North Carolina State University Athletics
TIM PEELER: A New Look for Wolfpack Volleyball
8/14/2006 12:00:00 AM | Pack Athletics
RALEIGH Teaching kids to play volleyball, new NC State coach Charita Stubbs says, isn’t all that difficult, assuming they are willing to be accountable and coachable.
Building a new program essentially from scratch, however, has been a challenge for Stubbs in the six months since she was hired to be the seventh coach in Wolfpack volleyball history.
Practice began on Thursday for Stubbs and the Wolfpack, another step in the rebuilding of a program that is coming off its ninth consecutive losing season. Stubbs was extremely busy in recruiting, bringing in a total of 10 new players for the coming season., She also filled out her recruiting class for next season by garnering more commitments for next fall.
This year’s 10 newcomers will join with eight returning players to give the Wolfpack an 18-player roster that is a little larger than Stubbs would ideally like to have. But it is what Stubbs thought was necessary to turn around a program that was 7-23 overall last season and lost its last 12 matches by a total of 36-4.
Recruiting was only the first step.
“I don’t think the hardest part is over with yet, by any means,” Stubbs says. “We have to continue to get everyone to buy into the program. We have to get everyone on the same page.
“Throughout the preseason, we will have some kind of activity that is going to test their ability to work with one another.”
So the next three weeks before her team’s appearance in the Spring Hill Suites Classic in Charlotte Aug. 25-26 will emphasize team-building and chemistry.
It will also give Stubbs the chance to figure out exactly where everyone should play. She described her primary concentration in recruiting as finding the most athletic players available.
Now, she has to find the right positions for everyone to properly harness that athletic ability.
“When I first came in, it was immediately brought to my attention that I didn’t have very many athletes,” Stubb says. “I knew that in order to get out of the basement, we had to have athletes. Our recruiting was based on finding kids that were athletic and able to play the entire game.”
The Wolfpack lost its two most experienced players in Stefani Eddins and Adeola Kosoko, who each played in all 103 games last year. But Junior Andrea Bentley returns after playing in every game last season, as does senior Melissa Rabe and sophomore Kelley Blakewood, who both played in more than 90 contests.
Stubbs does expect several newcomers to step into starting roles, especially Texas-El Paso transfer Jessica Williams, a sophomore who could play middle blocker or opposite. The coach likes the athletic potential of sophomore outside hitter Keisha Raibon, who transferred in from Louisiana-Monroe, and the ability of freshman outside hitter Chrissy Zirpolo, a native of Los Altos Hills, Calif.
Stubbs also kept an eye out for players who came from successful high school and club programs, hoping to change the culture within the program by having players who have experienced consistent success throughout their careers.
“The final component is finding winners, kids who played for winning programs or who had been associated with winning clubs so they could come in and help change the culture,” she says.
Stubbs and her staff have also immersed themselves into the area’s volleyball community, holding clinics and camps on campus, going to clinics and camps off campus and associating themselves with local volleyball organizations like the Capital City Volleyball Club and the Challengers Volleyball Club.
So that’s most of the groundwork that the coach and her staff have put in since arriving nearly six months ago. Now, they are beginning to install the foundation of a new look for Wolfpack volleyball.
You may contact Tim Peeler at tim_peeler@ncsu.edu.
