UNW’s Stoltz, UWP’s Kirchner named conference Woman of the Year nominees

The Upper Midwest Athletic Conference nominated Northwestern setter Krista Stoltz for Woman of the Year. The Wisconsin Intercollegiate Athletic Conference nominated middle Stephanie Kirchner.

Stoltz and Kirchner are among 49 Division III conference nominees, seven of which were volleyball players. The selection committee will announce  the top 10 nominees in each division in September. That list will be whittled to three in each division at the end of September.

See all conference nominees for Woman of the Year.

-Ricky Nelson

 

IIT (kind of) names new head coach

Katherine Zulandt is the new head coach at the Illinois Institute of Technology, according to the IIT coaches page. However, IIT has yet to publish a release regarding a hire. Zulandt was most recently a part-time assistant at Loyola Maryland.

Update (7/24): IIT published a release confirming Zulandt as head coach.

-Ricky Nelson

Ricky Nelson’s 2014 preseason top 25

My ideas of a preseason top 25 are probably not your ideas of a preseason top 25. While I appreciate the sentiment of rubber-stamping the final 2013 poll, I prefer to flush 2013 and start anew with some risk. Prior performance matters to me insofar the prior performance is relevant in 2014. My top 25 shows my order of teams when they step on the court for the first time this year. I will be flat-out wrong on teams — too high and too low. But I hope those errors will be addressed when I publish my weekly top 10s.

Because I post this so early, I know very few incoming recruiting classes. D-III, especially the fall season, is a crap shoot. At least in winter and spring you have a surer sense of where athletes are enrolled. Volleyball is one of the tougher fall sports to gauge in the early going because freshmen and transfers often play crucial roles.

In previous years I’ve posted my preseason top 10 followed by a laundry list of 20-30 teams (see my preseason polls from 2013, 2012, 2011). Being slightly bolder, here is my 2014 preseason top 25 followed by a laundry list of another 20 teams I wouldn’t mind seeing the AVCA voters recognize. There are several others, but lists have to end somewhere. I agree if you think the laundry list is a crutch, but it’s the preseason and I like quite a few teams this year.

1. Emory
2. Wittenberg
3. Hope
4. St. Thomas
5. Juniata
6. Wisconsin-Whitewater
7. Washington-St. Louis
8. Wisconsin-Stevens Point
9. Calvin
10. Trinity (TX)
11. Saint Benedict
12. Pacific Lutheran
13. Pomona-Pitzer
14. Eastern
15. Mount Union
16. Colorado College
17. Christopher Newport
18. Nebraska Wesleyan
19. Coe
20. Millikin
21. Texas-Dallas
22. Ohio Northern
23. Cal Lutheran
24. Mary Hardin-Baylor
25. DePauw

Next 20 (in no particular order): Claremont-Mudd-Scripps; Bethany; UMass-Boston; Webster; Elmhurst; Clarkson; Williams; Otterbein; Stevenson; Augsburg; Thomas More; Randolph-Macon; Concordia-Moorhead; Susquehanna; Carthage; Cornell; Franklin & Marshall; Chicago; UC Santa Cruz; Southwestern.

Pretty wrong, right? I agree, there are some that stick out to me too. We’ll see.

-Ricky Nelson

Illinois College names new coach

Kristy Duncan was named the head coach at Illinois College. Duncan was most recently an assistant at Illinois Wesleyan.

-Ricky Nelson