With only a few more weeks remaining of regular season play, fall sports teams plan on making postseason runs.
Seattle Pacific University’s volleyball team has won 11 of its 12 conference games, sitting atop of the Great Northwest Athletic Conference. Senior middle blocker and exercise science major Hannah Hair has been a leader for this veteran squad, gaining multiple GNAC defensive player of the week awards.
“We’re sitting on the success and we’re feeling it and loving it, but I think that we’re also really just a team on a mission. A lot of us have our heads down and are not looking at numbers or placements and ranking or anything,” Hair said.
Playing in a stacked GNAC conference allowed the team to prepare for top-level competition. While the season may be long with 28 total matches before the postseason, Hair and her teammates lean on each other and their support system to push through.
“Yes, our bodies are tired and minds are tired, but it’s so much fun to play with the girls and this staff. I don’t dread any aspect of it; I don’t dread practice in week 1 or 10 of the quarter. Our professors also work with us so well to make school manageable with this which is so amazing,” Hair stated.
Along with the volleyball team, the SPU women’s soccer team sits atop of their conference standings, remaining undefeated in conference play thus far. Head coach Arby Busey points to the women’s resiliency being a key role in the team’s impressive record.
“It takes some adversity during the season for [resilience] to come out. I think they’ve been really good at adapting and solving different situations that opponents have presented to us,” Busey said.
With the lack of stoppages or timeouts in soccer, Busey highlights his team’s ability to make adjustments throughout the course of games, making his job much easier.
Although the changes in administration at the top of the athletic department made the transition from pre-season to the start of the season more difficult than expected, Busey leaned on his team for energy during the offseason to ensure they were prepared for what would turn out to be an amazing season.
“Once [the players] get back here on campus, it’s very easy for all of us to not see some of those distractions that maybe we were feeling during the summer, and you can pour into the student athletes, and they bring vibrance and give you purpose every day. It makes it simple to invest in them,” Busey said.
The investment into athletes has not contributed to as many wins for the SPU men’s soccer team. While the team lost playoff hopes fairly early into their season, sophomore forward Orlando Erazo is eager to finish the season strong and get back to work in the offseason.
“Obviously we want to win the last few games. Anything that didn’t work out this year, try next year with a bigger motivation as a whole team. Do what we need to for us to start out strong next year at the beginning of the season,” Erazo said.
With regionals on the horizon, a few key cross country runners such as senior computer science major Brennan LeBlanc look to make a comeback from injury.
“Ben [Sheirbon] has been fighting through injuries, and we get him back for conference, so we have good momentum. Going into regionals, we need to step up a little bit more than we did at conference,” LeBlanc said.
