Southeast Missouri State volleyball team begins season with home invitational

The Southeast Missouri State volleyball team will officially get its season underway today with a pair of games at Houck Field House as part of the program's first season-opening tournament at home.

The Redhawks host Saint Louis, Missouri-Kansas City and Arkansas State in the four-team Drury Hotels Redhawks Invitational.

"You don't have all the stresses of traveling, we don't have to miss classes on Thursday in order to get to some away tournament, and just the comfort (of home)," Southeast coach Julie Yankus said of the excitement of playing at home. "We hope we get a great crowd. This is a great volleyball environment when we get some people in here."

SLU and UMKC kick off the tournament with a match at 10 a.m. Southeast will face Arkansas State at noon and SLU at 7 p.m. UMKC and ASU are slated for a 4:30 p.m. game.

The Redhawks play UMKC at 2 p.m. Saturday while SLU and ASU are set to play at 11 a.m.

"We're all really excited to be here and be on our home court and get to work together and work out those kinks with all the new people," junior rightside hitter Madalyn Werths said.

Werths is one of nine returners from the Redhawks squad that went 11-20 overall and 7-9 in the Ohio Valley Conference last season.

Yankus said Werths and Nzingha Clarke, who returns for her sophomore season after being named to the OVC's All-Newcomer team as a freshman, are two players she's excited to watch this season.

"Having those two in the front row -- they're going to be pretty unstoppable," Yankus said.

Clarke led the team with 111 blocks last year and had 136 kills. Werths recorded 137 kills with a .217 attack percentage and 31 blocks.

Senior Taylor Masterson returns after a first-team all-conference junior season. She led the team with 118 blocks and had 285 kills with a .351 attack percentage.

Both Werths and returning junior setter Katarina Rotta described this year's Redhawks as scrappy, which Yankus agreed was an accurate depiction of what she's seen in the past two weeks of practice.

"We talk about defense is an attitude. We talk about that a lot," Yankus said. "We do run if the ball falls without effort and we only did that twice in two weeks, which is remarkable. I guess they've kept track in the past and did like 17 last year. There's just that attitude to get everything up and they really trust in the system so they can go freely without thinking they're going to run into each other. I think it has a lot to do with the team chemistry as well, just really wanting to do so well for your teammates. When you're close and you have that good chemistry you don't want to let the ball drop to the floor and let down your teammates."