Position Battles? Not So Fast Husker Nation

It's the trendy phrase all over the chat boards the past couple of days.  An easy topic to throw out there this time of year no doubt.  "My favorite position battles for Nebraska Volleyball", "Most Hotly Contested Position Battles Heading Into Husker Camp", "What Position Battles I'm Watching Closely" funny thing is you know who might care the least about the Husker "Position Battles" in all of Husker Nation?  The lady in charge of it, DBK.

Last year as her Louisville team was making a run at a National Championship she had some very similiar situations in her program.  A talented Freshman Setter, but a veteran returning (preseason talks of running a 6-2).  Experience on the outside, but some talent and depth with potential to play.  Depth in the middle, but veteran talent with a lot of experience returning and then depth on her right side, but no one had won the position prior to the season.

Talk to members of that Louisville team and they almost laugh about it when they say what Freshman sensation Setter Nayellis Cabello did "Two weeks before our opener I heard I might play a little, a week before I heard I could possibly play in the opener and then DBK told me 5 minutes before we walked out of the locker room "Nay you ready? Your going to start tonight". That's just the way the season went, we all knew to be ready for anything and anyone could play at anytime so we didn't really blink or freak out when lineups changed."

The frequent changes also helped in emergency situations because well they didn't really feel like emergencies.  I asked Freshman hero Peyton Pedersen, who was thrown in the National Semifinal when All-American Anna DeBeer went down with her season ending leg injury.  (Didn't that kind of freak you out, you hadn't played all match and you hadn't played for awhile leading up to the match and DBK just walks down and says your in) "Yeah, I guess I really didn't get nervous that is how it had been all season Coach was always changing things so we really were ready for anything and she had us prepared to play at anytime so I don't know I just got up and checked in as weird as that sounds she had me believing I could check in at any moment and I did.  Now I also thought oh Anna will be back in, in just a couple points so after she didn't come back in then I got a little nervous maybe."

My point with those examples is that I remember a couple of conversations from last season now very well.  One was Coach talking about "Position Groups" needing to come up with X results, not a player.  So the staff looked at matchups of the total position group they had they didn't care at all about who started or played more, they simply cared about matchups and results.  Nowhere was this more true than at their Setter position with Sr. returning vet Elle Glock and Cabello with every match varying in style and reps for each player.  You go down the Cards positions (Middle Blocker same thing) and so on stats varied every night and so did reps.  It could have been a feel or rythm or practice that week or attitude and buy in, but the last thing it had to do with was "Hey she's the STARTER because she won the competition"

So go to this year's Husker squad is in nearly the same situation. Harper = DeBeer and Jackson = Cresse.  Everything else is open for rotation.  However I do think Dani would personally like a rock at the Libero position so I will predict a starter will be named there, but everything else don't try and ready the tea leaves because it won't be consistent and it could be set to set.

The coaches will be much more active than they have in the past.  Figuring matchups and trends and punching in data on that laptop and analyzing during the match.  So go ahead and think they are "Battling it out to be the starter" in camp, but I don't think they are.

Oh and the second conversation I remembered from last season...is when I asked Coaches' mom I said "man I'd think it's gotta be hard to go up to some of these D1 stars and just tell them they aren't starting or their role is changing all of the sudden,  isn't it hard for her to do that?"  Momma B looked at me and said "Tip she lived that, she made that sacrifice for the good of the team when she was a player to win a Championship it wasn't easy for her to go from Setter to Libero, but it was best for the team so she knows what she's talking about."