 Hello and welcome to the Dave Trumbo show presented by Buffalo Wildlings. I'm Greg Royce joining with Stevenson Head Woman's volleyball coach Dave Trumbo. Coach, I was certainly excited at the end of the season for us to start with the Mac Hummeloff Championship match against Arcadia. Dropped the first set, Arcadia came out pretty fired up, but the team was able to battle back and pick up another conference championship. Well, we knew they were going to be fired up after a regular season, but thankfully we're able to win a regular season and get that home match for us. Yeah, and they were fired up and we kind of knew that was going to happen. And right at the end of that first set, we had the hockey team walk in. And the whole atmosphere in the gym changed. And all of a sudden, the men's basketball team, the men's volleyball team, some of the football players, everybody, there were so many people there, and it was such a great atmosphere. And really we came out the second set, we're down 5-1. And we're like, I'm going, oh, come on, make a play. We've got to make a play, get the crowd into it. And thankfully we were able to make some plays. And I thought we played just a phenomenal match. And it was a great match. Arcadia is a great opponent and to win 30-28 in the fourth. Right. I'm not so sure what would have happened had we dropped that one, but I guess we fought off, I don't know how many set points, but it was probably three or four. Yeah, it was definitely a back and forth set there. Like you said, you get to a fifth set and I think it can happen, especially when they have all the momentum, winning the fourth set. When you go to 15, it's pretty much a toss-up. Yep, it sure is. The momentum just changes so quickly in volleyball. You think you've got the momentum going to the fifth set and then if you get a couple of shanked passes off-server seed and all of a sudden you lose the momentum, so it changes so quickly. Right. And then like you said, just a phenomenal match. Arcadia came out and played really well. I thought they played a little bit better than they did in the regular season match. They did. But again, your team rose to the challenge and was able to, you know, with the home-court advantage and was able to, you know, secure that championship and secure the end save breath. Yeah, I thought our middles played great that night. Chelsea Ireland and Victoria Prokic both hit in the 400s. I thought that was one of the big differences. And we just were hitting in all cylinders and it was just a phenomenal match. The defense on both sides was just incredible. But we had a lot of momentum and a lot, you know, back on October 6th we were 11-11 and then we won 11 straight or 10 straight going into that match. Right. So we were playing with a lot more confidence than we were earlier in the season. Yeah, absolutely. So then obviously you earned an end save breath through the Conference of Championship A straight. Go up to Ithaca, play Hunter. You know, TV face last year, the first rally in the State Tournament. But certainly a lot different match. You know, certainly a fun match to watch. I'm sure from your perspective, probably was a little nerve-wracking, but just a great back-and-forth match, especially at this set. It was kind of like the Arcadia match. It was a revenge match for Hunter. I felt like Hunter came down last year and did not play well at all. And we had a great crowd that night in the NCAA Tournament, you know, when we were hosting. And we went up there as a fifth seed. I was very happy to be a fifth seed. We were very happy to be in. Okay, well, we got past that. Okay, well, now we want to advance. And Hunter, they also came out and played really well at the beginning. And in fact, Greg, in the third set, he took 47 swings and only had four kills. Yeah. It's like, we were not... We were down two to one. And, you know, we kind of said in the huddle that we have to make a play. We have to make them do something because we were getting so tentative in the net. They were blocking everything that we had to make something happen and things just started happening. Tell you the truth, they set a couple things through the net at Mariah who was not having a good game up to that point. Then she caught fire and I think she had five kills in that fifth set. And a lot of times it just takes... You just don't want to poke the bear. And they did that that night to her. Yeah. And again, that fifth set just back and forth. I think you had set a match point. I think they had match point. You know, like you said, fifth set, anything can happen and fortunately you were able to pull that out to advance. Well, we had them 14-12. And then they scored three straight. So they were up. They... Let's see, it was 14-12 and then they scored three straight which made it 15-14 and then we ended up scoring three straight. And we got an overpass on the last one. Mariah was able to put it down. It was a great win. And I really felt like, again, both teams played so well and anybody could have won. But I think last year we had two five set matches and this year we had nine. So we were kind of used to going five. Yeah. The next night you played the host Ithaca to end up advancing the final eight. And the first two sets, you know, you were right there with them and, you know, battled tough and just weren't able to finish those off and, you know, make it a little bit more of a match maybe you would have liked. Yeah, I felt like we had a great game plan going in. We had watched a lot of tape on Ithaca and spent a lot of time the night before. And so I really thought, you know, if we could execute our game plan, it was going to be really close. And when you're up 23-23 in the first set, 21-21 in the second set, we didn't win those. And Ithaca is a very good team. You know, they won the next day, they went to the final eight. But we had them rattled. We had them rattled and unfortunately we didn't make plays at the end. But boy, looking back, now I am thrilled with the season we had. Yeah, you touched on it earlier, but to look at the season, you know, you had some kids in new roles this year. You had kids that may have played as much or played a lot more this year that you said you were 11-11 on a Cobra Six or whatever it was. And to go out, win 12 straight matches to get to the second round of the NCAA tournament to get to back to the same place you were last year, it hasn't been pretty satisfying overall as you look back. Yeah, well when I was looking at that end of the year schedule, there were four teams that had been in the NCAA tournament the year before. So it was not a soft end of season schedule. We did move the lineup around a little bit. Personnel was the same, but we did change the lineup around a little bit and then just started playing with confidence. If you do remember when we started the season, we played number 23 Christopher Newport. We were in the fifth set and we were serving for Match Point and didn't win. Right. And then the next weekend we lost another five-setter to Stockton. And then it took us a while to recover from that where we weren't used to that. So all the credit to the girls, they stuck with it. It could have been a really tough season and it turned out to really be a blessing and a great one for our program. Yeah. All right coach, well obviously congrats on a great season. And once again, thanks for all your time in the season and we'll chat in the spring for Beach. Oh yeah, it's Beach season now. We are finished on Saturday. They are out there on Monday playing Beach. So that just makes a coach feel good. So thanks Craig. Yeah, it doesn't feel like Beach season out there, but it does feel good enough. That's right. All right, for Dave Trumbo, I'm Greg Royce. This has been the Dave Trumbo Show.