Oswego State women’s volleyball has not had the success they had hoped for coming into this season.

Currently sitting at 6-8 overall and 0-3 in conference play, the Lakers are looking forward to their next set of games against conference rivals SUNY Geneseo and SUNY Brockport. For the Lakers, these games could wind up deciding the fate of their season, but head coach Jefferson O’Connell believes in his team and thinks they have the skills to beat any team.

“We still have a lot of opportunities going forward,” O’Connell said. “We have battled everyone pretty well, and we have a lot of beatable teams coming up later in the schedule.”

O’Connell’s team is filled with new faces, with no returning starters from their last season back in 2019. With the team being so new, for O’Connell, it is about learning about the team every week and figuring out what his team does well. During practices, O’Connell has different drills in order to determine who is the right person to put in certain positions and roles. He also likes to focus on the fundamentals of his team’s game in order to make sure they are playing a clean game and not putting themselves at a disadvantage.

“During practice we are doing a drill called the closer, in order to determine who we can look to late in games, and make sure they are ready to carry the team when the time comes,” O’Connell said. “We also need to be better at keeping our own attacking errors down so we don’t give the opposing team any free points.”

The team had 37 kills versus Buffalo State, but 24 attacking errors gave Buffalo State a lot of free points, en route to the 3-0 Bengals sweep. 

The upcoming weekend games versus SUNY Geneseo and SUNY Brockport are important in keeping the Lakers season going, as well as allowing them to compete at a high level. Both of these rival teams are strong and will be important in deciding their playoff chances depending on how the weekend goes for the Lakers.

“It’s more important for us to just compete, but if we get one of the two, we are doing OK, if we get both we’re awesome,” O’Connell said. “But even if we don’t get either one of them, the last four should be pretty winnable. Even if we don’t get the result we want this weekend, we are still going to be in the mix going forward, we just aren’t in the spot we want to be right now.”

Like many teams, the Lakers volleyball team believes that good chemistry is very helpful in a team’s success. Although they are a young team with a lot of new players, juniors McKenna Corbin and Sydney Chiffriller both believe the team needs to have good energy and a strong bond to help boost their morale.

“I feel like the energy needs to be high from both the players on the bench and the players on the court,” Corbin said. “When the bench energy is very strong, on the court we have so much more fun and we can be more relaxed while staying focused.”

Corbin also believes having a strong connection off the court helps the team communicate better when playing with each other. Chiffriller knows that they have not been getting the results they want on the court. But she knows they are young and that they have a lot of room to grow as a team and as individuals to make their play and teamwork stronger. 

“We are definitely a young team and we all know that. I think we just need to get on the court and get that out of our head,” Chiffriller said. “We are a young team but that doesn’t mean anything, we just have to put in all of our effort right when we step on the court, starting from the first set we need to come out strong.”

Moving past this weekend against SUNY Brockport and SUNY Geneseo, O’Connell knows that every game is important. For him, every game is circled on the calendar because they need to take the season game by game in order to turn it around and show the SUNYAC that they mean business. The games versus SUNY Oneonta and SUNY New Paltz the weekend of Oct. 15 and Oct. 16 are important because they need to beat both teams in order to stay within range of the playoffs, having to play both SUNY Potsdam and SUNY Plattsburgh on their home floor to end the in conference competition. 

“If we get one this weekend, that’s huge,” O’Connell said. “Otherwise we’ll probably have to sweep New Paltz and Oneonta. Two of the next three weekends are going to be pretty important for us.”

Shelby Peplowski | The Oswegonian