Lessons from Sampson
and Cy Young propel Kaleigh Nelson and her teammates to a win over the Bears
- #6 Washington def.
California 3-0 (25-23, 25-21, 25-20)
- next: #7 Stanford @
#6 Washington | October 20 | 4:30PM
For the past several months, Washington’s Kaleigh Nelson has thought about cutting her hair.
Monday night, she told her stylist to let the scissors fly.
“I just wanted change,” Nelson said.
When the Biblical Sampson’s hair was shorn, he famously lost
his strength. So when Nelson started the first set of Wednesday’s match against
California with a series of weak-hitting
errors, one might have wondered if the woman with shorter locks had somehow misplaced
her mojo. Nelson ended the very first rally by hitting the ball into the net.
She ended the second rally with a net violation. With UW trailing 3-1, she was
stuffed by Cal’s Michelle Neumayr.
“It was frustrating, making errors,” Nelson confessed.
With Cal leading 6-2, Nelson sailed a ball out-of-bounds.
Her coach, Jim McLaughlin had seen
enough, and called a timeout.
“I challenged her at that point,” said McLaughlin, “and I asked
her, who is she? Is she this kid that can make a lot of errors? Or is she this
kid that can stabilize and just hit shots?”
In practice this past week, McLaughlin talked a lot about
consistency. Too often, he’d seen his hitters make errors or get blocked, and
then resort to weaker, lower percentage attacks like tips or roll shots. His
message: work through the inevitable momentum swings by focusing on the one or
two shots you do best.
“I told them, if you’re gonna pitch in the major leagues,
those guys have one or two pitches, and they throw ‘em. And they know the
strike zone. And if you’re gonna win a Cy Young, you’re gonna know it even
better. We talked about winning Cy Young Awards as hitters.”
The first point out of the timeout? A Nelson slam, straight
down the right-side line. It was both a gift and a challenge from her setter, Jenni Nogueras.
“Gosh, I love that girl,” Nelson said. “Jenni was a stud.
She’s a lot more vocal than she used to be. She gets on us, but that’s what
teammates have to do.”
With the kill, Nelson rotated out, and the Huskies continued
to struggle. At one point they trailed 12-6, as Cal’s hitters—and particularly
opposite Christina Higgins—pounded the
ball with abandon.
“(Higgins) can hit high and deep, she can put it down,” said
Cal coach Rich Feller. “She’s pretty
tough to defend.”
Nelson reentered the rotation with her team back within two,
thanks to some timely hitting by teammate Krista
Vansant. But Cal’s other big weapon, Adrienne Gehan, welcomed Nelson with a powerful slam for a point. On the next rally,
however, Nelson answered with a smart kill off Gehan’s block attempt. Gehan
accepted the challenge and delivered another kill, only to see Nelson pound
cross-court from the right side, then a send a smart attack off high hands for
yet another point. Three swings, three kills. And Nelson was back.
Hair or no hair.
“I wanted to stay consistent, keep going for my shot over
and over again,” she said. “And not dwell on the fact that I started off not
very strong. It’s all about finishing strong.”
And finish strong she did, tying with Vansant for 14 kills
for the match. “She wasn’t herself,” said McLaughlin, “and then she became
herself in a big way.”
But the biggest play was yet to come. With Washington
trailing 21-20, Nelson hit a cross with power off the Cal block. Gehan again
responded with a monster kill, and Vansant answered with a powerful shot of her
own. Feller called a timeout with the score tied at 22. He wanted to make sure
Higgins got a swing.
“The scouting report on Washington is the corners are open,”
Feller said, “‘cause they play a bunched-in defense, everyone knows that. If
you can hit it high over the block into the corner, you can probably get a
score.”
With Vansant serving, Cal setter Joan Caloiaro delivered to Higgins on the right. But, for whatever
reason—set too close to the net? block too imposing?—Higgins decided to tip,
and the Huskies easily kept it in play. It wasn’t what Feller wanted.
“Nope, not at all,” he said. “With Washington’s defense, tips
don’t generally fall. ‘Cause they’re so close in. Washington had zero blocks
that first game. So my opinion would be, why not swing away at those, and see
what happens?”
Instead, it was Nelson who had a chance to swing away, on a
set from Nogueras, and she buried it down the line. After a Vansant service
error, Nogueras trusted Nelson again, and—you guessed it—Nelson delivered. That
made it 24-23, allowing Melanie Wade
to complete the comeback with a service ace.
“We have some adversity? Respond to it,” McLaughlin said. “It’s
the type of people we have, the type of team we have. That’s all it is. These
kids can make some plays when it counts.”
“We’re working in practice on keeping the edge, staying
competitive,” said Nelson. “A lot of that is staying aggressive: getting our
feet to the ball, going after every swing, and not tipping. Making them earn
the points, not giving them any extra points.”
And although Cal competed hard the rest of the match (“They’re
the best team we’ve played so far,” said McLaughlin,) Washington refused to
hand the Bears any gifts. After those first three errors at the top of the
match, Nelson committed just one more the rest of the way. Vansant had 14 kills
and just 1 error on 29 swings. As a team, the Huskies committed just two
hitting errors in each of the final two sets, while the Bears had 12 errors
over that span.
Jenna Orlandini
had another stellar match for Washington, with 15 digs, some of them
sensational. “She’s becoming a great player,” McLaughlin said, “In line with (former
Washington All-American liberos) Tama
Miyashiro and Candace Lee.” And
the Huskies—who lead the 328 teams in Division 1 in aces/set—added 5 more aces,
including 2 each from soft-serving Katy
Beals and hard-serving Cassie
Strickland.
Wiping her brow and readjusting her hair at the end of the
match, Nelson was reminded of her unfamiliar coiffure. “It felt so weird to
reach back and have, really, no ponytail.”
Turns out, she didn’t need it.
NOTES:
[10/17/13 | 3:45PM: corrects early version to note that Cal played Utah at home--not USC on the road--Sunday night]
- The Pac-12’s Wednesday night matches continue to draw
scrutiny from many conference coaches. After Washington drew large crowds last
weekend against Arizona and Arizona State, the announced attendance
was only 1,525. “I don’t know how good that looks on TV when there aren’t a lot
of people,” said Feller. Feller wasn’t dissing the UW faithful—he was reacting
to a two-year pattern of poorly-attended matches whenever the Pac-12 Network schedules a mid-week
game.
- Feller’s team had another reason to be concerned about the
schedule: academics. The Bears played a night match in against Utah Sunday (a
3-1 loss to) then had classes and a film session Monday (“We couldn’t really
practice Monday,” he said, “we were whipped.”) After a short day on Tuesday, the team flew to Seattle Tuesday afternoon. “I’m not sure how much trouble I
could get in for saying something about that,” he said. “I will say that our
team is going to miss double the number of classes this year than they have any
year that I’ve been here. And that’s a hardship. It’s an extreme hardship on a
student-athlete.”
- The Bears won’t return home until Sunday, because the
schedule has them playing Saturday night in Pullman. It begs the question:
couldn’t the conference have scheduled that match for Friday?
- Although the match was the only Pac-12 game of the evening, and although it was featured on the Pac-12 Networks, there were no broadcasters in Seattle. Instead, the play-by-play was called from a studio in San Francisco, as the announcers watched a video feed.
