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Becky Schmidt, Head coach of Hope College Women’s Volleyball
Last year the Hope College volleyball team was the national runner-up and Hope player Addie Vanderweide was named the co-player of the year. Becky started by talking about her coaching philosophy and the team culture. The volleyball team claims the motto "Inspire hope". They remind themselves that even though there is a good chance of failure it doesn't deter trying.Becky has decided that she will never nominate an individual player for an award because it is against her team philosophy. When the volleyball team started using social media 5 years ago, they decided that what they would emphasize would be fun, connection, and growth. NCAA Division III has always emphasized academics and Becky appreciates that. She will only schedule team activities between 2:30 and 6:00 PM because she wants her players to be able to choose other activities. Players who are choosing between DI and DIII schools will often choose DIII because of the environment. There have also been transfers to Hope of DI players, which leads to the story of this past season. But the story starts the previous year.
2022 Season
7 players graduated and only 1 returning player. This young team made it to the national championships and was defeated by the number one-seeded Juniata. The team talked about meeting standards instead of meeting expectations. Expectations are placed upon you by external entities, while standards are internal. In the off-season, the team learned that 4 Division 1 players were transferring to Hope. What would that mean for the continuing players? 6 months before the season started the team sat down and talked about what this would mean.
Last Season
The goals of the volleyball team are to be open to community influence, to demonstrate love, to serve others, and to pursue greatness. The community support for the volleyball team is greatly appreciated. The volleyball arena at Hope has 600 seats, but when there are 1,000 spectators or more, they play in the main gym. Hope volleyball averaged 1,200 fans a game last season. Becky decided that she needed to do some special things for this season.
Stress Inoculation
The regular season schedule didn’t have a lot of challenging teams, so Becky scheduled a weekend tournament at North Park in Illinois. Hope played North Park and the University of Wisconsin Whitewater. They beat UW and lost to North Park. On the same weekend, they came back and played Calvin at Calvin.
Adapt or Die
Early in the season two players had medical problems. Annie Lockett injured her ankle and was out for the entire season. Lauen Lee had back issues and was not able to play consistently.
Traditions
The team takes their work seriously and themselves not. They value fun. The Halloween practices are legendary. Last year the theme was Mario Cart with costumes and video games.
Tournaments
The season had only 5 home games scheduled. Hope had not hosted the MIAA tournament since 2013, however they hosted this past season. It is unusual for the volleyball teams to fly to games, but the national tournament was in Claremont, California. Rather than practicing constantly, the team lived up to their motto and had some fun while they were in California. They came away as national runner-up.