National Magazine

Word has it that a story about Lumpy will be in the March issue of Volleyball, which should come out during the third week of February. Check it out if you feel the urge.

The writer is a hack, but the story turned out OK. Not great – just OK.

-Ricky Nelson

Q&A with head coach Brian Schaefer

In place of a proper story, here is the edited Q&A session I had with Brian Schaefer, UW Oshkosh head women’s volleyball coach. By edited I mean I chose only the segments when we were talking about the 2008 season.

This could be my final “story” on the blog or main Web site www.students.uwosh.edu/~kostek00 

Thanks for reading over the past several months. It was nice to briefly meet a few of you. Good luck to the players, coaches and parents in the future.

Now I get to go back to being just a fan of UWO volleyball instead of worrying about crafting balanced stories that lacked the natural “homer” tendencies.

This interview was conducted in Schaefer’s office in late November.

Ricky Nelson: What did Leah Stumpf’s benching at the 2007 Carthage NCAA Regional say in terms of 2008?

Brian Schaefer: It will maybe teach [Stumpf, starting setter] that she does need to be maybe a little bit more vocal. We do have Sam [Schmidt, starting libero] out there in the backcourt, but we definitely need to have someone in the frontcourt, too, that’s loud and leads. With her going to be a junior next year, if she’s setting for us she has to be that type of person that’s going to lead us on the court, vocally and with excitement and just taking charge of the team. As a freshman or sophomore you don’t necessarily have to do that, but now she kind of does because next year we’re not going to have a Leah [Rosenbaum, starting middle] and a Kim [Vail, starting right-side] out there in the frontcourt with her, or a Rebecca [Masephol, left-side] in the backcourt. So she needs to be that person who’s going to lead our younger players and her teammates who might be the same age.

RN: Was 2007 The Year for UWO to make a deep NCAA tournament run?

BS: Yeah, it was. I was talking to Sam about this when we had our exit interviews or whatever you want to call them. I felt that at the beginning of the year. Then as the year progressed, when we got done playing I wasn’t like, ‘Jeez, now I’ve got to recruit all these freshmen and maybe three years from now we’ll have another legitimate shot.’ I don’t think that.

The way that the bench played, the people that I know can come out of the shadows, I think every year we have a legitimate shot. Especially next year because Whitewater loses five starters, Carthage loses three and the rest of the WIAC we proved that we can beat, basically, on a regular basis. And they’re going to get better, too. But La Crosse loses their outside and a couple middles and their setter. And Eau Claire, depite the fact that it seems like they should have lost everyone the year before, they do actually have like three seniors. Then you’ve got Stevens Point losing Shelly Maus, their setter and one of their outsides. Even Superior, that was over 20 wins, they lost their setter and like two seniors. So, it’s like everyone in our conference, except for maybe Platteville, who loses their setter who was a big part of it, is going to be not necessarily down, but a lot of experience is going to be gone.

We still have a lot. The middles, I don’t think a lot of teams in our conference have the middles that we have and someone like an Abby Halverson [reserve right-side], who is behind Kim. Maybe if we don’t get matched up with Wash U in our regional – because they pretty much return everybody – it’s one of those things where it’s like you never know. Maybe you could get deep into the regional again, because I think we definitely think we have the talent to do it. 

So I don’t think it’s like our ‘one and done year’ type thing, and I still think we’re going to be pretty good next year. It would be nice to have Kim and Leah back. It would be like, ‘Next year is going to be IT.'”

Delay

I hope no one is holding their breath for a story about next year. The sections that I have completed are horrible because I didn’t write it immediately after the interview. I think what I’ll do is edit a Q&A I did with Lumpy and transcribe that instead.

I might make another pass at what I have, but chances are I’ll post what Lumpy had to say about the 2008 season during our last taped conversation, which was roughly Nov. 26. Our last chat was long and touched on a lot of topics, but I’ll edit it down to what he said about 2008.

Hope you don’t mind. It’s just that I didn’t get it done like I would prefer when I had the time.

Here’s a taste of what it might look like, except much longer: