Wom­en’s Vol­ley­ball Starts Sea­son

MISHAWAKA—Af­ter two suc­cess­ful sea­sons un­der Head Coach Katie Weiss that in­cluded a NC­CAA Na­tional Cham­pi­onship and two twenty plus win sea­sons, the Pi­lots have started 8-4 while play­ing in three tour­na­ments and ex­pe­ri­enc­ing a Cross­roads League loss to Tay­lor Uni­ver­sity. 

“The ex­pec­ta­tions are al­ways to ac­com­plish more,” Weiss said. “We def­i­nitely have the de­sire to win our con­fer­ence, and to get to the na­tional site for the NAIA. Those are big goals that we have. And we don’t want what we have ac­com­plished in the past to get in the way of the fu­ture.” 

As al­ways, the Cross­roads League has proven to be dif­fi­cult. With four teams cur­rently ranked within the league, and the Pi­lots re­ceiv­ing votes in the rank­ings, the league will prove to be one of the best con­fer­ences. 

“The league is look­ing re­ally good, re­ally tough,” Weiss said. “It al­ways is. Right now, Mount Ver­non is 11-0, Mar­ian is un­de­feated, every­one is do­ing ex­cep­tion­ally well. It’s go­ing to be com­pet­i­tive as it al­ways is, and we love that.” 

Al­though the Pi­lots have had a dif­fi­cult start to the year, they re­turn with the bulk of the ros­ter from last sea­son. This in­cludes two NAIA All-Amer­i­cans, Maddy Payne and Is­abelle North-Payne, and oth­ers that have con­tributed in a ma­jor way over the past cou­ple of sea­sons. They also added two fresh­men to the team, Elise Schil­der­mans and Ains­ley Tacke.  

“Maddy Payne and Is­abelle North-Greene have been ex­cep­tion­ally good play­ers,” Weiss said. “Both have been go-to, con­sis­tent hit­ters and block­ers for us, but they’ve been un­der­class­men. So now to have them as up­per­class­men is in­cred­i­ble, and they have been fan­tas­tic lead­ers.” 

For more in­for­ma­tion on the Wom­en’s Vol­ley­ball team visit bupi­lots.com.