Men’s Volleyball Set for Big Season

By Mark Morales

Staff Reporter

The Sacred Heart University men’s volleyball team is 7-1 in their last eight games. Their most recent win was on Feb. 5 against Lincoln Memorial, which they won 3-1. With that victory, the Pioneers win streak is at four.

The team has yet to play on the road this season.

Home court advantage is not only important, but it helps the team.

“When we’re home, we have so much more down time, we can relax and plan out our days. Whereas when we’re away, we’re doing work, team things most of the time,” said senior Christopher DeLucie.

Increased energy has helped the Pioneers during their win streak.

“It’s definitely helped us get into a rhythm so that we can kind of find a cycle of what we need to do in the warm up and definitely help us find a casual cool environment instead of having to do it on the road and figure things out in an uncomfortable spot,” said senior Doug Dzema.

The Pioneers attributed a lot of their success to their head coach, Gregory Walker.

“First I would definitely attribute it to Coach Walker coming in and having a plan and running a system he feels is our best chance of succeeding,” said DeLucie. “Just with the beginning of our season we see that the system that Coach Walker has been putting together is working, we have been succeeding.”

The Pioneers have their first conference away game on Friday, Feb. 17 against Saint Francis University. When asked about how they will continue their win streak on the road, the men preached practice and hard work.

“It’s just going to come down to if we keep working hard in the gym. From preseason to now we have been working really hard. Everybody’s been coming in focused and that’s obviously showing on the court,” said Ayzenberg.

Last season held many injuries and the team hopes to not be hindered with so many this season.

“I know coming out of last season we had a lot of health issues and injuries. The team wasn’t at full strength,” said DeLucie.

So with the new season underway and everyone healthy, the 2017 men’s volleyball team has high expectations.

“I feel like we match pretty well with the conference this year. If we continue to work hard in the gym I feel like we can compete with almost anyone going at a high level and hopefully do something big this year,” said DeLucie.

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