A volleyball season that took a turn for the worse halfway through ended on a sour note Saturday night at Frost Arena as the USD defeated SDSU 3-1 in the final match of the season for both squads.

The lone set that the Jacks did win was the second set in which they battled back from as many as six points down to win 26-24.

“We did a good job at some points in the match, but when we were able to get our middles going for awhile, that certainly got us back in the match,” first year head coach Phil McDaniel said. “When we stopped paying attention to our defensive assignments, that’s when we really got into trouble.”

Jackrabbits outside hitter Kelly Herrmann attacks the block set up by South Dakota’s Tahnee Reed (10) and Tori Kroll (9) on Nov. 12 at Frost Arena. The Coyotes won the match in four sets. / Collegian Photo by Aaron Stoneberger

An 8-0 run midway through set four set the stage for USD to close the match out leading 21-14. However, SDSU came back to tie the set at 24 and had three set points in which it could have forced a fifth set, but the Coyotes prevailed 31-29.

“We saw a lot of fight in our team,” McDaniel said. “For us, it was just a matter of too little, too late. We started too late in our fight to stay in the match.”

SDSU was led by junior Kelli Fiegen with her 18 kills and .444 hitting percentage. The reigning Summit League Player of the Year ends the season with a team-best 422 kills.

“She’s phenomenal,” McDaniel said. “When we can get her the ball and have her play in the space where other teams can’t, she can do a lot of good things for us. It’s a matter of us being able to defensively transition so that we can get her good, quality swings.”

It was also senior night as Brookings native Ellyce Youngren and Emily Palmer played the final match of their SDSU careers. Youngren wrapped up her time at SDSU 13th on the all-time kills list with 1,144, including 11 in her final match, while Palmer finished with 740 kills as a defensive specialist.

“They played a great match and did a lot of good things for us,” McDaniel said. “Ellyce is such a big blocking threat on the right and Emily has been fantastic for us all year. We are certainly going to miss those two. They bring a lot on the court as well as off the court.”

When you consider all the factors, it was not a surprise that it was the loudest and most amped crowd of the year as 813 fans was good enough for the second largest crowd of the season.

“The crowd was awesome,” Palmer said, after her final match. “I’ve never in my career had a crowd like that. The energy was so high, it was awesome to play in.”

After being picked to finish second in the Summit League behind North Dakota State, the high expectations for SDSU were not met as they lost nine of their last 10 and 15 of their last 17 after starting the season 11-4, including a 3-0 mark in conference. The Jacks finished with a 13-20 overall record and finished ninth in the 10-team Summit League with a 5-13 mark.

The SDSU volleyball team received a crash-course in plate tectonics on their road trip last weekend. Yes, they experienced an earthquake. Actually, two earthquakes, but most players were sleeping during the Friday-night quake.

“Most of our players didn’t feel the first one,” Head Coach Phil McDaniel said. “On Friday night there was an earthquake at about 2:30 (a.m.) or so and most of our players didn’t feel it.”

The quakes happened while the team was in Tulsa, Okla., for their matchup with Oral Roberts.

One of the quakes was the largest ever recorded in Oklahoma, registering a 5.6 magnitude.

For a pair of South Dakota natives on the team, Kelli Fiegen and Ellyce Youngren, it was their first time experiencing an earthquake.

“All of the sudden the lamp shades start moving, the curtains start moving,” Fiegen said. “We were on the fifth floor and all of the sudden phones are ringing everywhere and people were diving out in the hallway [saying] ‘can you feel that? Can you feel that?’.”

For players who grew up mostly in the Midwest, what to do during an earthquake isn’t exactly common knowledge.

“Emily Palmer was my roommate and we were just sitting on the bed and [when the quake started] we looked at each other and ran to the window to see if we could see the cars shaking,” Youngren said. “Then we thought ‘this is probably not what you’re supposed to do during an earthquake’.”

The second quake that the team  felt struck after SDSU’s 3-1 victory over Oral Roberts while the team was winding down at the hotel.

“It shook us enough that everybody got up and got out in the hallway and once we realized everything was okay and got everybody calmed back down it wasn’t too bad,” McDaniel said.

SDSU’s 3-0 loss to UNI at Frost Arena on Nov.7 featured a program at the top of their game and another searching for answers to a lost season.

The 12th-ranked Panthers jumped out to a 3-0 lead in set one and never really looked back, sweeping the Jacks by scores of 25-22, 25-20 and 25-18.

SDSU didn’t have an answer for UNI setter Bre Payton, who posted 32 assists along with 11 kills in only 14 attempts. Blocking UNI’s Krista DeGeest was also a problem for the Jacks. DeGeest recorded a .571 attack percentage and finished the night with a match high of 13 kills.

Phil McDaniel, SDSU head coach, had the scouting edge for the match, having coached at Drake against UNI in the Missouri Valley Conference the previous three seasons. That edge didn’t seem to factor much into the final decision, though.

“Obviously UNI’s a very good team,” McDaniel said. “I’ve known that group for four years now, coming from the Valley, and they’re well coached and very athletic and move the ball around very well.”

Battling from behind the whole first set, the Jacks pulled within one point but couldn’t get past the fast-paced UNI offense.

Set two was close to the same story. Instead of playing from behind from the get-go, the Jacks held a slim lead during the first half of the set, but UNI wouldn’t go away and ended the match with four straight kills. The Panthers picked up right where they left off in set three, and the Jacks really didn’t have much of a chance for a comeback.

The Jacks have suffered from mental mistakes and inconsistent play all season long and last Monday wasn’t any different.

“I don’t think we did terrible,” Kelli Fiegen said. “We could’ve done better, kind of sloppy and we just weren’t engaged the whole time.”

Fiegen nailed a team high of 10 kills, followed by Kelly Herrmann and Kaitlin Klingemann with nine and eight kills, respectively. The Jacks finished the night with a .164 attack percentage for an offense that looked out of sync most of the match.

What’s the biggest difference between the two programs that battled in Frost Arena on Nov. 7?

“They’ve got the complete group there and I’d say we’re missing a couple pieces,” McDaniel said.

UNI extended its winning streak to 17 games while the Jacks fell to 13-18 overall. The match showed what tradition can do for a program and what SDSU needs to work on.

“The [tradition] is passed down from year to year with new freshmen coming in knowing that they have to work hard,” Fiegen said. “I think we could do a better job of taking a little bit more pride in our game and playing for South Dakota State.”

One cross country team fell short of expectations, the other lived up to them at the Summit League Championships Oct. 29 in Tulsa, Okla.

The men’s cross country team, expected by some to compete with Southern Utah for first place, finished in third place. The women, viewed as a team destined to compete for third with UMKC and USD, finished in fourth.

Individually, the men were again led by a strong performance from Greg Vollmer, who finished in sixth place at a time of 25 minutes and 16.4 seconds. After Vollmer, Trent Lusignan and Jared Ailts finished 9th and 12th, respectively.

The top three runners for the SDSU men finished within about 30 seconds of each other but the problem for the Jacks was the minute and ten seconds that separated their third and fifth runners. Kyle Schmidt finished in 34th and Kenny Mayer rounded out the effort for the Jacks in 39th.

Head coach Rod DeHaven said this finish was not quite what the team had expected.

“We had a bad day for multiple reasons and that caught up with us. If we would have run to get second, we probably would have been better off. Trent and Jared were in the lead pack for a while but they fell back after a while.” DeHaven said.

Vollmer was named to the All-Summit League first team and Lusignan and Ailts were named to the second team. Lusignan was also named the Newcomer of the Championship, the first time a Jackrabbit has received the award.

“(Lusignan) was far and away the first freshman out of the gate. He’s very deserving of it,” DeHaven said.

The SDSU women turned in a solid performance to claim fourth place as a team. Danielle Burke was the leader of the Jackrabbit pack with a 22-minute, 20.67-second run that was good enough for 14th place. Rounding out the top five for SDSU was Erin Hargens in 17th, Tera Potts in 20th, Danielle McCann in 31st and Laura Wolles in 34th. In all, only 50 seconds separated the Jacks’ first runner from their fifth.

“Truthfully, we could have ended up anywhere from third to seventh. They were consistent just like they have been all season,” DeHaven said.
Burke was the lone all-conference runner for the Jacks, being named to the second team. DeHaven described it as a fitting end to her Summit League career.

“(Burke) has been close lots of times. Usually in track, she’ll be in ninth place in an event and she always ended up hurt during cross country seasons. To see her get all-conference to end her Summit League career was just great,” DeHaven said.

The Jackrabbit cross country teams now look to the Fall Finale in Collegeville, Minn., on Nov. 4 as the final race before the NCAA Midwest Regional, held Nov. 12 in DeKalb, Ill. and the season finale, the NCAA Championships, held Nov. 21 in Terre Haute, Ind.

The Jacks (12-13 overall and 4-8 in the Summit League), adorned in hot pink for breast cancer awareness month, came out on fire to win a highly competitive opening set 26-24. The Jacks much maligned offense was exceptional in the first set with a .256 attack percentage and 15 kills. Star attacker Kelli Fiegen posted a .429 hitting percentage with five kills, the last of which was the winner in the set.

However, the Jacks early fire was quickly cooled as Oakland (12-9, 6-5) ripped SDSU 13-25 in the second set which included a 12-1 scoring run by the Grizzlies.

The Jacks would storm out of the gates early in both the third and fourth sets taking 5-1 and 4-1 leads, respectively, before giving away both by final scores of 23-25 and 21-25 with the match ending on an underwhelming double touch foul.

Fiegen and fellow juniors Kaitlin Klingemann and Kelly Herrmann ended the match having combined for 36 of the teams 44 total kills (Fiegen 15, Klingemann 11 and Herrmann 10) with Fiegen posting an tremendous .429 attack percentage for the match. Sophomore Lexi Fowler anchored the Jacks defense with a career high 22 digs and tallied 38 set assists to post her team-leading eighth double-double of the season.

The loss is the ninth in the last 10 games for the Jacks, but despite once again coming out on the losing end of the outcome, the team had plenty of positives to pull from the rubble of their latest defeat.

The Jackrabbits played with a noticeably higher intensity and energy that had been missing for the past few games and looked to be on pace to return to a more uptempo style of play that the team is comfortable with.

“I think we saw glimpses of it tonight” said Fowler on her teams renewed sense of urgency. “We started out strong enough we just have to follow it up the next few games.”

The Jacks stagnant offensive play, a key catalyst in their losing streak, also saw a definite improvement Friday night as the team finished with a .147 attack percentage, up significantly from the disappointing .098 percentage last Saturday at IUPUI and suggests that there may finally some light at the end of tunnel for the embattled squad.

Head coach Phil McDaniel said that his team played with much better energy and showed glimpses of a return to their style of game, but said that there needs to be more balanced play on both sides of the net.

Fowler added that team leadership could be another factor in determining the future success of the Jacks.

“We’re going to have to start leading by example. We’re falling into a slump right now were everyone kind of jumps on the crazy train and were not playing our game of volleyball, so we need to lead by example and start doing things right.”

After jumping out to a 2-0 match lead in front of an energetic Frost Arena crowd, the Jacks failed three times to close out IPFW as the Mastodons handed SDSU its tenth loss in 11 matches.

“We really controlled the net early on in the match and got a lot of blocks, but it [the match] kind of got away from us a little bit,” head coach Phil McDaniel said.

SDSU appeared to have the IPFW attack under wraps in the first two sets, registering seven total blocks with Shay Birath recording 16 digs. Then IPFW’s kills started to find the holes in the Jackrabbits defense.

“They had a couple [kills] that just slipped between us and the net,” said Kelsey Hansen, who finished the night with 10 kills and three total blocks.

The slip-ups started in set three.

The Jacks held an 8-3 lead but after an IPFW timeout, the Dons went on a 22-13 run to close out the set and stay alive.

Sets four and five needed extra points to determine a winner with both teams shaking off set and match points, but IPFW proved why they’re a top-four team in the conference, narrowly escaping the Jacks’ upset bid.

“They’re top-four for a reason. They’re a very good team. Matches like this- it’s how I expect us to play. Hopefully we learn how to finish these,” McDaniel said.

Both McDaniel and Hansen were positive after the match, with McDaniel saying he was happy to have his team back, referring to the 11-4 record to start the season.

There were encouraging signs from an SDSU team looking for answers to their struggles. Kelli Fiegen tied a career high with 22 kills. Kaitlin Klingemann tallied 16 kills. Lexi Fowler recorded a double-double, with 56 assists and 20 digs.

But a loss is still a loss and the Jacks now find themselves in a familiar situation as last season: having to win out for a shot to be one of four teams in the Summit League Tournament.

The top three spots are nearly wrapped up with Oral Roberts, NDSU and IPFW holding a strong lead over fourth place Oakland, but that fourth spot is still up for grabs.

“I think the big key is can we come out with this kind of energy, focus and attention to detail again and again?,” McDaniel said.

The Jacks face an uphill battle, as three of the five conference match-ups are on the road, including a showdown against the Bison in Fargo Oct. 28.

“Whether we have a chance or not [at making the tournament], it’s win-out just to end the season on a good note,” Hansen said.

Bailey Philippot looks for a kill in a sweep of Western Illinois at Frost Arena on Sept. 17 (Collegian photo by Aaron Stoneberger)

Questions abound as the Jacks continue to struggle in conference play.

The SDSU Jackrabbits volleyball team has been digging a hole for themselves as of late. After last weekend, they might be in over their heads.

The Jacks were dealt a pair of 3-0 losses at the hands of Summit League foes Western Illinois and IUPUI sending their record plummeting to 12-12 overall and 4-7 in the Summit League. SDSU sits in the Summit League cellar less than a month after beginning league play at 3-0 with an 11-4 overall record.

“We’ve hit a rough spot,” said head coach Phil McDaniel. “We’re learning to battle through tough times and unfortunately it’s taking us a little longer to bounce back.”

The weekend began with a trip to Macomb, Ill., on Friday for a rematch with the Western Illinois Leathernecks (10-10, 3-7), whom SDSU swept back on Sept. 17, and were promptly shutdown in the first two sets by scores of 25-19 and 25-17.

The third set was much more competitive, featuring 17 tie scores and six lead changes, but had the same outcome with the Jacks losing, 29-27.

Kelli Fiegen belted 13 kills to pace the Jacks offensively. Shay Birath, who reached the prestigious 1,000 dig plateau on Sep. 24th against Oakland, recorded 32 digs on Friday, the most in a three-set match in South Dakota State history. Birath broke the mark previously held by Samantha Pearson who notched 28 digs during a match with Louisiana-Lafayette in 2007.

The next night, the Jacks headed east to Indianapolis for a date with IUPUI whom SDSU defeated 3-2 in Brookings on Sept. 16. The rematch, like their rematch with Western Illinois, would be a completely different story, as the Jacks were thoroughly dismantled by scores of 25-21, 25-19 and 25-18 as IUPUI improved to 11-11 overall and 6-5 in the Summit. The Jaguars held the Jacks to a paltry .098 attack percentage and more than doubled their kill output with 53 total kills compared to just 26 for the Jacks. Fiegen paced the stale SDSU offense with eight kills.

With the weekend defeats, the Jackrabbits have now lost eight of their last nine contests; having been swept six times during the stretch. Much of SDSU’s recent lack of success can be attributed to an ineffective offense that once again underperformed, averaging just a .133 attack percentage for both games this weekend. McDaniel affirmed his team’s offensive woes in his comments, stating that the offense is struggling and needs to be more productive.

The Jacks will have a prime opportunity to get back on the winning track this weekend when they host a pair of Summit League foes. Oakland comes to Frost Arena on Friday and IPFW Saturday, both slated for 7 p.m. start times. McDaniel emphasized playing with emotion and energy as keys to winning future games.

“It’s a matter of playing with that emotion that got us to an 11-4 record that we haven’t seen in awhile. For us, it’s going to be focusing on coming out with high energy and making sure that we play at our speed and get back to playing our style of volleyball which has been absent for the past few games.”

“Tonight was the first time in two weeks I’ve seen my old team back on the court,” head coach Phil McDaniel said.

Heading into the match with Summit-leading Oral Roberts, the Jacks had dropped five straight matches, being swept four times during the losing streak.

The Jacks battled through five sets, but couldn’t overcome another slow start, which has become somewhat of a trend during the six game skid. SDSU couldn’t complete the comeback, falling 3-2 to the Golden Eagles.

ORU came out in set one ready to go to work, pounding out 20 kills as the SDSU defense didn’t have an answer for the ORU attack. The Jacks offense didn’t fare any better, only knocking down eight kills in the first set.

“I don’t know if we get too relaxed at home or what. I haven’t figured it out,” McDaniel said.

Set two was a different story. The Jacks came out firing with a majority of the hitting chances going to Kelly Herrmann on the outside. The teams battled all set long, with 17 tie scores and seven lead changes, before ORU took set two in extra points, 26-24.

With an 0-2 match deficit and facing another sweep, the Jacks kept feeding the ball to Herrmann and things started turning around. In another highly contested set, the Jacks pulled off a 25-23 victory to keep the match alive for one more set.

“We did a lot of things really well that we hadn’t been doing well, especially on blocking,” Herrmann said.

Blocking was the key to the Jacks set three and set four victories, as they registered four and three total blocks in the sets, respectively. SDSU finished with nine total blocks on the night, but none came in the final set.

Herrmann finished with 16 kills and one error in 50 total attacks and also had 14 digs.

“Great night,” McDaniel said. “She did a great job tonight moving the ball around and caught them off guard a bit with her shots down the line, moving the ball across court. Overall just a great job.”

The Jacks now have a 3-5 conference record and find themselves in almost the same circumstances as last year. In 2010, SDSU started the season with a 4-5 record in conference play and sat in the middle of the Summit League standings. Then the Jacks rattled off eight straight conference wins to qualify for the Summit League tournament.

“We tried not to put ourselves in that position again, but we kind of did,” Herrmann said. “We just have to be able to cut down on our errors and try to let the other team make the errors, or at least play the ball, which makes a big difference [turning the season around].”

Does this year’s team, facing the same uphill climb, have enough in them to go on a run and make the tournament?

“We have to play with this type of intensity every night. If we do that, we’ll win more than we lose. The thing is, we’ve been missing [the intensity] for the past two weeks. If we get that back, I’m not worried, but we have to make sure we maintain it. If we play that way, I like our chances,” McDaniel said.