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Penn State Women's
Volleyball Press Conference Transcript, Aug. 23, 2006
Head coach Russ Rose, senior
co-captain Cassy Salyer, sophomore co-captain Christa
Harmotto
When you look at this team and the preseason rankings, do you think your team will be able to live up to No. 2?
RR: "I don't think anyone right now can predict what is going to happen in three and a half months. But I like the athleticism that this group has and I believe when we control the ball, we're going to cause a lot of stress to the opposing teams. When we don't control the ball, our team is going to cause a lot of stress for me."
Who are the people that can control the ball?
RR: "Well, we're still working on that. I don't think you can go into practice and replace two four-year starters that we had in Sam (Tortorello) and Kaleena (Walters) and think that certain parts of your game are going to stay the same. But if the players play hard and play together, then there could be some opportunities to highlight some of the talents that some of the players have. I can't declare who's going to be my libero and backrow players throughout the season because there is going to be some competition throughout the season. It's pretty clear that the hitting positions are very competitive and the players do a lot of things athletically that are different from some of the teams we've had in the past."
You have a wealth of talent both coming in and held over from last season. Is that a nice problem to have?
RR: "Being wealthy would be a problem for some. A great deal of the athleticism and offensive potential we have is in the freshman and sophomore classes, but you need the older players to provide the leadership and direction, how to work, how to compete. I mean, the freshmen haven't played yet. Today they just received their uniforms. I can't even imagine in two days when half of them wear the wrong one. But you deal with that. That's one of the things about preseason. You don't really know how people are going to compete, how they're going to handle stress and pressure. Certainly there are days when we look good and there are days that are very challenging."
Sam was your setter for four years and set just about every point. How do you replace her?
RR: "We're probably doing setting by committee rather than one person. I made a conscious decision to change the system a little bit and look at a two-setter system. Right now that would be Jess Yanz and Alisha Glass who are sharing the setting responsibilities but Ann Naylor has been getting a lot of reps. And Cassy was pointing out that she feels that she should be given a serious nod at the setting position."
Cassy, would you compare your hands to Sam's?
CS: (Laughing) "No, I wouldn't compare my hands to Sam."
RR: "Sam's hands were really skinny and bony, but she was a terrific setter, for sure."
Christa, are you in the setting mix?
CH: (Laughing) "I am not, no. I try."
Cassy, after having Sam set you for the last three years, how is going to be adjusting to not just one but two different setters?
CS: "I've said from the beginning that Sam was a big part of the reason why I came to Penn State. It's going to be challenging adjusting to a new setter and a new tempo but it just takes practice. It took practice with Sam and it takes a lot of reps, and eventually we'll get it down."
RR: "What's so different about is, last year with the freshmen, we had the luxury of having Sam and Kaleena, who were seniors who had played so much, it was easier for them to ease the transition for Christa and Nicole (Fawcett). And now, it's a little different with freshmen setters because Christa and Nic are still, although they played for a year, they don't have the experience that Cassy and Kris Brown have, of the awareness of how the program is run and how competitive the Big Ten is on a day to day basis. These guys come in and go undefeated in the Big Ten and they probably think that it's standard fare when it's probably only happened (six) times in 25 years."
Christa, how is your knee feeling and how confident are you in it and in yourself?
CH: "My knee is 100%. I've had no real setbacks throughout my rehab and I'm very confident in it. I'm wearing a brace but that's only for protection for right now and I hope to get out of that eventually. But right now everything is going pretty well."
Who will be your starting libero Friday night against Nicholls State?
RR: "Well, it started this morning at practice with one person and at the end of practice it was someone else. So, because of that, I'd like to leave that to be determined. I'm going to use a number of people. To me, that's the whole idea of this system. I'm looking at coaching as saying 'I'll judge my performance on how many players I keep involved in the game' and things like that instead of just playing six people all the time and not really coaching the balance of the team. I want to see if I can get a lot of people involved and see if we can do some things a little differently than we have done in the past."
Is everyone healthy, relatively speaking?
RR: "Everyone is healthy. Blair (Brown) is the only one that came in with an ankle injury and she's still rehabbing that, but other than that, I think the health is pretty good."
A few years ago, when Cassy was a freshman, you were much more of a finesse team. Now it looks like you have a big hitting team with a lot of big people. Is that the way you have to play the game now to be really successful?
RR: "Well, there is a phrase 'bigger is better' and if you can get the players to ball-handle and play hard, then I think bigger has some advantages. Certainly the conference we play in is a different style of play than some of the other conferences. Our former style was much more of a finesse and ball-handling style but there was also traditional scoring. The game has changed. And with the change of the game - and I kind of dragged my feet on making that transition to going after players that are maybe a little larger in stature - but certainly we've got some big players, but they're very athletic. We've got three or four players who touch over 10-6, so I'm not sure there are very many athletes here on campus that can all do that."
How much has Nicole improved? She had a monster year last year, but how much better is she now?
RR: "She was hitting the ball a lot harder today than she hit it last year, which is a pretty scary thought. But what she has improved is her blocking. She still sometimes gets her blinders on and pre-determines where she wants to hit the ball, and doesn't care if there is a big block in front of her, but she is making some adjustments in shot selection. There aren't many players who hit the ball like her, in the United States for sure."
You have so much talent on this team, are you worried about keeping everyone happy?
RR: "I think most of the girls are unhappy most of the time. (Laughing) I don't think there is really a disparity in how unhappy they are. The goal is to win. It's a team game. My goal is not to make Cassy or Christa happy. If they play lousy, we identify what we need to do to get better. When I recruited these players I didn't kiss up to anyone to get them to come to school here, so it's certainly not me changing after I get them here and all of a sudden it's a different environment. They know it's going to be a competitive environment and they know that if they earn the opportunity to play, they're going to play. If they beat someone out, then that person can be mad at me. If I have 17 players and six are on the floor, that's 11 people mad at me. That's why it's nice to go home and see my dog."
Some people might say that the Tennessee match (in the NCAA Regional Semifinals last year) was a learning experience. Do you view it in those terms?
RR: "It was a disappointing match more than anything else because I thought that Tennessee played harder than we did. I thought we contributed more points to Tennessee's victory then Tennessee provided for their victory. That was probably the biggest disappointment to me, that we played so poorly in a competitive environment at home. But it is what it is. Tennessee played hard and they were in the right place at the right time. With the number of errors we made, we could have lost to any number of teams, and it just so happened that it was at a critical time. Some of it might have been that Christa wasn't there, but injuries are a part of what happens. The last couple of years in the NCAAs, we've gone in and we weren't healthy, and if you're not healthy, then you're going to be at a severe disadvantage. It's a one-and-done environment and you need to be healthy. You need to be lucky. You need to have favorable match-ups. I wasn't concerned about the match-up we had, I was concerned about the health of some of our players. We didn't play well, and if you don't play well, you don't deserve to win."
How hungry are you, Cassy, to make your last year something special considering some of the near-misses that have happened in the past?
CS: "My first three years have had some unexpected turns and I'm looking forward to making the last one the best one. We have the group and the potential to do it."
Does your senior year come up pretty quick?
CS: "Yeah, I can't believe that it's my last year. It's still kind of surreal. You come in and you have so many expectations and so many goals and then you just run out of opportunities faster than you'd like to admit."
Christa, last year you were a freshman and you didn't really know what Big Ten volleyball was all about. What did you learn from that and how can you use that to make year two better?
CH: "The first year you come in and are so excited that you're wearing that Penn State uniform and you're part of such a different level of play. As the year went on, I realized that the competitive atmosphere that the Big Ten provides just forces you to make adjustments and become better every day. After my injury, I realized that and worked twice as hard to get back to where I was and even better. I learned a lot from it, for sure."
RR: "She's making a lot of progress still, but again, so much of the success we had last year was based on the fact that Kaleena and Katie (Price) passed so well and Sam was a magnificent distributor of the ball. So not only was the tempo great, but the placement was great, and those are the type of things that we're really battling with this team. So when you say expectations are high, expectations are high everywhere where people have a team. You want to have a great season, you want the players to have great memories of the effort and the pursuit and that's why you go through preseason and play the season to see how it goes. We have a long way to go to make up for the losses that Sam and K had. I wouldn't have selected us as the number two team in the country coming into the season, although we have a very talented roster. To me, it's a positive that people hold our program in such high esteem but it's almost surprising that they didn't hold the success and the performance of Sam and K in as high of esteem as well, since so much of our success was based on their talents. Everyone at this time of year is working hard. We understand that we're the highest-ranked team on a lot of people's schedules and it's been that way for a number of years, and you do your best. You work hard and try to take care of yourself and you play hard and you go do the best you can."
Mike (Schall) isn't here for the first time in a long time. What's that like?
RR: "I miss Mike every day. That's not a refection on Dennis (Hohenshelt). (Director of Volleyball Operations) Julie (Backstrom) is gone as well. They elected to go do something else and I miss them. Their contributions were vast. But Dennis has a good feel for the game and is learning a lot about how we do things in the women's game. (New Director of Volleyball Operations) Salima (Davidson-Rockwell) has come back and has great energy. Change is a part of what's going on. But do I miss Mike? Every day, sure. I emailed him yesterday morning at 4:15 when I was awake and I got an email back at 4:30, so I was happy to see that he hasn't completely changed his lifestyle. I know he's only played golf once since he got the job, and I said 'since you left I haven't played golf much either, so it's not worked out well for both of us.'"
Christa and Cassy, what do you think about the high preseason ranking? Do you think much about that?
CH: "Absolutely. If you look at our roster, we're a very physical team. But it only matters where you finish, it doesn't matter where you start."
CS: "I agree. It's hard to say what we're going to do two days from now. This group hasn't played a competitive match yet when it really counts for something. In two days, I'll be happy to let you know how I feel about our ranking. But like Christa said, it doesn't matter until December.
RR: "In our first match, we may have five freshmen and sophomores on the floor out of the six players. So that's why you say 'I don't know' because, I'm serious, I don't know. But when you have talented players, you have to make some decisions. You may not be your best early. I'm sure there are some things systematically that would make things easier, but if you set the bar high, then you have to take the progression that's going to come with it. Sometimes you stumble and fall and it's what you do after that happens that's key. If we ball-handle well, I think people will like the style of play we have and find that we're a difficult match-up for a lot of teams."
You've had some freshmen that have come in quite mature and others that couldn't quite handle things. Is this a mature freshmen class that you can feel comfortable with?
RR: "They're a very bright class. They were recognized by a lot of publications as the number one class based on their talents. Certainly, Megan Hodge was the Gatorade National Player of the Year and she hasn't disappointed me one second. She hits some shots that we've never had an outside hitter hit at Penn State, and she's been here for 10 days. The setters are the ones that are probably shaking their head a lot, having to ice their ears, but they knew what they were getting into when they came here. Once Blair is healthy, she is also the type of player that can provide a lot of stability at the net. All of the players have good individual talents and they want to be successful. They're working hard and interacting well. That's one of the nice things. There doesn't seem to be a negative environment established by the players, which you can expect sometimes when you have so many players competing for positions. Especially when you talk about all of the Freshmen of the Year (in the Big Ten). There are some rotations when the last three of them are on the bench. That kind of shows that this is a team that needs to play well together, and if we can do that, then maybe something special can happen for this group."
How do you get the new players to understand that the season starts in the middle of summer and ends when everyone is getting ready for Christmas, or Hanukkah?
RR: "I appreciate that, thank you. (Laughs) Or Kwanzaa. But these kids play club volleyball so most of them go from their high school seasons to their club seasons and that goes into May. They're accustomed to a little longer season. But once they get into college, usually high school seasons start ending around late October, and we're in the middle of our Big Ten season. I know when soccer and field hockey are done, we're like 'great, we've only got the second half of the Big Ten season left.' It's a progression and the younger players are the ones that really have the hardest time making that transition. The older players know about it and we talk about it all the time. I tell the players all the time to not waste the opportunity. Your freshman year goes by a lot faster - preseason doesn't necessarily go fast, some matches and some drills seem to be in slow motion - but you don't want to be one of those people that laments 'I should be playing' and have excuses and what-ifs, instead of just going out there and playing hard every day. If you do those sort of things, you can make it through. A lot of people say it, and I've always been a big believer, that women's volleyball is not a sprint. It's a long race. If you're good at the end of the season then you can make some things happen. You just have to be good enough throughout the season to get yourself into position to qualify to be competitive and in the NCAA tournament. Hopefully we'll be able to do that. The ranking today has no bearing on what happens in December. You just have to play hard and see what goes on."
LSU is attempting to set an attendance record against you on Saturday. How do you feel about being kind of a target for that kind of thing?
RR: "Well, that happens every week in the Big Ten as well. Everyone in the Big Ten usually has the highest attendance figures when we come to town. You can look at it any way you want to look at it. We still have to play the match. I've taken my team to LSU three times, but it's the first time for the players to be at LSU. Certainly the great run they had last year in men's basketball and women's basketball, they're trying to rally the crowds. Football has always been huge down there, so you just go there and play. You don't worry about it. It's good for us to go play in those situations. That's why last year when we had the team that we did, we started off by playing at the three largest venues of crowds that existed. We played at Nebraska, in Omaha then in Lincoln, and then in Hawaii. That prepared us better for the fact that there are huge crowds in the Big Ten. We always have big crowds at Wisconsin. The crowd is always very animated at Minnesota, Purdue and Illinois. Iowa has changed their facility around. We need to be able to play in what would be non-friendly environments. You don't know how non-friendly they are. Sometimes there is a big crowd, but it's friendly. Sometimes you go somewhere and you are happy that the crowds at Penn State treat the visiting teams differently than you're being treated when you're there. But I've always enjoyed going to LSU. I don't know what their attendance figure is. If it's 18,000, I'd be a little concerned. Last year when we had our first match (at the Qwest Center in Omaha, Neb.), we were playing in front of 10,000 people and I was a little nervous that Nic and Christa weren't even breathing during the introductions. (Laughing) But that's how players learn. You get them into a competitive situation and whether the competition is what causes you the stress, or if it's the crowds or the travel, all of those things become big factors as you progress through the season. You can't control so many things, especially the way travel is right now."
Christa, is game one this year going to be a lot easier than game one last year?
CH: "Well, you still have to go and play. Maybe it surprised me a lot last year playing in front of 10,000 people, but once the game starts rolling, you get into a zone and you don't even worry about who is around you and who is screaming at you because you're worried about your team and what you're doing. You can only control your side. You can't control what the fans are saying. This year, it might not be as frightening at first, but it only matters until the game starts."
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Jen Armson
Assistant Athletic Communications
Director
Penn State University
101D Bryce Jordan Center
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Phone: 814/865-1757 ~ Fax:
814/863-3165
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