It will be a reunion of sorts for former WNCC volleyball coach Chris Green and current Cougar coach Giovana Melo on Saturday, March 26 when the college will put on the second annual Spring Fever Volleyball tournament.
Melo, who played for Green when she was a setter for the Cougars in the early 2000s, will be coaching against her mentor in the tournament. Green will bring his University of Alaska Anchorage team to Scottsbluff for the spring tournament.
Green said it will be fun to be back at WNCC for a spell.
“As you know Gering/Scottsbluff are my hometowns and WNCC is where I started coaching college volleyball,” he said. “So, it will be nice to be back. It will be great to be back to see friends and family. It will be good to see my old colleagues at WNCC.”
The reunion of sorts should be interesting when WNCC and UAA compete against each other on the volleyball court. Both coaches led WNCC to a national championship, Green in 2007 and Melo last November.
WNCC and UAA are just two of the five teams that will compete in the round-robin tournament. Other teams that will be here include Black Hills State University, Chadron State College, and Oklahoma Baptist University. Former Cougar Cami Weimer is a member of the Oklahoma Baptist team.
Last year, the Spring Fever Volleyball tournament had four NCAA Division I programs, coming out with a 1-3 record, including Colorado State, Creighton, Northern Colorado and Air Force. This year, the tournament will include NCAA Division II or NAIA schools.
Action begins March 26 at 8:30 a.m. when Alaska Anchorage takes on Oklahoma Baptist. Competition runs all day with the final game beginning 4 p.m. when Chadron State meets Black Hills State and Green and Melo will coach head-to-head as the WNCC and UAA teams meet each other.
WNCC’s other games on the day will be at 10 a.m. against Black Hills State, 11:30 a.m. against Chadron State, and 1 p.m. against Oklahoma Baptist.
Alaska Anchorage will also face Black Hills State at 11:30 a.m. and Chadron State at 1 p.m.
Green said the focus with his team will be fundamentals as they will bring short-handed.
“We are a little short-handed this spring with five of our starters from last year not able to play or make the trip to Scottsbluff for various reasons, but maybe Giovana can spot us about 10 points before the game begins,” Green said with a laugh.
Green added, “We are really trying to focus on fundamentals and the little things. Spring is the time of year where we work on individual improvement a lot and break the game down in order to improve the parts that require the most emphasis.”
Green said his team is looking forward to the trip to the states for a spring tournament since they usually don’t get this opportunity.
“The team is excited to play in a spring tournament and I don’t think it matters that I coached there before because they just want to play,” he said. “We normally do not have funds in the budget to play in a spring tournament but we saved some of our travel budget this previous year and because of that we are able to take our first big sprint trip since I have been here at UAA.”
Green has brought a lot of success to the UAA program since he took over in 2008. He led the Seawolves to two straight national tournament appearances the past two seasons. He also went to UAA with quite an impressive coaching resume, having led WNCC to nine straight Region IX titles including a national title in 2007.
He continued that winning success at UAA, leading the Seawolves to three straight winning seasons. The team finished 18-9 last season and were 23-8 in 2009 after a 15-14 campaign in Green’s first season in Alaska.
Green said it is special to have this kind of instant success at two strong volleyball programs.
“We qualified for the NCAA tournament the last two years and that is definitely a step in the right direction,” he said. “It has been great to take a program that had been previously unsuccessful and turn it around. The new challenge is to keep the level of play improving as we go forward.”
Green said the hardest part of coaching at the four-year level is the parity of the teams as well as the number of matches played. WNCC plays between 40 to 60 matches a year compared to around 30 at Alaska.
“At WNCC, we played a lot of volleyball and did not really prepare a lot for each opponent,” he said. “At UAA, it is very important to prepare for each conference match and know exactly what to expect from your opponent. There is much more parity in Division Two, especially in our conference than I saw at WNCC. It is important for our team to be very ready to play each night because the talent level is more equal.”
Tickets for the all-day Spring Fever Volleyball Tournament are $10.
No comments:
Post a Comment