ACU set to scrimmage Saturday

ACU to scrimmage in final tuneup for season-opener

ABILENE -- The ACU volleyball team will close out two weeks of summer camp Saturday at 9 a.m. with an intrasquad scrimmage at Moody Coliseum.

Seventh-year head coach Brek Horn said the Wildcats will scrimmage for two hours Saturday in preparation for the season-opener, Friday, Aug. 26, at 7 p.m. against Tampa, Fla., in the Tampa Classic.  ACU will play Central Missouri State and Metropolitan State on Saturday, Aug. 27.  Tampa is ranked No. 9 in the American Volleyball Coaches' Association NCAA Division II pre-season top-25, while CMSU is No. 7.  ACU is ranked No. 26 in the nation going into the season.

"We had a slow beginning to our summer camp, but our workouts this week have gone really well," said Horn, who will miss the Tampa tournament while awaiting the birth of her second child.  "Then we had a scrimmage against Midland College (Friday morning) that gave us a list of some things that we need to improve on before we get started next weekend.

"I feel like we're better off going into this season than we have been in the past," she said.  "We'll see when the real competition gets started, but I think our overall depth is better than what it has been in the past few years."

The two starting spots that were up for grabs going into the season -- middle blocker alongside senior Amanda Slate and libero -- appear to have been grabbed by freshman Lauren Leone and sophomore Liz Snoddy, respectively.  Leone was an honorable mention Class 5A all-state selection last year at Arlington Lamar High School, while Snoddy was the odds-on favorite to win the libero job from the start of camp.

"The game is probably a little bit faster right now than what Lauren is used to, but she's working hard and she'll play well for us," Horn said.  "Liz is our most vocal player on the court, and it will be good for her to be at libero.  It's taken her some time to get used to the position because it's a totally defensive position.  But the other players feel really comfortable with her there, and she'll become more and more comfortable in the position as we go along."

One of the biggest surprises of camp has been the play of senior outside hitter Michelle Bernhardt, who had off-season surgery on her right (hitting) shoulder.  It's not that Bernhardt's solid play throughout camp is a surprise; it's more of a surprise that she's been able to perform as well as she has early in the season.

When Horn saw the school's all-time leader in kills at ACU's volleyball camp in July, Bernhardt could barely swing her arm through a ball after the surgery to, basically, tighten her looser shoulder.  However, five weeks later, Bernhardt looks like her old self, only with new tricks because of the way she was forced to play in 2004.

"When I saw her in July, I didn't know what, if anything, we would get out of her this season," Horn said.  "But she went back home to Hereford and went through some pretty intense physical therapy to get ready for the season.  Now she looks like she did before she hurt her shoulder, but she's got a lot bigger shot selection now because she couldn't just rip it every time last year.  She's smarter now about ball placement and how to get the ball down."

ACU's other off-season surgery victim, senior setter Lindsey Martin, has shown no ill-effects from foot surgery and has not missed a beat during camp.  Slate -- the 2004 Lone Star Conference South Division Player of the Year -- has been, according to Horn, "stellar" throughout camp.

ACU finished 28-8 in 2004 and won the school's first Lone Star Conference championship in volleyball and reached the NCAA Division II Southwest Region Tournament for the first time in school history.  The voters in the LSC pre-season poll expect the Wildcats to pick up right where they left off in 2004 as they were made a unanimous choice to win the LSC South Division title in 2005, picking up all 17 first-place votes for 102 points.