This week, the Creighton Sports Information Department released the 2010 Volleyball Media Guide, the first of its kind for the 2010-2011 academic year.
Still waiting for one hot off the presses? Keep waiting: this year’s edition is only available to the general public online. So save it to your hard drive and peruse on your screen, or print it at home and bring it with you to the games. At 72 pages, the guide offers plenty of must-read information.
We took a little time here at White & Blue Review to share some of the highlights of this year’s edition.
Ryan Center in Action
Last season’s media guide outlined the anticipation for the opening of the new Ryan Center and Sokol Arena. This year’s guide features photos from the building’s first year of action, including some from WBR. With the opening of the new joint, the program established new facility records for games played at Sokol Arena. Here are some targets for future Jays volleyball teams:
Attendance
The average attendance at Creighton volleyball games last season increased to 1,062 a game. Compare that to the Omaha Civic Auditorium average over a 5-year span of 730 fans per match, and the new facility increased attendance by more than 45%. That’s an impressive increase, especially considering some of the struggles last year’s CU team suffered compared to the previous seasons. The attendance also put Creighton in the top 35 in the nation while only having 10 home contests.
Statistics
Surprisingly enough, the first year in a facility establishes new bests statistically. Fortunately for Megan Bober, Allie Oelke, Alicia Runge,Nayka Benitez, and Laurel Sanford, they all can strive to beat those single season bests they established last season while others try to get their name in the record books. It is also interesting to note that there are a couple players on some Missouri Valley Conference foes that are in the top of the single season records at Sokol Arena.
Professional Players
Although they don’t receive a sliver of the publicity the NFL and NBA receive, professional indoor volleyball leagues exist. A lot of them, however, are not stateside. Creighton is able to boast four former players participating in such leagues. Former Bluejays Kelly Goc and Amanda Cvejdlik both played in the Balkan Volleyball Association for Albania and led their team to the Albania Cup championship.
A year after finishing her college career at Creighton, Bianca Rivera was named Rookie of the Year and was an All-Star in Puerto Rico for Vaqueras Bayamon. Rivera played at the libero position as a Bluejay, but was a middle blocker in Puerto Rico according to Wikipedia. Meanwhile, Korie Lebeda, who was a 4-year all-conference and record-setting setter for Creighton, played in Spain last year.
Coaches
One constant during Kirsten Bernthal Booth’s coaching tenure at Creighton has been her coaching staff. But for the first time in 8 years, some coaching staff information had to be updated in the media guide.
Bernthal Booth, Paul Giesselmann, and Angie Oxley Behrens shared the bench throughout the Bernthal Booth’s 120 career wins at Creighton. But before this season, Giesselmann left to take the head coaching job at Midland Lutheran. Tom Mendoza now joins Bernthal Booth and Oxley Behrens on the bench. He brings with him knowledge of the Valley, due to his experience at Evansville last season. Also joining the staff this season is former Nebraska volleyball player Amanda (Gates) Sjuts. Maybe she will have some pointers when the Bluejays take on Nebraska on August 31st. Bernthal Booth is excited about both newcomers according to the media guide:
“I’m really excited about our staff this fall. I had been fortunate to have the same staff for seven seasons, but at some point you need new blood, new ideas, new energy, and I think Tom and Amanda definitely bring that.”
Players
The guide dedicates 13 pages to player profiles, so readers can learn pretty much every detail of their lives. But it also provides some pointers to fans. For example, if you see Nayka Benitez before the match, make sure to hand over your M & M’s; she ritually eats those on game day. Maybe your an Allie Oelke fan. If you didn’t know, one of her nicknames is Giggles. Or, if you want Alicia Runge on your good side, talk about how much you loved the movie The Other Guys since she loves any movie that Will Ferrell is in. The little pieces of knowledge are endless.
Stats
Alas, we come to the most important function of the media guide, at least for sports nerds like myself. These guides offer an encyclopedic listing of every important stat, fact, and figure you could ever need to know about a given program.
The Creighton Volleyball media guide only includes stat that reflect action that occurred since 1994, since that is when Creighton reinstated volleyball. But that’s not to say CU isn’t interested in the more distant past. The guide includes a plea from Creighton for anyone who has information regarding the volleyball teams from 1973-1979 to share it with CU.
And even though some of the school’s volleyball history is missing, some of the stats in this year’s guide really stick out:
- Leah Ratzlaff (2002-05) and Korie Lebeda (2005-08) will be constants in Creighton Volleyball lore for a long time. Some of the numbers they racked up have no chance of being broken anytime soon. Ratzlaff has multiple kill records while Lebeda has several assist records during their four year careers.
- Creighton is 0-3 when playing at the Qwest Center. Can you guess who Creighton played in those games? You might be surprised that all of those game were not against Nebraska. According to the media guide, the largest home crowd was 13,081 against Cal-Poly in 2007 as a part of the Holiday Inn Downtown Classic that was played in Lincoln and Omaha. The game against Cal-Poly was part of a double-header at the Qwest Center; Nebraska played Penn State in the other game.
- The 10 home wins at Sokol Arena last season were the most home wins ever.
- Creighton is 1-38 against ranked teams. A win against Wichita State at home last season was the program’s first against a ranked opponent.
- Creighton is 3-35 against Northern Iowa all-time including going 0-3 against them last season. They are 0-10 against Nebraska, but the Huskers make their first visit to Sokol Arena this season.
- The Bluejays’ best records against a team are 24-9 against both Indiana State and Southern Illinois.
I know, I know. This quick overview doesn’t do the media guide (or the folks who compile the information) justice. You just need to check it out for yourself. What are your favorite nuggets of info?
Stay tuned for our Volleyball preview next week leading up to the Blue-White game on Saturday, August 21.
