Bump…set…kill.
The Colorado Mesa University volleyball team will have to be investigated for all the kills they will rack up this year. They are returning three of their top four kills leaders from last season in, redshirt junior Kasie Gilfert, senior Camille Smith, and senior Katie Scherr. The Mavericks also got a key transfer in junior Maddie Foutz from Colorado State University, and Foutz is an incredible athlete with a versatile attack.
“The one thing we really like about this team is that they are tight, they’re close, and that’s huge in women’s sports because you have to want to play with the person that is standing next to you or someone that might come for that person,” Head Coach Dave Fleming said. “I think the culture of this team is really good, as far as them getting along really well, and so I think that is our strength and we’ve got to utilize that, so if someone is having a bad day, someone else can pick them up and run with it.”
CMU is coming off a season that saw them go 24-7, win an RMAC Tournament Championship, and make the second round of the NCAA Tournament. This season, the Mavericks are looking to extend their season even further and make it past the second round this year to make a deeper run in the postseason.
This team could be dangerous to run into in the playoffs due to their healthy balance of young talent combined with veteran players. CMU has a tough schedule this year, but the balance of talent will certainly help them stay ahead of the pack and continue in their winning ways.
One of the bigger questions is who will fill the libero spot that Taylor Woods has left behind?
“It’s between Maddie [Foutz] and Kerstin Layman,” Fleming said. “Layman was a very good libero when we recruited her, she was just playing behind Taylor, she had a really good spring, and we were not actually recruiting another libero, but Foutz kind of fell into our lap, she contacted us that she was going to transfer here because we were really comfortable with her.”
Foutz played as a libero and a defensive specialist for CSU where she totaled 263 digs in 112 sets in 2018.
“What we really like about having both in the gym is they are going to make each other better,” Fleming said. “They are going to push each other every day… with that said, I think it still up in the air which one of them will put on the jersey, but it is a good problem for us because either one of them is going to be really good.”
The loss of Taylor Woods is a huge one for this year’s team, but the addition of Foutz and the emergence of sophomore Kerstin Layman will help the team ease into a new era of great CMU liberos. If Layman wins the starting libero spot, Foutz is versatile enough to play on the court at the same time as Layman whether it be in an outside hitter position or a back-row spot playing next to Layman. Either way, the Mavericks will be in good hands at the defensive specialist position.
“Knowing we have Kasie and Camille in the middle as our rocks, it really helps us develop everything else around them, and the philosophy change on blocking last year where we went to channeling the ball to our best defenders, versus just blocking the ball.” Fleming said, “I think it gets us back into the mentality that’s what we’re going to do, we are going to make sure we are super aggressive on the block.”
The Mavericks scrimmaged Utah State University Eastern and Colorado Northwestern Community College in the last two weeks and showed aggressive play on the blocks from the start to the end of the scrimmages. The Mavericks were down three key players due to injury, but all three should be back by week one. CMU did not play all their starters at once but the experience and repetition have been beneficial for the team before their first set of games in the Oredigger Classic which starts on Sept. 7 in Golden, Colo.
