 Welcome to Go Mustang Sports. I'm Dave McHugh joined by women's volleyball coach Dave Trumbo and coach We talked to beginning this season expectations were mixed. You knew you had a good team But missed a lot of key pieces. You guys were off to a roaring 11 and one start You got to be thrilled with the way this team has responded early on this season. I am I am thrilled, Dave It's it's been amazing to watch this unfold as it was a little bit unexpected You know a lot of young kids had to play really really good And I'm kind of thinking is this team going to show up the filing weekend and they keep coming back So I'm starting to feel a little bit more comfortable with where we are right now You know Sarah Ballinger our setter who really is a sophomore. It's never really had baptism under fire It's just been phenomenal nothing short of phenomenal and of course, you know most of those games you're winning in straight sets You've only dropped a handful of sets obviously one loss on the season as well But some tough challenges along the way is the team seem to be coming into their own Or do you still see them improving as this goes along? We're gonna get better We we always have two freshmen on the court and we have two sophomores on the court Yeah, so we only have two seniors sure. We only have two seniors So we are really young and I just think we're gonna keep getting better, you know as as our setters starts to lead and Master our offense and as our freshmen just get more comfortable in their skin on the court And obviously they're pretty comfortable already, you know, Annika Swartz and Lauren Weaver So two of our three pin-hitters are freshmen and the other ones a sophomore that are starting right now So they all are playing really good and they've been pushed and they are not backing down I was gonna say a lot of the underclassmen have stopped up quickly that the headlines aren't always the upperclassmen It's the Freshman's and the sophomores last match out against Gallaudet led by Freshman's and sophomores in the hitting department. It's clearly they're coming into their own and very comfortable in the office Yeah, and they are playing with confidence. I mean because we lost a set We lost a match early in the season did not deter them from from coming back beat the number 22 team in the country at the time Right with the number 22 team in the country And they really enjoy they they just kind of They're mustangs they understand how hard you have to work to run I never had to teach this the Freshman had to compete so they love playing together. They love competing and I'm expecting better things Defensively this team is playing very well as well Holding teams to below a hundred in hitting percentage in many games even negative numbers in some occasions Defensively this team is certainly clicking as well Yes, we are probably better defensively than we were last year Of course led by you know, Sammy Perrilla. We'll talk about her a little bit later But our setter again Sarah Ballinger who's only five foot two, but super super quick and the Freshman and They're playing middle back along with Kristen Brooks who had a lot of experience last year And she's our other outside hitter as a sophomore Phenomenal defense just tremendous athletes and they just refused to let the ball drop And I think it frustrates the other teams because they think that ball is going down And then some kid comes out of nowhere and picks it up And then we ends up transitioning and getting the point and that's the kind of stuff that wins matches And then the other thing I think the glass game against God I had six players who had a block in the game showing that a lot of players willing to step up Especially at the net and get the plate on well And we're trying to play a lot of people as much as you absolutely I coached a win But there's a lot of people that deserve time on the court and they're getting it And that just makes our depth a little bit better So when people do get hurt and we did have somebody hurt in the guy in that game We can easily replace her and just keep on rolling Shouldn't ignore the service game either your team can sometimes just start going on runs Thanks to your service game five aces a game is almost on average for you guys You find the holes in the opposing team and you're serving well to keep the rallies going Well, we say that the best defense is a good serve. If you serve it tough, then you're gonna get something back. That's very easy to Pass and set and hit so we try and serve tough We do make it more serving at hers than I would like But if you're gonna beat the best teams, you've got to serve tough and then you you mentioned Sam Varelo at the beginning She's obviously the glue on this team the most experienced two thousand digs now in her career It's it's pretty much her bread and butter you talk about good defense But then setting up a good offense it starts with Sam. Absolutely Absolutely, and we put we try to get Sam to pass as many balls out of serve receive as we possibly can and She has such confidence because she's human she makes mistakes It does not bother her a bit and the kids can see the confidence and they feed off that confidence And I think that's one of the reasons why we're doing well is they don't think they're gonna lose because Sam doesn't think They're gonna lose how important is it you weren't that sure? She could come back from injury and be part of this team this year How important is the start to this season been because Sam's in the lineup? It couldn't be any more important She brings so much to the table Her leadership I'll never forget at the end that you know when we did lose in the sweet 16 the NCAA She had that team around her talent with tears just streaming down her eyes. How proud she was She said all the things that as a coach I would have said but she beat me too Yeah, that's that's what kind of a person that she is and you know The kids love to play with her and they respect her and I think they don't want to let her down This is her senior year and they want to make sure that she goes the NCAA's and so I think that's that's everybody's goal And she's kind of one of those and she's quiet off the court She's not a boisterous person necessarily at least when I run into her in the office But when she steps on the court, she takes over a home other Dimension she is very competitive and she does play with little chip on her shoulder, which I love That that she had you know because she is really she's feisty and she is stubborn Yeah, all good qualities, but you're looking for somebody to play libero and she just will not give up Let's talk about the week ahead before we let you go Wednesday You'll take on Messiah and conference play would be the third conference game of the season so far You haven't dropped a game or a match I should say in the conference yet so far in this but exactly I was gonna say Missiah is a tough Messiah gives us their best shot every single time We've had been able to beat them the last two times for the conference championship in the tournament But we're gonna get on their court. There's gonna be a huge crowd Yeah, and it's gonna be a great game because we know they're gonna play great So there is no like a looking at box scores and this happened to that happen This is Messiah Stevenson and it's it's probably the biggest robbery in the conference for us And then of course this weekend got four games ahead of you at York College More just them of keeping the team focused on the fact that you have that many games this week And you want to stay on task? Yeah, and I'm thinking this weekend because we have four matches We're gonna get a lot more play for everyone Which is great because kids are fine for position things change people enter are interchangeable And we find out a little bit more about our entire squad this weekend when we have four matches like that So I think we're looking forward to it So five big games this week one against Messiah and Mac conference action And of course we have the the four games at York and by the way We'll talk about it later But then a huge Mac crossover quad match coming up here at Stevenson in a week's time quickly the top 25 You're getting some attention there Is it maybe because you're not maybe getting a lot of it because maybe some people like who is this Mustang squad? We thought had lost so much Exactly, I mean we lost our top hitter. We lost an all-american outside We lost an all-american setter and we lost a starter where somebody that was in our receive So we lost two-thirds of our receive and two of our best hitters and our setter So they're thinking and well, they're gonna really be down this year So we'll creep back up there as long as we keep playing with our creep back up there That's all right under the radar for a while. It works for the Mustangs That's for sure 11 and one coach Dave Trumbo squad currently again Messiah and four games at York coming up this week We'll catch up with coach next week as they get past that hurdle and take a look at the Mac crossover coming up In a week's time coach. Thanks so much for joining us. We'll catch up with him soon here on Go Mustang sports