Mississippi State volleyball coach Jenny Hazelwood knew she needed to do something to keep her team on its toes during the annual grind of two-a-day practices in August.
After wrapping up the second practice of the day on Aug, 11, Hazelwood decided to spring a surprise on her players as they were mentally and physically winding down for the day in cold tubs. They would practice for a third time that day, which certainly had the intended effect of catching the team off guard according to junior right side Faith Steinwedell.
“Let me tell you, I think it blindsided us,” Steinwedell said.
That was not the only trick Hazelwood had up her sleeve, though.
Enter strength coach Matt Balis, master motivator and a man credited as being one of the driving forces behind the turnaround of Dan Mullen’s football program.
Balis, who once coached ninth grade volleyball, delivered a simple message before the surprised team: others quit when it gets hard or they get tired, but champions keep going when they reach their breaking point.
Hazelwood believes Balis’ message was exactly what the team needed to hear before a third practice of the day which would run past 11 p.m.
“A perfect message going into a third practice when they weren’t expecting it … It was one of our best practices of the preseason,” Hazelwood said. “We let (the players) plan it. They planned it and challenged themselves probably more than we would have.”
After finishing tied for fifth in the SEC West last season with an 11-20 record, the Bulldogs are hoping the extra effort in August will yield better results on the court.
The Bulldogs begin the season Friday against Southern Illinois at Newell-Grissom, and senior Caitlin Rance thinks the team’s training in the offseason has the group more prepared for the season than in previous years.
“We’ve already had our ups and downs, so it’s good that we’re getting them out early in preseason,” Rance said. “Now we know exactly what we need to work on.”
An unfortunate trend in recent seasons for the volleyball program has been major injuries. Steinwedell is coming back from a torn ACL suffered last season, which was the second time in her career a season was cut short by a knee injury.
However, with more depth on the roster in the form of freshmen Sarah Temperilli and Lainey Wyman, Hazelwood said the team is more prepared to withstand an injury to one its starters. Temperilli, a right side from Tomball, Texas, could give Steinwedell and her knee a break during long weekends when they play three games in two days.
“I think we’re due for a season without major injuries like that,” Hazelwood said. “If something unfortunate does happen, we for the first time have the kind of depth at every position that we need to have.”
While Rance and Steinwedell are the team’s captains, sophomore setter Paris Perret will also be expected to take on a leadership role this season. As a freshman, Perett ranked fourth in the SEC with 1,024 assists, which is only the second time in MSU’s history a freshman has surpassed the 1,000 assist mark.
Hazelwood admits she tried not to overload Perret as a freshman, but she expects her to be able to handle the pressure of playing setter (a vital position on the volleyball court) in the SEC. Ask her teammates, and they’ll say Perret is up for the challenge.
“She might have an underclassmen title, but she doesn’t act like it,” Steinwedell said. “She comes out there like she’s the best in the SEC, and that’s the attitude you have to have to win.”
The team will also be looking to improve on last year’s 2-11 record in away games, which Hazelwood attributes to problems that are all mental and not physical.
Meanwhile, she said she is also hoping to make Newell-Grissom a tougher place to play. The gym loudly echoes any noise inside it, something Hazelwood told administrators not to fix when they approached her about it.
“Schools already hate coming to our gym because it’s a hard place to play, and they’re gonna hate it even more,” Hazelwood said.  “That’s what we want.”
Of course, it takes more than loud gymnasiums to challenge opponents, and Perett thinks this year’s team will be able to advance in the standings of the competitive SEC.
“Everybody works 10 times harder, the expectations are higher,” Perret said. “There’s gonna be some good things happening this year.”