Sorry for the looooooong delay. After returning from the beach tournament my wife and I bought a new house. So we’ve been packing and moving and cleaning during most of our free time the past few weeks. We finally moved in to the new place last weekend, and this weekend we finally got our internet service connected. I’ve got a few items I’ll catch up on here tonight. But hopefully from here on out I’ll be officially settled in and posting on a more timely schedule!

Congratulations to Kylie Marshall and Nikki Fowler on winning the top division championship at the 2009 SEC Coaches Beach Volleyball Tournament held this past weekend in Siesta Key FL. UT has the full story. Marshall and Fowler went 5-3 during pool play before winning four straight games to clinch the title. Also competing in a separate division were Kelsey Mahoney and Kayla Jeter (2-4 in pool play, won first round game but lost in second round) and Amanda Friday, Carol Cheade, and DeeDee Harrison (1-5 in pool play, lost first round game).

I’m going to be a little busy for next few days but will post some pics and more soon.

I’d hoped to be able to update a little more before this weekend’s beach tournament but real life interfered! So let’s get caught up!

The big news is Tennessee has a new assistant coach. Dani Busboom, a Nebraska Cornhusker from 2003-2006, will step into the shoes formerly filled by Katie Noble. Quotes from Busboom and Coach Patrick, along with more details on the hire, are available over on the official site.

More recruits are heading for Rocky Top. According to the Chicago Daily Herald, outside hitters Kelsey Robinson and Carly Sahagian will be heading to Knoxville in the next two years. I’ll try to post more about them soon.

Don’t forget about the second annual SEC Coaches Beach Volleyball Championships being held this Saturday in Siesta Key, FL. Last year’s event was a lot of fun and I doubt this year will be any different!

As I mentioned in my last post, the family and I recently started house hunting. I assumed it would take time but we actually found something within the first week! Dealing with finalizing the sale and preparing for the move has consumed a lot of my free time recently, so sorry about the slow updates. The good news is it will all be over soon! The bad news is that we close on the house either the day before I leave for Florida or the day after I get back! So I’ll try to get an update posted as soon as I can after the tournament. But if I’m late you’ll know why!

Hello! Is anyone else well into volleyball withdrawal? Now that we’re officially into spring I thought this would be a good time to post a few notes of interest.

• Unfortunately, it seems Tennessee is losing a few members of the volleyball family. According to posts at Volley Talk, players Jaye Loyd and Michaela Hanakova have apparently left the team for personal reasons. I’ve also heard that we may have lost some staff, including assistant coach Katie Noble, graduate assistant Annie Sadowski, and volunteer assistant Philip Bennett. If any of this is incorrect please contact me so I can immediately correct it. Best wishes to those moving on in their future endeavors.

• Some good news: new recruits should be joining the Lady Vol ranks soon. According to Rich Kern and Memphis Metro Volleyball, Rebekah Smith (5′ 11” RS/OH, Hutchison School, Memphis TN) will be joining Leslie Cikra in the 2009 freshman class. Smith made All-State and was a PrepVolleyball.com Honorable Mention All-American in 2007 and 2008. And according to the Tennessean, joining Kylann Scheidt in 2010 will be three-time All-State player Ellen Mullins (5′ 5” DS/L, Father Ryan HS, Nashville, TN).

• Spring season should be just around the corner. Other than the beach tournament in April I don’t have details about any matches. Check the official Tennessee site and hopefully they’ll post info there soon.

• Nikki Fowler was named an Honorable Mention on the CVU.com 2008 Stellar Spiker list.

• Six players made the 2008-09 SEC Fall Academic Honor Roll: Carol Cheade, Milan Clarke, Nikki Fowler, Chloe Goldman, Lauren LaFlamme, and Kylie Marshall.

My family and I are in the middle of looking for a new house. We hope to find one and move in within the next month or two. But I am planning to head to Florida for the beach tournament. So besides that, and barring any major news, there probably won’t be many other updates for awhile.

I hope everyone is having a great off season!

After a successful inaugural event, the SEC will hold a second SEC Beach Volleyball Tournament on April 18th. Like last year this one will be held in Florida, but instead of the Florida campus this one will take place in Siesta Key. The SEC tournament will be part of an event called “Fiesta on Siesta Key” which will also feature a separate volleyball competition called the Collegiate Beach Volleyball Challenge. That event will include USF, UCF, North Florida, Miami FL, DePaul, Notre Dame, Stetson, Jacksonville, Boston College, Houston, Marquette, Pittsburgh, Florida State, UNC Greensboro, Florida Gulf Coast, Georgia State, and Georgetown.

2008 was a great year for Tennessee: a 22-10 record, some big awards, and finishing in the top 3 in the SEC and in the top 80 nationally in almost every statistical category. Here are the final national and conference rankings.

NATIONAL RANKS
• Pablo Ranking: 43rd
• NCAA RPI: 50th

NATIONAL TEAM STATS
• Aces per set: 225th
• Assists per set: 74th
• Blocks per set: 47th
• Digs per set: 78th
• Hitting percentage: 53rd
• Kills per set: 79th

NATIONAL INDIVIDUAL STATS
• Assists per set: Kelsey Mahoney – 293rd; Michaela Hanakova – 311th
• Blocks per set: Alyssa Hilby – 37th; Farren Powe – 307th
• Digs per set: Chloe Goldman – 59th
• Hitting percentage: Farren Powe – 89th
• Kills per set: Nikki Fowler – 74th

CONFERENCE TEAM STATS – ALL MATCHES
• Aces per set: 9th
• Assists per set: 3rd
• Blocks per set: 2nd
• Digs per set: 1st
• Hitting percentage: 4th
• Kills per set: 4th

CONFERENCE INDIVIDUAL STATS – ALL MATCHES
• Blocks per set: Alyssa Hilby – 2nd
• Digs per set: Chloe Goldman – 3rd
• Hitting percentage: Farren Powe – 5th
• Kills per set: Nikki Fowler – 2nd

CONFERENCE TEAM STATS – SEC MATCHES ONLY
• Aces per set: 10th
• Assists per set: 1st
• Blocks per set: 3rd
• Digs per set: 1st
• Hitting percentage: 2nd
• Kills per set: 1st

CONFERENCE INDIVIDUAL STATS – SEC MATCHES ONLY
• Assists per set: Kelsey Mahoney – 10th
• Blocks per set: Alyssa Hilby – 4th
• Digs per set: Chloe Goldman – 3rd
• Hitting percentage: Farren Powe – 1st
• Kills per set: Nikki Fowler – 2nd

It’s the last day of 2008, which was a great year for Lady Vols Volleyball! I hope everyone had a great Christmas! Just a quick heads up on updates now that the holidays are almost over. I’m off to Memphis for the Liberty Bowl (Go Pirates!), but when I get back this weekend I should have a final look at how the Lady Vols stand nationally and in the conference done and ready to be posted. Then in the next week I hope to have a season recap written up. After that things will go quiet except for any occasional news that may come up. Until then, Happy New Year!

I’ve gone through all the data I could get my hands on and compiled a list of records set after the matches from this season. This list may not be complete, but is as good as I can get it. Apologies to anyone left out. Check out the full list here…

Congratulations to Lady Vol high school recruits Leslie Cikra (Senior, Ohio) and Kylann Scheidt (Junior, Tennessee) who made All-State recently!

Congratulations to Penn State on a dominating season that ended with the 2008 NCAA Division I volleyball national championship!

The 2009 Final Four will be played in Tampa, Florida – which is just 650 miles from Knoxville…

Just a reminder that the 2008 National Championship is tonight at 8pm ET. After two exciting semifinal matches Thursday, #1 Penn State and #2 Stanford advanced and meet tonight in Omaha NE. The match will be broadcast on ESPN2.

I’m running a little behind on those season updates (the records list is almost done!) so how about a few Final Four stats for now?

• There are over 300 teams currently in Division I. But in the 28 years the NCAA has had the championship tournament, only 25 teams have made it to a Final Four. Only 6 of those schools are in the Eastern Time Zone (including Tennessee in 2005). Only 2 of those went on to the Finals. Penn State is the only eastern school to have won the title.

• Only 10 different teams have ever won the National Championship. Stanford leads all with 6, while Penn State has won 2 (which means after tonight only 10 teams will still have ever won the championship).

• Stanford and Penn State have been in every NCAA tournament since its inception in 1981.

• Since 1992 Stanford has never gone more than one year without making the championship match.

• The Lady Vols have played both the potential champions a few times over the years. Tennessee is 0-2 vs Stanford, and 4-5 vs Penn State. In their last match in 2005, Tennessee knocked #2 Penn State out of the tournament in the regional semifinals.

• Tennessee coach Rob Patrick was an assistant coach with Stanford from 1994 to 1996. During those seasons the team went 92-6, won all three Pac-10 titles, were in all three Final Fours, and won two National Championships.

The Knoxville News Sentinel has a piece this week about Tennessee recruit Kylann Scheidt, a high school junior from my neck of the woods here in Farragut (a west Knoxville suburb). Scheidt talks about her goals (“to play in the Olympics”), her plans for Christmas break (training with the United States Junior National Team), and having to transfer to another state during high school (“It wasn’t too bad”).

On the subject of recruits I saved an article a few months ago but forgot to post it until this story just reminded me of it. Chagrin Falls senior Leslie Cikra, formally announced as a signee recently, talked with the Cleveland Plain Dealer before the season about her decision to become a Lady Vol: “The weather there is great and the athletic department is awesome. They have separate athletic directors for men’s and women’s athletics, and that was important to me. And academically, it’s outstanding.”

Congratulations to Nikki Fowler who today was named to the AVCA All-American Honorable Mention list! Fowler is just the ninth Lady Vol (and the third sophomore) to ever achieve All-American status. More later…

UPDATE: Tennessee has the story.

Coach Patrick: “I am very glad that the rest of the country sees and recognizes the contributions that Nikki has made to our program. This award is a testament to her work ethic and constant drive to improve in every facet of her game. She played at an extremely high level all year and I could not be more proud of what she was able to accomplish this season. For her to take on such a huge role as a sophomore, not only offensively, but passing and defensively as well, is not an easy thing to do, but she handled it better than we could have ever asked her to.”

Congratulations to senior Milan Clarke. She was named to the Southeastern Conference Community Service Team this week. And later today she will graduate from Tennessee with a degree in creative writing.

“Clarke helped read to preschool kids during a national event named Read for the Record which promoted the importance of reading. She has twice visited patients at East Tennessee Children’s Hospital and participated in the annual Holiday Dinner hosted by UT athletes for guests from a homeless shelter. Clarke also participated in the Saving Little Hearts putt-putt fundraiser to help raise money for children with heart diseases, bought and wrapped toys for needy families for the Teams and Toys Christmas Project, put on a volleyball clinic for the Smokey Mountain Children’s Home, hosted over 500 kids from the Boys and Girls Clubs for a day of fun and education at the April Play Day, and refereed volleyball matches for the Special Olympics of East Tennessee.”

Congratulatins to coach Rob Patrick, sophomore Nikki Fowler, and junior Chloe Goldman. Patrick has been named the AVCA South Region Coach of the Year. Fowler has been named to the All-South Region Team. And Goldman was named an honorable mention.

(My internet service is down so I am typing this from my phone. Apologies for being brief! I will update this entry with links and more once my service gets restored.)

UPDATE: Woohoo, I’m back online! Tennessee has the story on these awards.

Coach Patrick, on Fowler: “It’s very gratifying to see Nikki receiving the respect that she deserves. I honestly feel that she is one of the best players in the nation due to the impact she has in every phase of the game, and I am very happy to see that other coaches feel the same way. She may be the most multi-dimensional player that we have ever had at Tennessee, as her hitting, blocking, passing and digging skills are all done at a consistently high level.”

Coach Patrick, on Goldman: “Chloe has been the anchor of our defense for the past two seasons. I’m very proud that people realize the tremendous impact she has in our matches through the ball control and defense she provides for our team. Through her dedication and hard work, Chloe has become more consistent throughout her career, which I believe has translated into the success she has had on the court and, ultimately, this honor bestowed on her today.”