National Tournament

In collegiate volleyball the equivalent to playoffs is the NCAA National Tournament. But instead of having district play, collegiate volleyball has conferences. High school volleyball also has five different divisions in Texas, 1A, 2A, 3A, 4A and 5A. But in college there is only Division I, II, and III schools. Every division has its own national tournament.
Rice's conference is called Conference USA. It is made up of 12 Division I colleges, and in volleyball, only one goes to the NCAA tournament: the winner of the regular season. It is very competitive, as you would imagine.
To see more about Conference USA click here

Conference will be over for pretty much all Division I volleyball teams by Thanksgiving. Around this time, the NCAA will create the brackets for the tournaments also divided into four regions. This year the "final four" in the tournament will be played in San Antonio, Texas.
click here to learn more about NCAA volleyball

Playoffs

Probably one of the most exciting times in a high school volleyball is competing in playoffs to the state tournament. I haven't played anywhere else, so I'll try to shed some light on the Texas high school volleyball playoffs and my experiences through them.
I made varsity as a freshman so I have been to playoffs four times, and every time was an adventure.
The journey starts in your high school's district, or "regular season" play. Your team needs to place 1st, 2nd, 3rd or 4th to be eligible to compete in the playoffs. Texas is divided into four regions, every district being assigned to one of the four. This makes a big difference on how difficult your road to state is going to be. There are 5 rounds, or 5 matches that your team has to win to make the state tournament, that the winner of each region attends.
My senior year, as captain, I unfortunately broke my pinky in the last practice before district was over, which made me ineligible to play. And my team was picked to win state. You can only imagine my team and school's devastation. But my team pulled together like they never had before and they promised they would take me to San Marcos (the location of the state tournament). And they did just that. Through trials and tribulations, my team conquered unfeasible goals and made it to state.
This was the greatest moment of my volleyball career and I didn't even touch a volleyball.

Secrets of the Game

People looking at volleyball from the outside world don't always know what all the game encompasses and often think of it as a recreational sport. But the extreme opposite is true. Volleyball is an extremely difficult sport that requires dedication, hard work and skill. If you want to be competitive in the sport, here are some things you might want to keep in mind...

1. If you hate spandex, STAY AWAY
    Unless you play Junior High ball, you will have to wear spandex so get used to it.
2. You will have permanently scarred knees
    The repeated diving and throwing your body on the ground will cause you to have permanent bruises.
3. Must be competitive but you can't yell at your teammates because girls are sensitive :/
    You have to be as aggressive as any other sport but you rely on five girls for everything so if you upset them, you're done for.
4. Have to be half- cheerleader
    The game is based off pure emotion so you have to cheer for any little thing to gain momentum.
5. NO SYMPATHY
    It doesn't matter if you hit someone in the face on the opposing team to where their nose bleeds. IT'S A GOOD THING!

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NCAA Update

This week history has been made.
For only the third time ever, Oklahoma University volleyball beat the #8 University of Texas.
Both schools, being in the Big 12 Conference, are each other's main rival. They have to play each other twice a year and in their first encounter last Wednesday, September 28, Oklahoma took Texas to a long five set match only to come out on top.
In NCAA volleyball, all matches are played best 3 out of 5 sets. A set is complete win the first team gets 25 points and they have to win by two points.
Oklahoma won the first two sets 25-16 and 25-20, then dropped the second two 17-25 and 24-26. They finally prevailed to defeat Texas by smashing them in the fifth set 15-9. Both teams are very young starting many of their freshman and relying on them to win games.
This was a huge accomplishment for OU and one of the many upsets that has happened this season. There is most likely many more to come and who knows who will end up with the national championship.


CLICK HERE TO SEE FOOTAGE FROM THE GAME

UPDATE!

Just in case some have been mislead by what this blog is directing toward I just wanted to take a second to clarify what exactly I'm aiming for here.

This blog is directed toward anyone who wants to learn about volleyball from a collegiate athletes perspective. I'm not going to have a routine of things to learn about or a strict lesson plan. I'm going to talk about things that are relevant to my volleyball life. I have tried to take the time to break down the game so that my volleyball-illiterate followers will know what I'm talking about when I use volleyball jargon.

I would hope to inspire young girls or anyone who wants to pick up the game but if not I would at the very least like to inform people about updates in the college volleyball realm.

Here's the rice volleyball website if you want to know schedules or more in depth news stories.
Rice Volleyball

Were currently getting ready to beat SMU TONIGHT!

It's a Small World After All

Volleyball may seem massive, but generally, if you are a true volleyball player you pretty much know every other volleyball player in the United States.

Not really.
But almost!
When a girl begins her volleyball career it usually starts in grade school or middle school.

Grade school = YMCA
middle school = your school team

And after the girl realizes that it is the greatest sport ever created and she wants to get better, she has to find her local club team. A volleyball club, depending on the size, is an organization that creates teams based on age then skill level. It is a huge commitment that starts a few days after school volleyball season ends and ends a few weeks before school volleyball starts. It costs a lot of money and if the club is pretty big and well- known and the girl makes a high skill level team, then she is committing to also travel with the team. Usually, the older the girl is; the more the team wants to travel. Some teams decide to only travel within the state for one or two day tournaments, but if a girl makes a very competitive team then the team will go to two or three big out of state tournaments called "qualifiers". These tournaments give teams the opportunity to qualify for Nationals or Junior Olympics. If the team gets a medal at one of these qualifiers then they automatically receive a bid to participate at Nationals at the end of June.

see what you know!!!

Volleyball 101

Since I just went off on a rampage of emotions in my last entry, I thought maybe I should take it back a few steps and break down the actual game of volleyball for those of you looking to understand a little better.
There are six players on the court on each side at one time, three back row players and three front row players. When one team wins a point, they get to serve the next ball. The server stands outside of the end line to serve to the receiving side who is ready to pass, set and attack, because a team can only touch the ball up to three times on their side.
The different positions that someone can play is a setter, libero, defensive specialist, outside hitter, right side hitter, or middle blocker. The libero is the back row player and the person in the different colored jersey because they are considered the best defender and the different jersey allows them to remain in the game longer. The setter is often referred to as the "quarterback" of the team because they run plays and decide which attacker gets the ball to potentially score. The three attackers are the outside hitter (left side of court), right side hitter (right side of court), and middle blocker (middle of court). And the defensive specialist is the third back row player who assists in digging balls.
This is just the beginning of the basics that is required for someone to know to understand the game of volleyball. And on a fun note, Rice volleyball takes on Tulane tonight at home at 7 p.m.!!

http://www.momsguide.com/volleyball/images/volleyball_court.gif

Volleyball sucks... or maybe just losing

Nothing like a solid loss to your biggest rival school at home to make a great blog post.
My name is Daniela Arenas and I am currently playing volleyball as a freshman at Rice University. Volleyball is my passion and it always will be, and I'm a competitor, which makes losing kind of difficult. Last night we got beat by the University of Houston in our own gym (even more of a gut wrench-er).
The match was neck-and-neck the entire time but we just couldn't find a way to finish the game. Regardless of the fact that we all wanted the win more than anything. We had your standard team "pow wows", where everyone puts in their share of what they want to do that night and how they want to be effective. We had a great warm-up everyone was nailing their passes (when the ball is served and the defender bumps the ball directly to the target/setter), and putting holes in the floor with their swings (When the ball is set and the hitter attacks it hard). We knew we were going to win this game.

But somehow it just didn't go our way. The first set was close; both team were siding out fairly quickly (when the opposing team is serving and your team wins the point to regain serve) but then when it was 19-19, Houston just took us on a run based off of our errors to win the game 25-19. We hung in their for longer in the second game but Houston eventually won that one 26-24. The third game was exactly the same, we just couldn't hang in their long enough to finish the game and we lost 25-22.
We were devastated but we will come out next game even more ready to win.