Vol­ley­ball Ramps Up for Cross­roads League Sched­ule

MISHAWAKA—The Wom­en’s Vol­ley­ball team is off to a quick start this sea­son. Af­ter last sea­son fin­ished with a NC­CAA Na­tional Cham­pi­onship, ex­pec­ta­tions are sky high, and the team has not dis­ap­pointed. They have jumped out to a 13-1 start in­clud­ing a trip to Mi­ami, Florida and two in­vi­ta­tion­als right here at Bethel.

“It’s so fun to play at home,” Vol­ley­ball Head Coach, Katie Weiss, said. “We have the best home fans in the world. Our stu­dent sec­tion has been amaz­ing, so it has been a blast to play at home. We had a stretch of twelve games at home, so it's been pretty awe­some.”

So far, the Pi­lots have played two matches within their Cross­roads League sched­ule. This in­cludes two sweeps ver­sus No. 16 In­di­ana Wes­leyan Uni­ver­sity and un­ranked Goshen Uni­ver­sity. A huge cat­a­lyst for the Pi­lots is sopho­more Izzy North. She was named a Cross­roads League Ath­lete of the Week for the week of Sep­tem­ber 7^th. North, and fel­low sopho­more Maddy Payne ended last sea­son with NAIA All-Amer­i­can hon­ors. 

“I think it is al­ways awe­some when one of your play­ers gets rec­og­nized,” Weiss said. “Izzy has been fan­tas­tic so far this sea­son, and I ex­pect her to con­tinue earn­ing more of these awards. I think the team loves it when some­one gets rec­og­nized. I mean it’s a team game, if we can’t pass it, and we can’t set it, then a player like Izzy won’t be able to get rec­og­nized. It takes a whole team ef­fort to be able to do that.”

As for the team, they have played mul­ti­ple ranked teams and have been very suc­cess­ful. They have beaten both Viterbo, who is ranked 13^th, and Keiser, who is ranked 20^th. They did, how­ever, drop their only game to Viterbo, but since then the Pi­lots have rat­tled off eleven straight wins. This in­cluded a three-set sweep against 24^th IU Kokomo.

“I want to con­tinue to dom­i­nate teams,” Weiss said. “I want to fin­ish well in our con­fer­ence and make NAIA Na­tion­als. And I don’t want to just make it there, I want to dom­i­nate and play well in that tour­na­ment. I think it will still take us a cou­ple of years, but I think if we keep push­ing our­selves to be our best, we can be at the top of the NAIA level.”

One of the more unique parts of this Bethel Uni­ver­sity Wom­en’s Vol­ley­ball team is their fresh­man class. The class in­cludes two Her­itage Chris­t­ian High School grad­u­ates, Paige Hickey and Abby Men­nen, as well as Weis­s’s daugh­ter, Hanah Weiss.

The Bethel Pi­lots will start play­ing much of their Cross­roads League sched­ule over the next cou­ple of weeks. This in­cludes a week where the Pi­lots will play both In­di­ana Wes­leyan and Mar­ian who are both ranked within the top 25 in the na­tion. The Pi­lots next match will take place against Mount Ver­non Nazarene on Sep­tem­ber 15^th at 6 p.m. here at the Weikamp Ath­letic Cen­ter. For more in­for­ma­tion on the Wom­en’s Vol­ley­ball team visit https://​www.bupi­lots.com/​sport/​25-wom­ens-vol­ley­ball.