But for first-year Rachel Shober, remaining calm in important situations is already second nature. Earning a consistent spot in the regular rotation, Shober has impressed her coaches and teammates with her ability to remain focused under pressure.
“Rachel has brought a great emotional level and mental game to the team,” said junior captain Alex Graves. “She’s a steady, solid player and is always ready to rally the team when we’re facing a difficult spot in the match. She brings a ton of maturity to the court as a freshman and has impacted the team in a great way.”
Shober plays middle blocker and ride side hitter for the Missionaries. In high school, she played for the competitive Archbishop Murphy Wildcats, who dominated league play all of her four years.
For Shober, transitioning from high school to college volleyball was quite a challenge.
“Being a college athlete is a lot of work,” said Shober. “College volleyball is different because everything is just one step up from high school: players are better and more committed, the style of play is faster and more powerful, practices are longer and more intense and the season in general is about a month longer.”
Despite the challenges, Shober says she has enjoyed every minute of the season so far.
“It has been a great experience, and it is so much fun being a part of a team,” said Shober. “But it is definitely difficult balancing homework and being gone so much and trying to have a social life on top of that, especially as a freshman.”
Shober is part of an impressive ’09 recruiting class that managed to place seven freshman players on the team. While the team’s results this year have been less than stellar, as their 4-12 record suggests, the team is confident it has the ability to succeed in the near future.
“We are improving every day in training: we’ve been working to expose the strength of each individual player in order to build a stronger team,” said Coach Carolyn Papineau. “The freshmen have been doing an incredible job at learning our system quickly, contributing to the team in many different ways. We are seeing daily improvement, and will see this success pay off in terms of wins and losses.”
With such a young team, the few upperclassmen players are having to shoulder most of the leadership role: something these players are more than willing to do.
“The job we wanted to do as upperclassmen was pull the team together and get everyone on the same page,” said Graves. “I wish we had been able to do it sooner, but we have now. We’re all in it together and now that we’re on the same page we can make those changes that we’ve been reaching for.”
All in all, Graves is excited about the team’s prospects in the years ahead. With another solid recruiting class in the works, the team could once again challenge for a NWC title in the next few years.
“These freshman: not to mention four other sophomores and juniors, are going to go into next year with a huge group of solid returners,” said Graves. “It is just going to get better from here on out and I’m excited that I get to be a part of it for the last part of the season.”
With seven games left, Shober, Graves and the rest of the volleyball players still have some time to improve their record.
“We are improving every game and practice,” said Shober.
