Earlier this year Jena Berg transferred to the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. She was not given a release so will have to sit out the 2008 season but won’t lose any eligibility. The move puts the Bristol, Wisconsin native closer to home and family — in fact her brother Evan is the team’s assistant coach.

Despite whatever problems or issues that may have led to the transfer, Berg had a pretty good career at Tennessee. She is #9 all time in career assists per game. She was just 26 assists short of joining the the top ten in total career assists. This season alone she had 1013 assists and 300 digs – just 51 short of joining the top 10 in total single season digs. She had 17 double-doubles this year. On top of her on the court achievements she was also named to the CoSIDA/ESPN The Magazine Academic All-District IV Second Team.

Good luck at UWM Jena! You’ll be missed!

Hello! I’m still here! I’ve spent the last few months working on some other sites I run while we’ve been in the off season. And while those other sites will continue to take up most of my available online time, I’ll also be back posting here now that things are starting to pick up.

So much to talk about! Where’s Jena? Who’s Gregg? Will the team be playing any spring tournaments? Is Stokely being demolished? SEC beach volleyball? 25!!!??? Over the next few days I’ll start posting about some of these things.

BTW – Speaking of the upcoming practice tournaments, I only have what seems to be very tentative information about them. If anyone has more definite info I’d appreciate it if you could send it my way. (via email or in the forum – no registration required). Thanks for any help out there!

Congratulations to Penn State on winning a thrilling five game match to take home the 2007 NCAA Division I volleyball national championship! The Nittany Lions withstood a comeback attempt by a tough Stanford team to win 3-2 (30-25, 30-26, 23-30, 19-30, 15-8).

The 2008 Final Four will be played in Omaha, Nebraska – which is just 919 miles from Knoxville…

I’ve gone through all the data I could get my hands on and compiled a list of the changes to the Tennessee Lady Vols volleyball record book after the matches from this season. Many players on the team made some outstanding individual achievements this year. Congratulations to the following players for breaking into the record book this season: Jena Berg, Mindy Flynn, Nikki Fowler, Chloe Goldman, Leah Hinkey, Kylie Marshall, Farren Powe, and Yuliya Stoyanova. For the complete list, read on…

I’m sad to report that Tennessee assistant coach Mike Minnis is leaving the Lady Vols after seven seasons. He’s moving on to take a position as head coach at Dallas Premier/Dallas Summit volleyball club. Good luck to coach Minnis! The search for his replacement is already underway.

Tennessee’s Nikki Fowler was recently profiled in the Plano Courier Star, a hometown newspaper, after winning the SEC Freshman of the Year award. The article talks about her achievements this season with family, club and high school coaches, and with Fowler herself.

I mentioned last week that I would not be going anywhere for awhile and updates would still be coming. Then I disappeared! My apologies! I got a really bad cold and was drugged up with cold medications for the past week. I’m back online now and will get right back to work finishing up my planned updates. Later today look for a story with some of the records that were broken this season.

Last night the 64 teams that will play in the 2007 NCAA Tournament were announced. Five SEC teams made the cut – Florida (27-2), LSU (24-7), Mississippi (25-7), Kentucky (22-9), and Alabama (15-14). The full bracket is available at the NCAA website.

I just wanted to let those of you still visiting the site know that I do have some updates coming, I’ve just been too busy to do them this weekend! Look for the player stats to be updated and a match recap to hopefully go up today. Then later this week I’ll do a final look at the record book. Either this week or next I will get a season recap up. And sometime before the end of the year I plan on posting full-resolution versions of all the pictures I took this season.

When I started this site I admitted it might only last for a few months. I called it a bit of an experiment, and said that I’d “give this idea a shot this season and see how it goes”. Why was I so tentative about the future? Well, it begins before the site even went up. To research the kind of things I should do on a webpage like this I looked for fan-run sites for other college volleyball teams and was shocked that I couldn’t find anything – not even for the top teams in the country. And, let’s be honest, Tennessee isn’t the most popular team and our matches aren’t the best attended. Would a fan page for the Lady Vols be of interest to anyone since even Nebraska, Stanford, and Florida don’t seem to have people willing to do something like this for them? So I said up front that I’d decide whether or not to continue the site after the season.

The good news is I’ve had so much fun doing this that I wouldn’t be quitting even if no one was visiting. And the even better news is that people are visiting in pretty good numbers! I run several other websites that average several thousand hits a day, so I know the number that visit here is not really a lot. But since I was afraid no one was going to read this blog at all I’m thrilled with what I have! And I’m having a lot more fun working on this page than I am on my other sites with more visitors! So TennesseeVolleyball.net will be staying on for as long as I’m able to run it!

Now that the season is over things will slow down obviously but I will get any off-season news up as it happens. I also have some behind the scenes stuff I want to do to make the website better for next season (here’s a peak: working on a way to make it easier to find stuff on the site; creating a new, more informative roster page; getting a gameday chat room running so fans who can’t make a match can discuss what’s going on live; and lots more).

Thanks for all your visits and support this season. My email box and the forum are always open if you have any questions or comments. I look forward to continuing this site in the coming seasons – and off-seasons!

The Lady Vols dropped their last match of the season to Notre Dame 3-1 (30-21, 30-20, 23-30, 30-19). More details later tonight.

UPDATES: Nikki Fowler finished the season with her twelfth double-double, this time with kills and assists. She was just three digs shy of the triple-double. Yuliya Stoyanova finished her college career in a big way with a .545 hitting percentage a season high 20 kills. Chloe Goldman had the fifteenth 20+ dig match of her season. Leah Hinkey had four blocks, giving her 155 on the season. That puts her into a tie for 7th in the Tennessee record book for blocks in a season.

Tennessee and Notre Dame have the story and stats online now.

I should have some pictures from the match up later. Pictures from the match are now up!

This is your last chance this season to see the Lady Vols in action, as they take on Notre Dame at 7pm Friday night. Not that Tennessee fans need to be told to do so, but for tonight’s match attendees are encouraged to help create an “Orange Out” by filling the arena with orange clad fans. So come out to Stokely Athletic Center tonight to show your support and thank the 2007 squad for all their hard work. Tickets are just $5 for adults, $3 for children, and UT students are free with their student ID. If you can’t make it to the match, you can keep up with the score and stats online.

Notes for the final match of 2007 are now online. For the second week in a row, the Lady Vols look to build off a win to get their first winning streak since September. This week they’ll have their chance against Notre Dame.

• Notre Dame (14-13): website | match notes
Game time is Friday the 23rd at 7pm ET, in Knoxville.

• Tennessee match notes (PDF).

Tennessee has announced the signing of three high school seniors to join the Lady Vols squad for the 2008 season. The signees are setter Kelsey Mahoney of Fort Worth TX, middle blocker DeeDee Harrison of Nashville TN, and outside hitter Kayla Jeter of Solon OH. All three are among the top 100 seniors in the nation as ranked by PrepVolleyball.com. Tennessee’s article has all the info you’ll want to know about the signees, so I won’t repeat it here for now. Congratulations to the newest Lady Vols and welcome to the team!

UPDATE: Here are Tennessee’s incoming freshmen for 2008:

Kelsey Mahoney	DeeDee Harrison	Kayla Jeter

Congratulations to Mindy Flynn who was named to the 2007 SEC Volleyball Community Service Team! The award highlights an athlete from each school who gives back to their community in superior service efforts. From the SEC announcement:

“Flynn has participated in the Saving Little Hearts Mini Golf Tournament, bought and wrapped toys for needy families for the Teams and Toys Christmas Project, has put on a volleyball clinic for the Smokey Mountain Children’s Home and has hosted over 500 kids from the Boys and Girls Clubs for a day of fun and education at the April Play Day. The Louisville, Ky. native is a member of SAAC, has signed autographs and greeted fans in Volunteer Village prior to football games and was a participant in the Dogwood Arts Parade.”

Congratulations to Nikki Fowler on being named the 2007 Southeastern Conference Freshman of the Year! She was also named to the SEC All-Freshman Team. The award is only the second SEC player of the year award in Tennessee history (in 2005, Amy Morris was named SEC Defensive Player of the Year). I’ve posted details of Fowler’s phenomenal first season already in the past two weeks (“Freshman Phenom Fowler” and “Goldman, Fowler contenders for SEC annual awards“) so there isn’t much more to say in that regard. But I’m sure all Lady Vol fans will join me in adding one more huge congratulations to Nikki, with best wishes in the hopes that we have many more reasons to celebrate her career in the future!

The details are available from the SEC and Tennessee.

Coach Rob Partick: “I am very proud of Nikki and feel that she is very deserving of this honor. She did it all for us this season. We could not have asked her to do any more than she did. It is rare in our system to have a freshman take on so much responsibility on the court both offensively and defensively, but she has handled it all with tremendous poise and experience beyond her years… I knew that Nikki would be a major contributor in the Tennessee program, but I could never have foreseen her having such a huge impact in her first season. I am very excited to see her development over the next three seasons. Many of her talents are still untapped and, once she goes through an offseason in our strength and conditioning program, she will be a force on a national level.“