BATON ROUGE, La. – With a little more than a week to go until the start of the 2015 regular season, LSU head volleyball coach Fran Flory and the Tigers held its annual media day session with the LSU soccer team in the conference room of the LSU Athletics Administration Building Monday on campus.
The Tigers are coming off of their first full week of team practice and activities in preparation for the opener against UC Irvine in the American Campus Classic hosted at the University of Texas August 28-29 in Austin. LSU will play UC Irvine, Rice and the host Longhorns – the No. 3 preseason team in the country – that first weekend in Gregory Gym.
LSU returns five starters and 10 total letterwinners from a team that went 20-9 last season and 14-4 in the SEC. The Tigers qualified for the NCAA Tournament for the second consecutive year in 2014, advancing to the second round of the tournament for the second straight season.
In a vote of the league’s head coaches, the LSU volleyball team was picked to finish sixth in the conference, while the group is also receiving votes in the AVCA Top 25 preseason poll that was also released last week.
For all of the latest news and information on Tiger volleyball, visit www.lsusports.net/volleyball. Fans can also follow the program on its social media outlets at www.Facebook.com/lsuvolleyball along with @lsuvolleyball and @lsucoachfran on Twitter and @lsuvb on Instagram.
A transcript of the session is in full below
HEAD COACH FRAN FLORY
Opening Statement…
“I echo Brian’s sentiment of being the first sport, for him, and the first team to put on the purple and gold this fall and get to represent this great university. I talk to S.T.R.I.P.E.S., which is the spirit group for LSU every year. I go every chance I get because there is no better place, and there’s no better people that come to LSU than those young kids with wide eyes focused on getting a chance to be a part of this great university. It’s an amazing experience. It’s all of our jobs, from every person who walks on this campus, to help every one of those kids matriculate through and get this great degree and have that diploma on their wall when they graduate. It’s a super exciting time. First off, I love my team. I just absolutely love this group. They are one of the most special groups of people that I’ve ever been around, and that goes a long way. I’ve coached a long time. This is 30-plus years of coaching in here. We are here collectively as a team because we are an amazing team, and we haven’t even played our first match. We have bonded emotionally tighter than any group I ever had already, and again, we haven’t put the uniform on. We have a group of committed leaders that we’ve never had and such great leadership in our group. We have talented athletes who are on a mission, not for themselves—for the Purple & Gold, for the letters on the front not the ones on the back. They are driven, and they are going to be special. Does that mean we are going to win every match? No, it doesn’t. Very few will win every one, but we are going to win every one we are supposed to. We are going to knock off a few where nobody expects us to. We were picked sixth in the league, and I’m okay with that. We didn’t have anybody on the all-conference preseason team, and I’m okay with that, too. I will tell you every one of those 18 kids over there are okay with it too because they don’t care about that. They care where we finish, not where we start. They care about what this team does at the end of the season, but they also understand that what we do in the beginning creates what we get to do in the end. We welcomed a group of great kids and talented athletes with our incoming freshman class. I’m really excited. I think when you watch us play you will see that one to 18, we are just as valuable as the next. We are just as committed as the next. We are not going to be worried about whether I do my job because I know I have somebody behind me who’s going to pick me up if I’m not the best version of me today. They’re not going to worry about whether I get the chance to do it again because they know and they trust that they will because they will get another opportunity out there. This is a fun group, and I am hopeful. D.D. Breaux with the gymnastics program filled the PMAC across the street there. What a great event for women’s athletics. It’s never really happened other than basketball a couple of times and special events. They came to watch women’s athletics at LSU for the first time. They came to watch a special, special group of young women compete wearing that Purple & Gold. I am so hopeful that for us, for Brian (Lee) and for Nikki (Caldwell) and for everybody else at all of our venues will be full this year because women’s athletics are amazing here. You have a great group of coaches and a great group of athletes. We are excited about our season, obviously, and I think we will open it to questions now.”
On the senior leadership…
“I think what makes this group different is the senior leadership, to tell you the truth—the captains of this team: Katie Lindelow, Cati Leak and Haley Smith. They came here, a leap of faith when we weren’t in the NCAA Tournament. They brought us back their sophomore year, got us in and carried us through. They were part of our Jeff Jansen leadership program that really, really helped them mature as people as much as athletes and certainly as leaders. Katie Lindelow is the president of the Student Athlete Advisory Committee. We have a great group of leaders. I think that sets the tone for your group when the upper classmen are not the selfish kids and not worried about what happens for them at the end of their career. They are more worried about bringing the young kids along. I think that’s why these things happen.”
On being poised to have a good season…
“When you are the winningest coach, it sometimes means you’ve been here the longest too. I appreciate the opportunity to be at LSU. It’s certainly my dream job. My career, of course, is defined in the public of wins and losses, but really a coach’s career is defined by the type of student-athletes that they produce, certainly in our sports because we don’t really have professional opportunities. Wins and loses mean a lot to me because I get to be here when we win a lot, but honestly, the people that walk out and put that diploma on the wall and hang up that jersey for the last time—that’s our legacy.”
On opening the season at Texas, her alma mater…
“First and foremost it wouldn’t matter where I was playing with these guys. It’s interesting to go back to Texas, and certainly in volleyball, your postseason opportunities are defined by the opponents you play pre-conference. You have to play the right people to have a chance to have significant wins to get into the NCAA Tournament at the end and have a chance to be seeded in the NCAA Tournament. Certainly, having Texas not too far away and having a few ties to Texas makes that an easy match to go play and schedule. I’m appreciative of the fact that they will play us. The tournament is going to be a tough tournament with great teams that will be there. It is nice to go back, but I don’t always throw up the ‘Hook Em’ sign when they introduce me because I just can’t quite do it the same way anymore.”
SENIOR RIGHT SIDE HITTER CATI LEAK
On season expectations…
“Like Fran said, this is the most team-like we’ve been in my career. We’re really looking forward to the start of the season and we have a lot of depth so practice is really competitive, really gearing for what’s ahead, going into Texas, and really just hoping to put our best foot forward.”
On this year’s challenges…
“Every year you go into it knowing that you need to contribute to your side of the net and I feel like if we embrace that and continue with our teamwork and staying connected we are just going to succeed.”
On this year’s strengths…
“The fact that we are a team. I know for a fact when I look at each and every person we are on the same mindset, same mission, to play for each other and for LSU because it’s one of the biggest honors.”
SENIOR OUTSIDE HITTER KATIE LINDELOW
On expectations…
“We’re excited. I think last year we were young so this year we have more experience. As upperclassmen we feel like we have more experience. The younger kids are great. They jumped right into practice and are playing really well. We all work well together, we are working hard together and I think that’s kind of the most important part right now.”
On the importance of experience…
“We’ve seen what it takes to get to the tournament. We’ve been there twice now and we want to get further than we have. We want to get past that second round and I think that we are really showing the younger girls how bad we want that and they’re showing that right along with us. They want it just as bad as we do. Just the fact that we’ve been there and we know what it takes, but we know it takes more than what we’ve given in the past.”
On challenges this season…
“It’s been competitive. There are a lot of us and people are going to be vying for positions but like Fran mentioned earlier, whoever is on the court is going to help us keep winning and we are going to be okay with that. It’s going to be competitive at practice. There are going to be days when we aren’t going to like the person next to us because we are competing for a position, but that’s what it’s all about and we are really embracing it so practices are going to be fun.”
SENIOR DEFENSIVE SPECIALIST HALEY SMITH
On the upcoming season…
“I think that we are really excited about this season. It’s definitely been a different preseason from my first year starting. My freshman year we went through preseason and of course, like a freshman, you just went through worrying about yourself and you are trying to get yourself done and finished and doing what you have to do and not worried about the team. I think these freshmen that came in this year, I think they are more worried about the team. Like Fran said, we are definitely connecting more emotionally. We are doing this thing called the ‘One Step’ process and it’s something where we can connect on the court and off the court. We talk about goals that we want to accomplish off the court, our degree, our families, stuff like that. We definitely get that connection off the court and of course it helps on the court.”
On the freshman class…
“Honestly, their ability to take information and actually put it into what we are trying to do as a team. I think their ability to take what we are telling them, take what the coaches are telling them and actually implementing that and doing it very fast and very quickly is going to help us a lot.”
On senior leadership…
“Cati Leak, Katie Lindelow and I have been going through the Jeff Jansen leadership program the whole time we’ve been here. When they came in as freshmen, I was actually on the team in the spring and they came in as freshmen. We actually went through that class, the Jeff Jansen Academy, together. I think that with that under our belt, kind of understanding and knowing each other and the types of leaders that we are, it helps for us to compensate for each other. We are different types of leaders, but when you put us together it makes us a great leadership team for this team.”