FIRST SERVE
William Jewell volleyball opens the 2022 season at the Missouri Southern Invite in Joplin, Missouri. The Cardinals will take on Northwestern Oklahoma, Newman, Southwestern Oklahoma and the host Lions over the two-day event.
FOLLOW THE CARDINALS
You can follow the Cardinals all season across the team's various social media platforms. Find the team on Instagram and Twitter with the handle @WJCVolleyball. On Facebook, search for William Jewell Volleyball.
SERIES HISTORY
The Cardinals will take on three opponents that they have seen before, including Missouri Southern whom they swept in a non-conference match up last season. Jewell faced off with Northwestern Oklahoma most recently in 2019 in a 3-2 loss while it's been nearly a decade since the last meeting with Newman (9/7/2013), where the Cards lost 3-0. Jewell will take on Southwestern Oklahoma first the first time in the NCAA era.
LET'S RECAP
The Cardinals are coming off an 8-23 season a year ago, with a 2-19 mark in the GLVC. The season started strong, winning three of four in the opening weekend but tough competition combined with a young team led to some stumbling blocks along the way last fall. Jewell lost four players to graduation but return the bulk of the roster.
THE RETURNERS
Jewell returns nine players who appeared in at least 50 sets last season, including seniors Hannah Cope, Haidan Baade and Tatum Ernt. Cope leads the setters, after averaging a team best 5.76 assists per set and will be joined once again by sophomore Samantha Thompson (4.61 A/S) who gained valuable experience as a rookie in 2021. Baade will headline the defensive unit and enters the season with 690 career digs. She'll be joined by senior Kaci Behrens, junior Jordan Collard, and sophomore McKinzie Thompson. Along the net, Bella LaPorta led the team as a true freshman with 2.13 kills per set on the outside. Juniors Anna Godfredsen and Katie Paine will join LaPorta on the outside pin while sophomore Katy Garrison returns on the opposite. In the middle, Ernt is back after a strong showing at the end of her junior season and will welcome back Jorey Luebbert who missed all of 2021 due to injury.
NEW KIDS ON THE BLOCK
The Cardinals and head coach Carolyn Beck welcomed in a six-person freshman class this fall. On the outside is Emma Lea Benney along with Belle Reynolds who also plays at the opposite pin. Setter Drew Baxter and middles Alex Dvorak and Kendal Franklin have the luxury of veteran players to learn from, and along the back row Alexis Nunn brings a spark to the defensive core.
THE SENIORS + TWO
Hannah Cope and Haidan Baade are the original members of the 2019 recruiting class now entering their senior seasons. The duo was joined in the spring of 2021 by Tatum Ernt but the class has added two additional members this fall in Kaci Behrens and Meghan Schneider, who will be reclassifying and graduating a year early, in the spring with the class of 2023.
50 YEARS OF WOMEN'S VARSITY SPORTS
The 2022-2023 academic year marks the 50th anniversary of Title IX and the 50th year of women's varsity sports of the William Jewell campus. Volleyball was one of the original five sports, joining basketball, tennis, swimming and field hockey. Jewell will be celebrating the growth and accomplishments of women's athletics throughout the year, headlined by an all-women's Hall of Fame class, to be inducted on September 23 which includes the 1981 volleyball team which was the first women's team to win a conference championship in school history.
