Coline Coessens Writes the Volleyblog

Saturday, August 20

LOUISVILLE, KY

6:00 PM

University of Louisville

Red & Black Scrimmage

August 21, 2016 | Women's Volleyball

Photo Gallery Photo Gallery

Scrimmage Day for the Cards!

By: Nancy Worley

Hey Cards Fans!

It's Coline Coessens! I am a junior transfer, from Belgium, and I play outside hitter!

Today was our last day of pre-season, finally! We all can't wait for the season to start.

We started off the day with our usual team breakfast followed by a serve and pass at 10:30am. Fans, 10:30 a.m.! This is a total sleep in morning for the team and the staff. Coaches surely wanted us to be rested and prepared for our scrimmage at 6 p,m. Since yesterday, the whole team is starting to feel the excitement going up and we all have been practicing with butterflies in our stomach from being so excited and impatient to start. We all couldn't wait to show you what we've been working for our 12 days of pre-season.

Anyway! We all finally got to see the Cardinal Arena with our volleyball court on it and it was totally worth 12 days of hardwork! After our serve and pass we got to rest a little more, and we all used this time to go see Nicole Lowery (our trainer/mom/sister/psychologist/listener/…) to take care of our bodies. She's been doing a phenomenal job taking care of 17 players in a day that should be double of 24 hours.

Some girls went home to take a short nap (Fun fact Piper Roe taught us => you only need a 23 minutes' nap to give your body the full recovery it needs).

We all had to check back in at 3 p.m. to grab a small snack. That's when we started to get prepared for the scrimmage. Taping and treatment all took place in the Cardinal Arena. We were back on the court at 4:15 p.m. for another serve and pass. We saw fans arriving and that's when the excitement started to become real! The real warm-up started at 5:30 p.m. where we rotated in defensive groups, passing groups, and finally hitting lines. Coach Kordes explained the different rotations she was going to use and we all were ready to jump on the court.

After a small introduction of our team and our staff (where I caught myself practicing on how to say my name and where I'm from), we ran on the court and were ready for it.

Funny moment, the fire alarm went off and we had to evacuate the building. But Coach Kordes had the best reaction and we transferred the scrimmage to our practice gym that was one block away. I was so surprised and impressed by the support of our fans. All of you walked down the street and kept supporting us. We all thank you for that.

After the game, Coach invited all the volleyball players to play on our practice court and see how it's like to play in there.

This was our official last day of Preseason and we can't wait to start season. We are ready for it back on the court on Monday to work just as hard as the last 12 days.

GO CARDS!