Southeast Missouri State spikers open season today at Hamilton Classic

The Southeast Missouri State volleyball team, entering its fourth season under coach Julie Yankus, can breathe a little easier going into the year.

The expectations for the Redhawks, which lost key players to graduation, aren't nearly as high from other members of the Ohio Valley Conference, which picked the team to finish seventh in the preseason poll.

But that doesn't mean that the players and coaches' expectations are any less than last year when they were picked to win the OVC -- it just means they don't feel like they have something to live up to.

"Basically now we can kind of take a deep breath and we don't have all the pressure on us," junior middle blocker Taylor Masterson said. "Not everybody's going in and looking at us like we're expected to win every single game. We know within ourselves what we need to do to get the win and become a better team each day, so instead of everybody looking at us like, 'Oh, they should be winning,' it's more like we're just expected to play and whatever happens, happens."

The Redhawks open their season today at the Marcia E. Hamilton Classic, which is hosted by Saint Louis University.

"Everyone's eyes were on us," senior outside hitter Andrea Baylin said about last season. "We had big targets on our backs last year, and this year we're kind of flying under the radar. It's nice to just come in and have a clean slate and whatever happens, happens."

Southeast faces Memphis at 10 a.m. and Alabama at 5 p.m. today and concludes the tournament Saturday with a game against SLU at noon and Northern Iowa at 5 p.m.

It is the first of three tournaments the Redhawks will compete in to start the season. They'll play in the Indiana Invitational on Sept. 5 and 6 and in the Alabama State tournament Sept. 11 and 12.

"We have some really big competition for these first two tournaments in particular, but I think it'll be a really great test for us" Yankus said. "It'll show us the level that we can compete against. Realistically, having so many young players, they shouldn't have a preconceived notion as to who's supposed to be a good team, who's supposed to win or who's not, so hopefully we can just go out and perform and compete every day. By our third weekend, I think that's definitely a tournament where we can be very successful and get some confidence, which will be great for us going into the conference season."

Southeast begins conference play at Murray State on Sept. 26.

Yankus said she and her players believe they can finish in the top third of the conference. Southeast finished fourth last season in the conference standings, and four of their top players were seniors -- all-conference selection middle blocker Emily Coon, setter Julie Shives, libero Berkley Idel and outside hitter Colleen Yarber.

"Really, anything's possible, and I think probably almost every team in the OVC believes that because it's a competition between No. 1 to No. 12 every single year," Yankus said. "There's never an easy match. There's never just one clear or two clear winners above everybody else."

Baylin and Masterson are projected starters heading into this weekend. Freshman Nzingha Clark is expected to start at middle blocker, freshman Krissa Gearring at outside hitter, senior Kelsey Keeve at right-side hitter, sophomore Katarina Rotta at setter and sophomore Jade Mortimer at libero.

Yankus has focused on the team getting more kills as well as continuing to be strong blockers. Southeast led the conference with 2.39 blocks per set last season, and Masterson led the conference with 139 blocks.

"We're trying to find new ways to score," Yankus said. "We need to terminate, so if that means different players, different offensive options, different systems, whatever we need to do to score."

The Redhawks will try to mix up the offense, work on different crossing patterns and could have some players play different positions at times to try to confuse the defense, which is something that the team is focusing on more this year.

"We talked about it," Yankus said. "We didn't really do it as much, but with having the ball control and having so many more hitters and more options it's something that we can actually execute this year."