Bethel Vol­ley­ball Com­petes in NAIA Tour­na­ment

MISHAWAKA—Jump back to 1998. Many of Bethel’s cur­rent play­ers on the vol­ley­ball team were in­fants, and maybe not even born. That year was the first time Bethel vol­ley­ball went to the NAIA tour­na­ment. Cur­rent Head Coach Katie Weiss played on that tour­na­ment team. Fast for­ward to 2021, and Bethel is now mak­ing its sec­ond tour­na­ment ap­pear­ance and com­ing off their 2020 NC­CAA Na­tional Cham­pi­onship run.  

“Re­ceiv­ing the at large bid for the NAIA Na­tional Tour­na­ment means a lot to me per­son­ally,” Weiss said. “Bethel Uni­ver­sity has not been to the NAIA tour­na­ment in 22 years, and this is the sec­ond time in school his­tory! I was on the last team from Bethel to play in the NAIA tour­na­ment and be­ing se­lected to com­pete brings nos­tal­gia as well as ex­cite­ment. To com­pete as a player and now re­turn as a coach is mean­ing­ful. It's com­ing full cir­cle. I am proud of my team and all that they have ac­com­plished this year. We are mak­ing his­tory and it's very ex­cit­ing.” 

On April 12, the Pi­lots were se­lected to the NAIA Na­tional Cham­pi­onship as an at-large team. In a nor­mal sea­son, the Pi­lots would not have been able to com­pete in both the NC­CAA Na­tional Cham­pi­onship and the NAIA Cham­pi­onship, but be­cause of the NAIA mov­ing their fall and win­ter cham­pi­onships to the spring, the Pi­lots will com­pete in both this sea­son. 

“Our sea­son has spanned the en­tire aca­d­e­mic year,” Weiss said. “That's a long time to stay fo­cused and give your best ef­fort. It's dif­fi­cult to com­pete at your high­est level with­out in­jury for 8 months. We've had to take more time off, have talk­ing and en­cour­age­ment ses­sions, and at times eat ice cream. I don't usu­ally ap­prove of dessert, but this year my motto seems to be, ‘what­ever it takes!’” 

The tour­na­ment game will come with some un­prece­dented chal­lenges for this year’s team, as they will be los­ing three se­niors due to aca­d­e­mic rea­sons. Abby Ar­mold, Calsey Gruz­dov and AJ Mc­Don­ald will not be play­ing in the tour­na­ment for the Pi­lots due to grad­u­a­tion. 

“Be­ing a young team, es­pe­cially this se­mes­ter af­ter los­ing se­niors Abby Ar­mold, Calsey Gruz­dov and AJ Mc­Don­ald, I ex­pect us to play young.” Weiss said. “We are learn­ing and grow­ing but we are ca­pa­ble of more than we know. It's time for us to lean into our tal­ent and trust our abil­i­ties. If we can do that, we will have an ex­cit­ing time at na­tion­als.” 

The Pi­lots faced off against the Rein­hardt Ea­gles on April 17 in Waleska, Geor­gia. The Ea­gles en­tered tour­na­ment play 22-5 and were awarded an au­to­matic bid for win­ning the Ap­palachian Ath­letic Con­fer­ence. This was the Ea­gles fourth ap­pear­ance in an NAIA Tour­na­ment. Their tour­na­ment ap­pear­ances have all hap­pened since 2015. 

“I think Rein­hardt is beat­able. They haven't played a top 25 team this year,” Weiss said, prior to the game. “We play top 25 teams of­ten. We have strong ex­pe­ri­ences this year from our time at NC­CAA and we know the mind­set it takes to win. We have ex­pe­ri­ence play­ing in a Na­tional Cham­pi­onship game al­ready this sea­son and we know how to fight it out un­til the end. These things will help us in the NAIA Tour­na­ment.” 

The Pi­lots beat Rein­hardt 3-1 (25-19, 25-22, 20-25, and 25-21). With this vic­tory, the Pi­lots ad­vance to the main site for the NAIA Na­tional Tour­na­ment held in Sioux Falls, Iowa from April 27 to May 1. For more in­for­ma­tion on the Bethel vol­ley­ball team, visit www.bupi­lots.com.