When Kirsten Bernthal Booth became the head volleyball coach at Creighton on February 3, 2003, the Bluejays were not even two full months removed from a season in which they finished with a record of 3-23. The team improved its win total by nine games in Booth’s first season, then over the course of the following 11 seasons they started crossing things off their to-do list.
- Creighton had never before won more than 15 games in consecutive seasons. Until they did so in 2004 and 2005.
- Creighton had never before won 20 games in a season. Until they did so in 2006.
- Creighton had never made it to the NCAA Tournament. Until they did so in 2010.
- Creighton had never won a conference regular season or tournament championship. Until they did so in 2012.
- Creighton had never been to the NCAA Tournament in consecutive seasons. Now they have made it three years in row.
In the last five seasons, the Bluejays have won 20 or more games in a season four times.
They’ve won two regular season conference titles, two conference tournament titles, and have been to the NCAA Tournament four times, advancing to the second round in three of those trips.
Kirsten Berthnal Booth watches her program rise (click to photos.whiteandbluereview.com)
Think that’s enough to satisfy a head coach who inherited a team that finished 20 games under .500? Think again.
“Each jump, as you try to develop a program, you have a different bar to try to get over,” Booth said. “Our last year in the [Missouri Valley Conference] we had never won a conference championship, so our bar was beating Northern Iowa, beating Wichita State, and being strong enough mentally to sustain a conference season and winning a conference title. Obviously we still want to do those things; a huge goal for us is to win the Big East, but you set new bars, and our next hurdle is a Sweet Sixteen. That’s a lot easier said than done; the jump from 300 to 150 was far easier than the jump from 30 to 20.”
Creighton found out how just exactly hard the bar is to clear last December.
They entered the 2014 season expecting to make a deeper run in the NCAA Tournament after three years of bowing out in the second round. With an historic senior class led by three-time All-American Kelli Browning, the Bluejays rolled into the tournament only to be eliminated in the first round by Oregon State. Their meant-to-be Sweet Sixteen didn’t come to fruition. It was abrupt ending to say the least.
The players who would be returning in 2015 did not accept the result. While Creighton’s winter and spring sports were kicking into gear, the volleyball players kept working behind the scenes, trying to get better every day. Trying to use their early exit from the NCAA Tournament to drive them to not let it happen again.
“The past two years before my freshman year we always had gone to the second round, and after we lost in the first round we said, ‘wait a second, that’s not what was supposed to happen,'” junior outside hitter Jess Bird said. “It has kind of put a chip on our shoulder during the training in the offseason. We’ve put a lot of dedication in this summer. More than we have before.”
Jess Bird (click for photos.whiteandbluereview.com)
Bird earned a spot on the All-Big East First Team last season along with Browning, and at the beginning of August she was named the Preseason Player of the Year in the conference, while the Bluejays were picked to win the league in 2015.
She appreciated the acknowledgement, but knows it doesn’t mean a whole lot in the big picture.
“I was thankful for that, but as coach always says, ‘that’s preseason, what matters is at the end of the season,’” Bird said. “It just gives me even more of a goal to look forward and work even harder knowing that people are thinking that could happen. It makes me want to work hard, and even though I may have gotten the preseason player of the year, our team was selected first in the Big East. That was more important because it takes all of us to get to the NCAA Tournament at the end of the year.”
The team this year is led by Bird and fellow preseason all-conference selections in senior libero Kate Elman and junior middle blocker Lauren Smith. They highlight a group of returning players that are helping six talented freshmen get into the mix in order to push Creighton over that next bar.
“I think we’ve got really outstanding returners and leadership,” Booth said. “I think they’ve done a really good job of trying to get the freshmen familiar with our offense and our defense during the summer, so that they didn’t arrive in the fall clueless on how we ran things. They knew our offensive systems just by the players they were doing open gyms with. I think our returners respect them, and the other thing that is good is they really like them. All of those things help.”
Another thing that probably helps is the talent throughout this incoming class.
PrepVolleyball.com ranked Creighton newcomers Taryn Kloth, Jaali Winters, Megan Ballenger, Kelsey O’Connell, and Samantha Bohnet as the 11th-best recruiting class in the entire nation for 2015. Booth said they entered preseason practice this week aware of what the media thought of them, but that they weren’t letting the expectations spin out of control in either direction.
“They know because it was all over social media, but I don’t sense stress from them, and I don’t sense cockiness,” Booth said. “I think they are just fitting into our gym really well, and they’ll be in the discussion when we make decisions.”
Still, Booth isn’t sleeping too well at night right now.
That’s mainly to the fact that with a large group of talented players and only so many spots to put them, she is anticipating having to make some hard choices with the regular season just two weeks away.
“The challenge this year, and we said this in our first team meeting, is we really do have 16 great players on this team, and nine, maybe 10 will play regularly at some point. Obviously, with subbing, other people will get in and get opportunities, but it really is going to come down to how players that are in that starting rotation handle it more than anything else. I think overall this year is probably the toughest decisions I’m going to have to make in 13 years. Just because almost nearly every position is up for grabs. I think in other years I’ve had three, maybe four. Then deciding what systems we want to run. We just have a lot of decisions to make.”
Fortunately she doesn’t have to make any of those decisions right now. The team will continue with two-a-days heading into next week before making their 2015 debut at the annual Blue-White team scrimmage on Friday, August 21 at 6:00 p.m. at D.J. Sokol Arena.