Soccer and volleyball news

[psycHOGlogist]

Softball has been pretty fun to follow this spring, and of course there's been the excitement of the WBB coaching change and possible roster changes. But there's been some other stuff to note, as well. The soccer team signed a really great (maybe strongest ever?) recruiting class, and the volleyball team has also had some goings on, as well. The soccer recruiting class is described here:

http://www.arkansasrazorbacks.com/soccer-welcomes-13-new-student-athletes/

with a late addition described here: http://www.arkansasrazorbacks.com/traxson-selects-arkansas/

The kids from Oklahoma, in particular, are supposed to be outstanding. If they are as good as advertised, the soccer program is really officially starting to turn the corner. Arkansas has never gotten kids this highly rated in back-to-back recruiting classes.

Volleyball has replaced Sarah Rumely as assistant coach with Megan Wargo-Kearney, which I mentioned in an earlier post. But there's also been at least one change in the roster heading into the fall. There wasn't much publicized about the spring season for volleyball, probably because they really didn't have a lot of players on campus to engage in competitions (They lost 6 seniors, most of whom were the starting lineup, off last year's team, leaving only about 8 on the spring roster).

I've also written about the recruiting class that Coach Watson is bringing in, but there have been some apparent changes there. We had a 6'2" OH/RS player from Ohio, Dominique (Nikkie) White committed/signed. She came to campus and was photographed in uniform with all of the other signees in the fall. However, she now lists herself as an "ISU commit" on her twitter bio. Not sure if that's Iowa (unlikely), Indiana, or Illinois State (or something else?), and I'm not sure how the parting of ways happened. She has some upside because she is tall and athletic, but I think she was going to be something of a project. In some video I saw of her, she had a pretty ungainly armswing and tipped the ball a lot, but she was a great jumper and solid blocker. She was also not a player in a position of extremely high need on the team, which is definitely short of middle blockers.

To address that, though, we are evidently bringing in a Euro kid -- from Denmark -- to give us more options in the middle of the court. According the article linked below, she has some national team experience in Denmark; she's 19 and will have four years of eligibility -- her name is Maia Stripp. Good height (~6'2"-6'3"), looks like a strong blocker, and has played a pretty high level of volleyball. Euro players usually have some adjustment to the US collegiate game, which is played at a little faster tempo, but her size should help, and she looks reasonably agile.

Here's the article -- it's in Danish, but google will translate it for you with some fairly broken English, but you can get the gist: https://volleyball.dk/index.php/rssnyhed/item/1680-danmarksmester-og-landsholdsspiller-far-fire-ar-i-usa
Seems like a good, and needed, addition to the squad.

There have also been rumors/reports that Yasmeen Ratliff has left the basketball team and is joining the volleyball team (she was actually more experienced and better regarded in high school as a volleyball player). I haven't seen any official announcement about that, so I'm hopeful but still regarding that as a rumor.

So ... the soccer team should be very exciting to watch this fall, and it should be a fun team to watch.

I don't expect the volleyball team to be especially strong, even though we will be returning All-American candidate Pilar Victoria from injury. There will be a LOT of newcomers on the team, and I think it will take a while for them to grow and gel as a team. The full season schedule hasn't been released yet, but some of our competitors have published theirs. We are playing at a very tough pre-SEC season tournament at Kansas State with the Wildcats, Wisconsin (one of the best teams in the B1G), and Syracuse. 'Cuse was terrible last year, but they were very young. Wiscy should be very strong, and K State could be pretty interesting - they're tall and talented, but they lost a lot from last year and will be starting a bunch of players with limited eperience. We also play Florida twice during the SEC slate. More on the schedule when it's released.

Now ... back to cheering for Softball in the SECT and beyond!

[flippinhogmana]

thanks psych, those programs seem to be in good hands.

[hawg1221]

The last couple of years the soccer team has made big improvements on the field. This recruiting class you talk about just solidifies the future of the soccer program even more. When you add the major improvement of the softball program this year and the great coaching hire of CMN in basketball, the overall women's programs at the University of Arkansas are vastly improving. 

[hawg1221]

After reading about the soccer recruits coming in this fall, I'm pretty excited about it.

[psycHOGlogist]

After reading about the soccer recruits coming in this fall, I'm pretty excited about it.

Right? I'm very excited to see what kind of product we put on the field. Exciting times...