“Who better than me?”
Lindsey Behonick kicked off her third season as Oregon State’s head volleyball coach with an assignment for the team: listening to a podcast episode hosted by Mel Robbins, interviewing film producer Will Packer.
Jackie Matias, a transfer junior setter from Honolulu, Hawaii, said that the podcast’s message, “Who better than me?” is the mantra the team wants to build their season around.
“I think that’s what our team is. We’re here. We’re here to play and we’re here to get some wins. So who better than us?” Matias said.
“I think it was just more about having a confident arrogance of ‘everyone belongs in the room that you’re in,’” Behonick said. “Every person on this team has a role and they’ve earned the right to be here.”
Oregon State is starting off their season with hard work and optimism. The first practice with the entire team and coaching staff took place on Aug. 7.
The practice included drills such as spot-serving reps, covering blocks, jousting and rounds of short-court games to work on ball control. Jousting includes two players going head-to-head at the net. Short-court limits the playing field to the 10-foot line.
These all assist in Behonick’s goal. “I want to just be a really good team defensively,” she said. “We want to counter whatever (the opponents) have to put more pressure on them to ultimately score the point.”
The Beavs are still looking to be on the attack, especially with senior outside hitter Lauren Rumel coming into this season fresh off a gold medal win with Team USA’s U23 team in the North, Central America and Caribbean Volleyball Confederation U23 Pan American Championship.
“To get that recognition was really meaningful,” Rumel said. “I’ve had a little bit of some bumps along the way earlier in my career. So to overcome those and achieve this, it was really special.”
Rumel’s experience has helped her and her team grow as players and set themselves up for a season full of collaboration, cooperation and communication.
“I’m at the highest level of volleyball entering the season that I’ve ever been at, and so I feel very confident going in with my skills and abilities,” Rumel said.
Cheyenne Green, a freshman outside from Pleasant Hill, Oregon, said “Having Lauren on the team, who has been playing at an extremely high level, has motivated me to come into practice every day. … It’s awesome to have a player in the gym like that who pushes you to try and do your best every day, every hour of practice.”
The coaching staff is also introducing a new habit of having players keep journals to track their season goals set by themselves and the coaches.
“We start off with a goal, and then things we want to work on in practice, and then at the end we kind of evaluate it in our strengths from the day,” said Alana Marrs, a freshman middle blocker who joined the Beavs this spring. “There’s a number scale. … We can flip through every day and have a new journal entry and it’s kind of cool to see our progress.”
The coaches gave some players individual goals to focus on for the first practice. “Mine is ‘elevate and annihilate the ball,’” Green said. “I think that’s really helped me focus in on my hitting and what I need to do to get better at that.”
Behonick said that she sometimes doesn’t want practice with the team to end. “They’re so joyful. I see a lot of gratitude in them. Like even if there’s some dips in practice or they don’t think it’s going great, I’m still finding a lot of optimism,” she said after the practice.
The Beavers will begin their season on Aug. 23 with an out-of-conference matchup against the Oregon Ducks. The match will take place at Gill Coliseum, starting at 4 p.m.
The regular season will start Aug. 30 at Gill against Stanford at 7 p.m.
