New season, familiar faces.
No. 17 UCLA women’s volleyball will kick off the 2021 season on the road Sunday against UC Davis. Seventeen of the 20 members on last year’s Bruin squad will be returning, spearheaded by graduate student outside hitter/opposite Mac May, who enters her fifth season.
Despite the continuity, senior defensive specialist/libero Zoe Fleck said there remain plenty of battles for playing time and roles on this year’s team.
“It’s incredible how strong our gym is,” Fleck said. “I mean, our B-side is a top-25 team. There’s just so much competition in our gym every single day. Everyone is fighting for their job constantly. And it’s just a really fun environment – super competitive, super friendly, everyone’s in there to get better, and it’s just a really, really special place.”
Coach Michael Sealy echoed Fleck’s comments about the competitive nature of the team, highlighting impressive performances from some of the incoming freshmen and new transfer graduate student setter Shelby Martin.
“There’s a lot of good, healthy competitions at a lot of positions, whether it’s setting, outside or in the middle – and a lot of freshmen are in the midst,” Sealy said. “(Freshman outside hitter/opposite) Charitie Luper and (freshman middle blocker) Francesca Alupei have both been great in preseason, and again, Shelby has had a ton of experience in the past. They’ve all been really good in the preseason.”
While the Bruins have a lot of experience competing against one another in the early stages of the season, the Aggies are unfamiliar foes. Despite both being University of California schools, UCLA and UC Davis have not played each other in women’s volleyball since 1977.
Fleck – who previously started at UC Santa Barbara, a conference opponent of UC Davis – offered some unique perspective on preparing against them.
“It’s really about knowing who their players were two years ago, who’s still on the roster and then finding any film or tidbits on players that are new,” Fleck said. “It’s kind of putting pieces together in a way we don’t typically have to when we are watching film for a team, but it’s a fun little challenge because there’s definitely information out there, you just have to go out there and look for it.”
Regardless of the opponent, May said focusing on executing on their side of the net will be the key to victory.
“What’s going to be most important is just playing our game and running our system to the best of our ability,” May said. “I think when we stay calm, cool and collected, the game seems really simple, and so just keeping that kind of composure will be really important for us.”
For Sealy, the season opener provides a litmus test for the team’s early progress in running its systems.
“We’ve only been training for two and a half weeks together, so it’s not a whole lot of time,” Sealy said. “Not playing any scrimmages or getting the opportunity to be in uniforms on the court together, we just don’t know where we’re at. So I think the first match and the first few matches is a good baseline to figure out where we’re at and where we’re going to build from.”
Sunday’s match is slated to begin at 2 p.m.
