to wait and see. We were young when we won the National Championship. It is very possible to win with young kids and that is what our expectations are going to be. I don’t look at it as a rebuilding year at all. What we went through last year definitely matured people very quickly. It is all about the preparation right now so that we can hit our preseason with those players that we are counting on being ready to go.
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