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09232012_VolleyballVTowson(Amanda) Credit: Amanda Suarez , Amanda Suarez

In mid-October, Penn volleyball appeared to be down and out.

Tough five-set losses? Check. A few key early-season injuries? You bet. Highly inconsistent play? Of course.

The Quakers were headed for another middle of the pack finish as they entered the final game of the first half of the Ivy season against Dartmouth. Penn was 2-4, sitting in a last-place tie with Dartmouth, Cornell and Princeton.

Yet the early season struggles were the adversity Penn needed to solidify into an impressive team.

“We never ever say we’re done,” coach Kerry Carr said. “That’s been part of the team in the second half of this season. We can lose a set here or there, and we can still win the match.”

Since that fateful match against Dartmouth, Penn has gone undefeated, sweeping its way through its last six matches. What changed?

The simple answer is nothing. The pieces were there all along.

It’s not as if Penn suddenly became a deep team with a rotation of outside hitters designed to ride the hot hand and the most enthusiastic bench in the Ivy League. Penn was that all along, too.

It just took time to materialize.

Losing two senior captains — Dani Shepherd and Susan Stuecheli — to injury typically takes a team down a notch, but the Quakers benefited. The team as a whole is relatively young, with the starting lineup typically including three or four sophomores.

The opportunity for younger players to step in and fill those roles was huge for the team, as players like sophomore Alexis Genske had the opportunity to shine. While it did take some time to reconfigure the lineup when Shepherd and Stuecheli returned, the result was a much deeper and more experienced team.

With such a young team, the Quakers were prone to inconsistent play, oftentimes finding it difficult to sustain early leads or recover from deficits. They were especially prone to this during a road-heavy slate of games early in the season, during which crowds were able to affect their emotions.

In addition, two tough five-set losses after winning the first set against both Princeton and Columbia in their first two Ivy matches knocked the Red and Blue down a peg. But those experiences only toughened the squad’s resolve.

“When we get in that [five-set] situation, we know how to handle it,” Carr said after Penn trumped Cornell in five sets on Oct. 5. “That’s something that we have over those teams that don’t play that many sets.”

As the road trip continued, Penn developed its own weapon to counteract the crowd. As they soon learned, it’s very difficult to hear the crowd when your bench is the loudest group in the gym.

“We learned a lot through our first roadstand,” Carr said. “Both at Dartmouth and Harvard, we really took their fans out of the match by being really excited.”

The energy the bench provides has been key and often immediately obvious when you look from one end of the sideline to the other. Who’s going to be more comfortable playing — the team standing around staring off into space or the one singing and dancing around constantly?

And that’s what it’s all come down to for Penn: a team environment where everyone is comfortable and having fun. The pieces were there the whole time — it just took some hardship early in the season to mold them into an efficient product.

So even though Penn won’t end up on top of the Ivy League standings this year, which has been Yale’s territory for years, they’ve still proven that — given time — they can hang with the best.

HOLDEN McGINNIS is an Engineering freshman from Philadelphia, Pa. and is a staff writer of The Daily Pennsylvanian. He can be reached at dpsports@thedp.com.

SEE ALSO

Penn volleyball comes back against Harvard in thrilling fashion

Empire State showdowns on tap for Penn volleyball

Penn volleyball sweeps Princeton at the Palestra

Inspired Penn volleyball embraces ‘Playing for Pink’

Penn volleyball splits Ivy weekend at the Palestra

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