Pitching to the Pros: Former Colonel Borne makes professional debut
July 1, 2015
Player of the Week: Ryder Bruce
July 1, 2015
The Nicholls State University volleyball team will start its 2015 season at the Southern Miss Invitational on Aug. 28 with a round-robin match against Southern.
The Colonels won’t play their first home match until 39 days later on Oct. 6 with a Southland matchup against rival UNO.
That about sums up Nicholls’ schedule in a nutshell.
Colonels coach Tommy Harold announced his team’s schedule this week – a road-heavy slate that will see Nicholls play 16-straight road matches to start the year, including four-straight in the Southland Conference.
The schedule is a bear. Harold didn’t deny that the first month of all road games will be a challenge. But he added that because of the Colonels’ high number of returnees, there’s an opportunity to build on last year’s 10-20 record, which included a 6-10 mark in Southland play.
“Our non-conference schedule will challenge us early,” Harold said. “(It will) help our team grow together and we’ll be ready to roll and compete for a Southland Conference Championship.”
Tournament play will be the story of the first several games of Nicholls’ 2015 season.
The Colonels open at Southern Miss and will face-off with Southern, Mercer and the host Golden Eagles over a span of 24 hours from Aug. 28-29.
After the Mississippi trip, the Colonels will head west for a three-game, two-day run the next weekend at the Sawyer Camillo Memorial Volleyball Classic, hosted by the University of Louisiana-Lafayette.
During that run, Nicholls will battle Houston on Sept 4, then ULL and Jackson State the next day.
Perhaps Nicholls’ most difficult non-conference weekend will be the Tulane Volleyball Classic, which will pit the Colonels against major-conference foes like the host Lady Wave, North Carolina State and TCU.
Nicholls wraps up non-conference play from Sept. 18-19 at the Flo Hyman Collegiate Cup in Houston, where the team will face off with Prairie View A&M, Houston and Alabama A&M.
Southland Conference play begins on Sept. 24 when Nicholls travels to face Stephen F. Austin. The Colonels open on a four-game roadstand that will feature the aforementioned SFA matchup, as well as tilts with Northwestern State, Sam Houston State and Lamar.
In total, the beginning of the season will see games in three states and will see the Colonels log more than 2,000 miles on the road over the 16-game stretch.
Harold said those early games will be a golden opportunity to see how Nicholls’ incoming recruiting class can handle the pressures that come with the rigors of collegiate volleyball – a challenge that is especially important for this Nicholls team, which is expected to give playing time to many of its younger players.
“We’re blending our returning veterans with newcomers, who we fully expect to compete for playing time,” Harold said when asked about his younger players.
Once finally able to play a home match on Oct. 6, the Colonels will stick around for a while, enjoying a five-game homestand against UNO, Central Arkansas, McNeese State, Texas A&M-Corpus Christi and Houston Baptist from Oct. 6-24.
Nicholls will also end with three of its final four matches at home, facing Incarnate Word, Abilene Christian and Southeastern Louisiana at home from Nov. 5-10 before ending the season on the road at McNeese State on Nov. 14.
If successful, the Colonels will compete in the Southland Conference Tournament from Nov. 20-22 in Conway, Arkansas.
Nicholls doubled its win total this past year, enjoying one of its most successful volleyball seasons in several years.
There’s still progress to be made, yes.
But Harold thinks the Colonels have the pieces to get it done.
That’s even if most of the games to start the season are on the road.
“I really think we’ve got a challenging non-conference schedule with a good mix of teams,” Harold said. “We’ll be on the road until October and facing some good opponents from all over, yes. But a lot of those road matches are still close to home.”
NICHOLLS SIGNS LUCIJA BARAC
One of the new players that Harold talked about will be a setter and defensive specialist from across the Atlantic Ocean.
Harold announced this week that the Colonels had signed Croatian-born Lucija Barac – a player rich in playing volleyball at an elite level.
Berac has two seasons of collegiate eligibility and will be with the Colonels this fall.
Barac played collegiately for the past two seasons at Jefferson College in Hillsboro, Missouri. While there, she started every game before suffering a season-ending injury at the end of 2014.
The new Colonel has international experience, as well. Barac was part of a first-place team at the U16 Croatian Championship in 2008. She also helped her squad win first at the U19 Regional Croatian Open in 2010.
Perhaps Berac’s biggest honor came in 2011 when she won tournament MVP at the Kinder Maxi King Adria Super Cup Beach Volleyball Tournament.
Harold expects the new signee to immediately challenge for a spot in the Colonels’ playing rotation, despite several returnees on the team’s roster.
