Photo courtesy of SMSU Athletic Communications The 2018 SMSU volleyball team includes front row (L to R): Taylor Reiss, Sydney Omtvedt, Sariah Naea, Payton Hjerleid, Emma Thomssen, Kaylee Burmeister, Madisyn Heaney and Erin Corrigan. Back Row (L to R): Head coach Terry Culhane, assistant coach Paul Soupir, Angela Young, Zoe Lier, Caedyn Reinhardt, Sarina Smith, Marissa Thompson, Meg Schmidt, Lexi Ferrell, Jenna Walczak, assistant coach Tyler Boddy, assistant athletic trainer Cody Kliever and assistant coach Aryn Moura.

MARSHALL – Last season, the Southwest Minnesota State University volleyball team posted another strong year, going 29-4 and making their 14th consecutive NCAA Tournament before falling in the Region semifinals.

This year, the Mustangs have gotten out to a 5-3 start and heads into conference play looking to get out to a similar path as a season ago. Head coach Terry Culhane said he expects his team to be one of the top groups in the conference and knows there are going to be another set of challenging teams surrounding them.

“I think we want to be one of the teams in the top of our conference. I think we have the personel to do that, and a big factor in all of it is how healthy key players can stay,” Culhane said. It’s a long grind and there are just good teams. A lot of the better teams in the conference have most of their kids back, so that makes it that much more difficult.”

The Mustangs return multiple key players from a season ago, including two seniors. SMSU will rely on their veteran leaders in Taylor Reiss and Kaylee Burmeister as well as a mixture of younger players, including Sarina Smith, Emma Thomssen and Angela Young.

One of the key storylines this season will be play of the underclassmen, as SMSU will feature six sophomores and six freshmen on its roster. The freshman class includes Sydney Omtvedt, Madisyn Heaney, Meg Schmidt, Sariah Naea, Lexi Ferrell and Marissa Thompson.

Culhane said they’re going to be relying on the younger class to step up and make an impact.

“I think in our sophomore class we have two kids who played a lot last year, so that will be helpful. They’re all a year older and hopefully a year better and can put themselves in a position of possibly playing. We’ve always been comfortable playing first-year players if we think they can contribute, and I think we could have a couple of those that could find themselves in that position to help play on our team,” Culhane said. “It’s hard because we haven’t seen enough of it yet, but there’s just a lot of hard-nosed competition that’s going on in practice. They’ll get chances to see who’s better and that’s always fun because whoever earns the right to be on the floor gets to play.”

Culhane added doesn’t want his team to get too far ahead of themselves and just continue to improve each segment of the season.

“I’m hoping we’re going to have a good team, that’s ultimately what I’m looking forward to. We need to stay healthy and not lose key players,” Culhane said. “I don’t want us to get too far ahead of ourselves; I think we have to work at getting better each segment of the season and play with some consistency.”