WNCC volleyball team ranked No.

When the Western Nebraska Community College volleyball team takes to the court Friday morning for the Salt Lake Community College Invite, they will be doing so with authority.

After the NJCAA released its pre-season volleyball poll on Tuesday, the players were a little pumped up. The Cougars, after enjoying a 56-2 and national runner-up season a year ago, were tabbed No. 5 in the preseason, and below teams they beat a year ago.

So, freshman Chelsea Lyles said the only way to prove just how good this team really is, is on the court.

“Most of them are ranked above us so we are trying to prove ourselves, saying that we should be ranked above most of these teams,” Lyles said. “We really are just going up there proving ourselves that we should be in the top two in the nation and not No. 5.

Iowa Western Community College, last year’s national championship, comes in as the No. 1 team in the nation followed by Missouri State-West Plains, Frank Phillips College and Salt Lake Community College.

WNCC is next at No. 5 followed by Blinn College, Casper College, Jefferson College, Hillsborough Community College and University of Arkansas-Ft. Smith rounding out the top 10.

The Cougars march to proving themselves will start Friday when they compete in what could be called a pre-national tournament Invite. WNCC will open the tournament Friday at 8:30 a.m. against Yavapai College. They will then face Snow College at 11 a.m., Northern Idaho at 1:30 p.m. and then the College of Southern Idaho at 5:15 p.m. WNCC will wrap up the pool play portion Saturday morning against Salt Lake Community College.

WNCC finishes the tournament with bracket play Saturday afternoon.
Other pre-season ranked teams that will be at the Salt Lake tournament include College of Southern Idaho (12^th), Hutchinson Community College (13^th) and Northeastern Junior College (22^nd).

“The rankings fired us up a lot,” Lyles said. “The rankings made us want to work harder in practice so when we play a match we will have the drive to go out and beat teams more now to just prove ourselves to the nation, other teams and other people.”

The Cougars will get a test and are ready for the challenge, especially after their dominating performance at last weekend’s South Sub-region tournament. WNCC swept through all five opponents for the ninth year in a row.

Lyles said they will need to play at the top of their game to come away with a second straight tournament championship. Last year, the team won the Salt Lake Invite.

“I believe we can win the tournament if we go out there and play our game like we can,” she said. “We need to play as a team and don’t get frustrated. We need to step up and play better then we did last weekend because basically the competition is way higher then it was last weekend.”