OT. Fall KU women's sport

Our two main women's spectator sports in the Fall are soccer and VB. Both teams did well last year, soccer with a new coach last year and VB with a new coach this year.

Soccer, Many new players including a few transfers after loosing many key defenders. Much of the offense is back. Preseason schedule is tough but nice mixture of home and away games, many on ESPN+ starting tonight at home against Missouri State, which is an excellent team with a very good coach. Should be a good season but like last year, we may lose some games early.

VB. We essentially lost much of last year's team which made the NCAA tournament to graduation and one transfer out. The transfer out was understandable as she would have been a graduate student and went to a program with in her area of interest. With a new coach and many new players, transfers and freshmen, including three Eastern European freshmen and many transfers, the early season should be challenging. Not helping is our schedule.. Our first 14 games are on the road or at neutral sites. Our first home game, the start of conference, is against ASU on September 26, a really good and well coached team. A fun player to watch will be Jovana Zelenovic, 6'7" from Serbia. I went to the preseason game against an excellent alumni team with four former players playing for pro teams. It was a fun night. Team looked good. Jovanna, can you play BB?

hoshi wrote: The transfer out was understandable as she would have been a graduate student and went to a program with in her area of interest.

Shocking. A student using the old graduate transfer rule for its advertised purpose (although the portal renders that rule moot)

Soccer off to a 2/0 start. Easily beat a good, well coached Missouri State team 5/2 on Thursday and very good South Dakota State team, 1/0 today. Offense looked really good in both games but could have scored more in both games.
We played better defense today compared to Thursday's game.
We play Utah Valley at home on Thursday then our first road game at Utah State on Sunday.
Ever Onwards

KU women’s Fall sports did well this week.

In soccer the team played three conference champions and coming up, we play the #3 ranked team. Florida State at home this this week end. We beat Utah Valley 3/2 in a close game at the end after being up 3/1 until the last 10 minutes. Against Utah State, the game ended in a 0/0 tie. KU looked slow early but picked it up in the 2nd half. Florida State will be a real challenge.

Not sure if you know, but the KU soccer facilities will be used by a visiting team during the World Cup this Fall with Lawrence as a team’s base while playing games in KC.

In VB, the team played Vanderbilt in Lincoln. Vanderbilt was playing its first game in 25 years with a new coach and multiple very good transfers. Interesting, the KU coach fielded a team that would not have been my first choice. KU won 3/2 and played really well in the 5th set .

Last evening, KU played last years National Champions and currently #2 ranked team Penn State and took them to 5 sets before loosing 2/3. They played great. The line up used by Ulmer was very different from the Vanderbilt game. Interesting!!! Losing the last two sets came down to breaks that did not go our way. That is, this was a winnable match. Very encouraging. Two of the freshmen from Eastern Europe play exceptionally well, especially outside hitter Leban. Senior, Rhianna Swanson from McPherson was also stellar.

The schedule gets even worse this week with road games against ranked Wisconsin and Creighton.

Well, this last week was a mixed bag with women’s soccer and VB games.

The good news first. The soccer team is still unbeaten at 4/0/2. Both games this week we fun to watch. First, on Thursday, we played #3 ranked Florida State. FSU scored an excellent goal early while KU scored a beautiful goal in the second half by a freshman. Never totally satisfying for games to end in a tie, BUT. Both teams had their chances. Yesterday, we played Drake, here in Lawrence, and won 3/1. Two offensive mainstays scored goals along with one by a freshman, Rowan, for her 2nd goal of the season. This week we are on the road with a game against Yale on Sunday. Unlike men’s BB and FB, women’s team sport are competitive across different levels, so Yale will be a challenge.

The not so good news, the VB team lost both its games on the road to #8 Wisconsin and #12 Creighton. There was some good news. Both games went to 5 sets with a chance to win, BUT. Ulmer is still playing with his rotations. In the Creighton game, Cline was back at setter and 6’4” freshman middle blocker Aurora Papac from Croatia played for the first time and did quite well. This week, we play three road games in 3 days against Bowling Green, Wednesday, Georgia Tech on Th, and Purdue on Friday. All games are in West Lafayette. It would be nice to win some of these games.