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Volleyball

mr12182

HR All-State
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Jan 14, 2009
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Did Iowa recruit Brigg Tubb's daughter from Clinton? I see she chose Drake. TIA
 
Most scholarship volleyball players verbally commit the summer before their senior season. Increasingly, more and more are doing so before their junior year. Ellie Tubbs announced for Drake before her Sophomore season, noting she liked the campus when she competed in the Drake Relays in the spring of her Freshman year (high jump I believe).
Iowa, and virtually no other school, was really ever in the mix.
She's a skilled outside hitter, but Drake is probably a good fit. If you thought Brig was thin 25 years ago, he was Shaq like compared to his daughter.
 
So where exactly is all the talent in Iowa going? Are they going to Iowa and we just suck that much compared to the rest of the nation or is it more like softball in that we've abandoned in-state recruits, thinking we can't field a competitive team with what Iowa high schools offer (along with the recruits from other states)?.................
 
Over the last 25 years, UNI has been the superior volleyball program in the state. That trend was already underway when Kate and Kara Galer from Iowa City West played in Cedar Falls in the mid 90's. Iowa State really stepped it up not long after the turn of the century. The Cyclones went toe to toe with national powers Nebraska and Texas in conference (back when Nebraska was a conference foe). ISU was one win away from making the Final 4 in the last five years, and has been the best program in the state for the last decade.
I'd estimate Iowa has had 5 coaches in the last 20 years, more than UNI and ISU, combined.
Perhaps no state produces more volleyball D1 talent, per capita, than Iowa. One of the best AAU programs in the country is in Iowa City. The Iowa Rockets practice in the North Dodge Athletic Club. They routinely win national titles. But, their players, all from Eastern Iowa, avoid Iowa City like the plague. Haley Eckermann from Waterloo was the star outside hitter as a Freshman for national champion Texas in 2012. Holy Trinity Catholic of Fort Madison's Mikaela Foecke is this year's USA Today and Gatorade National Player of the Year and will be a Freshman at Nebraska.
Iowa's problem is attendance. Volleyball is a great spectator sport, but Carver is simply too cavernous an environment. Until a volleyball specific arena is built, Iowa will lag far behind in a brutal league. Iowa football competes because it packs 77,000 into Kinnick, which isn't Ohio State, Michigan, Nebraska, Penn State and Wisconsin numbers, but tops everyone else. Iowa's volleyball attendance is about 12th in a 14 team league. The top half of the league can routinely boast single matches of over 10,000 fans. 2,500 is Iowa's max, and the average is significantly lower.
Drain the Fieldhouse pool and put a volleyball court in the same spot, and they will come. Several dorms are right there, and student attendance would skyrocket. Get that place rocking, and the talent won't flee eastern Iowa. It will stay.
Iowa's volleyball problem isn't coaching (and hasn't been). It's been a lack of commitment to provide a fun and fan friendly place to watch a match. It's an embarrassment that so much talent comes out of Eastern Iowa, but never even considers playing in Iowa City. The athletic administration only seems to care every 4 years when it fires a coach for getting his/her head beat in by conference programs with enthusiastic fan bases that attract talent. Bowlsby and Barta have never done anything to legitimately assist the volleyball program. This is sad, because Iowa has been sitting on a powder keg of talent for quite a while, but a lack of imagination and attention by the administration is the root cause of the school's abysmal record. Tight confines, raucous fans on top of the action breeds a fun environment that players want to play in. Iowa high school talent doesn't want to play at Iowa, not because they don't like the coach. It doesn't like to play at Iowa because it doesn't like the building.
 
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Over the last 25 years, UNI has been the superior volleyball program in the state. That trend was already underway when Kate and Kara Galer from Iowa City West played in Cedar Falls in the mid 90's. Iowa State really stepped it up not long after the turn of the century. The Cyclones went toe to toe with national powers Nebraska and Texas in conference (back when Nebraska was a conference foe). ISU was one win away from making the Final 4 in the last five years, and has been the best program in the state for the last decade.
I'd estimate Iowa has had 5 coaches in the last 20 years, more than UNI and ISU, combined.
Perhaps no state produces more volleyball D1 talent, per capita, than Iowa. One of the best AAU programs in the country is in Iowa City. The Iowa Rockets practice in the North Dodge Athletic Club. They routinely win national titles. But, their players, all from Eastern Iowa, avoid Iowa City like the plague. Haley Eckermann from Waterloo was the star outside hitter as a Freshman for national champion Texas in 2012. Holy Trinity Catholic of Fort Madison's Mikaela Foecke is this year's USA Today and Gatorade National Player of the Year and will be a Freshman at Nebraska.
Iowa's problem is attendance. Volleyball is a great spectator sport, but Carver is simply too cavernous an environment. Until a volleyball specific arena is built, Iowa will lag far behind in a brutal league. Iowa football competes because it packs 77,000 into Kinnick, which isn't Ohio State, Michigan, Nebraska, Penn State and Wisconsin numbers, but tops everyone else. Iowa's volleyball attendance is about 12th in a 14 team league. The top half of the league can routinely boast single matches of over 10,000 fans. 2,500 is Iowa's max, and the average is significantly lower.
Drain the Fieldhouse pool and put a volleyball court in the same spot, and they will come. Several dorms are right there, and student attendance would skyrocket. Get that place rocking, and the talent won't flee eastern Iowa. It will stay.
Iowa's volleyball problem isn't coaching (and hasn't been). It's been a lack of commitment to provide a fun and fan friendly place to watch a match. It's an embarrassment that so much talent comes out of Eastern Iowa, but never even considers playing in Iowa City. The athletic administration only seems to care every 4 years when it fires a coach for getting his/her head beat in by conference programs with enthusiastic fan bases that attract talent. Bowlsby and Barta have never done anything to legitimately assist the volleyball program. This is sad, because Iowa has been sitting on a powder keg of talent for quite a while, but a lack of imagination and attention by the administration is the root cause of the school's abysmal record. Tight confines, raucous fans on top of the action breeds a fun environment that players want to play in. Iowa high school talent doesn't want to play at Iowa, not because they don't like the coach. It doesn't like to play at Iowa because it doesn't like the building.
I think coaching has had something to do with it. Hopefully this new coach can do something. After all, he does have connections in IC and those powerful Eastern Iowa players.
 
Guess I'm not quite buying the building theory. UNI built their program when they were playing in the old crappy west gym (which would embarrass most high schools). ISU built theirs while playing in Hilton, and still do. Wisconsin has been playing in their old fieldhouse, which could be kind of cool except that it hasn't been maintained and is frankly a dump. A dedicated VB building at Iowa just isn't going to happen, even with BTN money sloshing through the place. That said, when Saint Louis built their new arena, the adjacent new practice facility was equipped with retractable seats for VB and I was a bit surprised that Iowa didn't do the same.

One possibility might be scholarship money. There was a thread on the Ultimate College Softball board about programs that low-ball their in-state kids, hoping they'll still come in order to be close to home, in order to throw more generous offers at out-of staters.
 
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Illinois played for the national championship just four years ago. It never plays its home matches in Assembly Hall, now known as State Farm Arena. This link makes my point, in spades.

http://www.fightingillini.com/sports/2015/3/24/huffhall_volleyball.aspx

I never said volleyball needs to be played in a Taj Mahal. It needs to be played in a building that provides raucous atmosphere. Playing it in a "dump" where the crowd is on top of the action is better than playing it in a cavernous locale like Carver, where the closest fans are more than a first down and a half away, and proceed to recede further from that. UNI was better when it played in the West gym. It's actually regressed since moving to the McLeod Center. Hilton is a better and more intimidating home court advantage than Carver. Always has been, and always will.

Receding bowls don't cut it compared to buildings that go more straight up. Acoustics is a major force. Kinnick is harder on visiting teams than Michigan's Big House. It's just 23,000 more per game buys you better players.

My suggestion that the Fieldhouse pool be the solution isn't costly. They were going to drain and fill the thing, anyway. Use the bleachers built into the North wall, surround the court with the roll in, metal, make shift kind, and call it good.

Iowa isn't losing local talent because it prefers out of state talent. That's ludicrous. Iowa isn't getting local talent because the state's high school players have experienced more rabid fan bases at their high schools, and there are two better in-state options. Eckermann and Foekle are to volleyball what Barnes and Paige are to basketball - simply too good to keep at home when national suitors come calling. But Iowa isn't even a consideration for in state players at the next tier, down. Student athletes go where the fun is, especially in Olympic sports where fan attendance is at a premium.

Iowa volleyball doesn't play in a fun environment, and never will be as long as Carver is the site of its home games. What's sad is, the distance between a national title contending home fan base, and Iowa's current situation, is only a couple thousand people. Spring football game attendance counters couldn't get Iowa a 500 person volleyball average attendance figure, but Illinois broke its attendance record in 2013 by simply eclipsing 3,000.

Coach Bond Shymansky is a City High grad. If he does a Hayden and turns a moribund program into a winning one, he'll do another Hayden and threaten to leave if the facilities aren't enhanced. Having a coach with Iowa City ties might buy Barta a year in negotiations, but that's it.
 
Iowa is getting another transfer from South Carolina. An OH hitter who led SC in kills. Bond is really making a push to make this team good now not in a few years.
 
Iowa incoming players Regan Coyle and Molly Kelly both just competed at the USA HP Championships in Des Moines, where the Iowa team won the silver medal in the Women's Junior International Division. They lost to USA Junior Red in the finals. (top USA team) On that morning they defeated Team Canada. Coyle was named to the All-Tournament team.
So, great Iowa players coming to Iowa.
 
Records of our Non-Conference opponents.
Over half the games against teams that qualified for the NCAAs last year.
A little too much too soon?

South Dakota St. 6-27
Pacific 24-7 (should have qualified)
at Northern Illinois 21-10
at Hawaii 22-7 (NCAA Qualifier)
UCLA 22-12 (NCAA Qualifier)
American 26-7 (NCAA Qualifier)
Milwaukee 17-14
Iowa St. 19-10 (NCAA Qualifier)
Texas A&M 20-10 (NCAA Qualifier)
Gardner Webb 12-21
Coastal Carolina (2) 25-7 (NCAA Qualifier)
Drake 11-18
 
Records of our Non-Conference opponents.
Over half the games against teams that qualified for the NCAAs last year.
A little too much too soon?

South Dakota St. 6-27
Pacific 24-7 (should have qualified)
at Northern Illinois 21-10
at Hawaii 22-7 (NCAA Qualifier)
UCLA 22-12 (NCAA Qualifier)
American 26-7 (NCAA Qualifier)
Milwaukee 17-14
Iowa St. 19-10 (NCAA Qualifier)
Texas A&M 20-10 (NCAA Qualifier)
Gardner Webb 12-21
Coastal Carolina (2) 25-7 (NCAA Qualifier)
Drake 11-18


Problem is, that at tournaments, it is hard to control who you play. Hawaii tournament looks brutal, but still a chance to go there. And, new setter is from there. So, good time tournament? They played Northern Ill in spring scrimmage and held their own.
Interesting who is NOT on the schedule. UNI??? Heard Iowa offered them multiple dates to play, and UNI declined them all?!
 
Years ago I read that UNI's Peterson said they were forced to play a stiff non-conference schedule at as many high-visibility tournaments they could get into, in order to maximize their chances of getting an at-large to the NCAA tournament should they fail to get the MVC auto-bid. That meant no room in the schedule for Iowa. I thought that might change when Iowa hired ex-MVC'er Dingmann, but did not. Now, Iowa's on the upswing while UNI has missed the NCAA the last two years, and just had their returning setter transfer out following other transfers last year. So from UNI's POV, they have nothing to gain by playing Iowa, and risk further loss of prestige.
 
I understand,but their tournament is solid, however, after their tourney, they face Cincinnati, Butler, Illinois-Chicago, and Western Kentucky, Alabama, Northern Ill. Not a real powerhouse pre-season. So, seems more of "ducking" iowa than claiming RPI needs.
 
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