The volleyball game at Anderson Arena has been moved up tonight from 7 p.m. to 6 p.m.
For coach Denise Van De Walle and her Bowling Green volleyball team, it has been a trying and emotional past week.
Entering last Friday’s game against Eastern Michigan, who at the time was 8-4 in conference play and second behind West leader Ball State, the Falcons had won three games in a row after opening their Mid-American Conference slate 0-8. They were feeling confident after two straight-set wins over Central Michigan and Toledo, and won the first set over the Eagles.
Ever since, though, emotions and unfortunate circumstances have presented themselves for BG, making tonight’s rematch with Ball State all that much harder to focus on.
“With the tragedy in women’s soccer, we’ve been very moved and very touched by that situation,” Van De Walle said. “We took a day off practice this week, and we tried to help them out and support them. The last six or seven days have been very emotional, especially with last weekend’s game against Eastern being taken away from us, and then Bridget going down.”
Lone senior Kristin Gamby agreed that this will be a hard match to focus for.
“This week has definitely been hard,” she said. “With our loss, and their loss, we’re definitely under emotional strain right now. We need to focus a little more than usual for this game.”
The Eastern Michigan match, played at Anderson Arena, had all the makings of a game that could turn around a season. The Falcons had the Eagles on their heels, winning the first set of the match. After dropping the next two sets, BG was in position to win the fourth set and send it to a fifth, but a late Eagle comeback followed by a controversial call gave Eastern the win.
The following night, Bridget Protas, one of the more experienced Falcons, went down with a knee injury, adding to the Falcons’ frustrations. Protas is out for the remainder of the season.
“To know we were on the upswing, and playing better, and to have that match taken from us was heartbreaking,” Van De Walle said. “And then to have Bridget go down the next day hurt us. She’s very talented, fast, and offers us a lot offensively and blocking-wise. Losing one of your most dynamic athletes is certainly hard.”
The Cardinals enter tonight’s match leading the West Division by three games, at 11-1 in conference play. They beat BG in Muncie three weeks ago in straight sets, 30-18, 30-28, 30-19. Susie Norris led BG in the match, recording eight kills and 14 digs.
“I expect Ball State to come in confident at 11-1 and leading the conference,” Van De Walle said. “They’ve done an excellent job down there; they’ll expect to come in and win. I expect us to compete extremely hard, and to be a different team than we were at their place.”
Gamby said the Falcons being close to elimination from MAC Tournament consideration is enough motivation for her and her teammates to compete as hard as they can to get a win tonight.
“For me right now, I want to get in the tournament really bad,” she said. “The Eastern loss is still in our minds, definitely. I don’t think they’ll expect us to play as well as we’ve been playing. … This will be huge for us.”
