Rochester volleyball preview: Strasser hopes for more offensive variety in 2nd year

BY VAL TSOUTSOURIS

Sports Editor, RTC

The 2024 Rochester volleyball team will begin its season with a road match against Plymouth today. The JV match will start at 11 a.m., and the varsity match will follow at approximately noon. Rochester went 7-24 last season. They graduated only one player from last year and add 10 freshmen.

Team photo day for the Rochester volleyball team might have been a little complicated.

The team had been practicing for only a week, and second-year coach Laneia Strasser was still in the process of deciding who was varsity, who was JV and who was on the freshman team.

Rochester did lose Keyton Doran to graduation, but they added 10 freshmen.

There are five senior returnees in Audrey Bolinger, Rylee Clevenger, Mia Howdeshell, Lillee Lett and Darah Strasser, and middle hitter Avarie Montel and Ella Hake are juniors that are back.

Key sophomores include setter Aubrey Wilson, opposite side hitter Brailyn Hunter and defender Logyn Honkomp.

It’s all led up to today’s season opener against Plymouth. The JV match will start at 11 a.m., and the varsity match will follow. Plymouth coach Shauna (Ellinger) Fagan is a 2013 Rochester grad.

“I feel more set,” Strasser said. “I feel like the first year of any job is always tough because you just don’t know what’s going to get thrown at you. You don’t know what to expect. And even though obviously each year is going to have challenges and things, I just feel better prepared mentally because I know more what I’m getting myself into. I think that’s mainly the biggest difference between Year 1 and Year 2.

“And it already feels more relaxed for me personally. You don’t feel as much pressure. … It’s not intense. It feels a little more settled, I guess.”

Strasser said that one area that has improved is the team’s serve-received. It’s a critical area because every other strength of the team will not blossom unless the serve-received is on point.

“I have seen huge improvement in serve-received. That was something that I felt was our Achilles heel last year, that and being mentally tough enough to fight through the adversity of struggling on serve-received. I feel we’ve seen huge improvement over the summer. … Obviously, serve-received is something you work on in practice a lot because if you can’t pass the ball, you can’t do anything else. But I feel a lot more confident in our serve-received this year moving forward.”

Wilson quickly moved into the varsity setter role as a freshman. Strasser was asked if Wilson’s decisions on where she moves the ball are natural or things she had to learn through experience.

“I feel like a lot of her decisions, probably 75 percent of them, are natural,” Strasser said. “And that was kind of a struggle last year because she didn’t know what decisions to make at this level. So now she has a whole year of varsity volleyball under belt, she now knows that those natural instincts just have to be placed better or more executed. And she’s just leveled up as far as her level of competition goes. She understands the level that she’s playing at better.

“And she’s also really smart too, so that helps. She’s naturally athletic, and she’s smart. She understands the game. I don’t really have to micromanage that side of her.”

The sophomore group will provide depth all the way down to players like Makenna McKee, Kyra Doran, Rilyn Strasser, Emma Murphy, KayLea McCarty and Jenna Seuferer.

“I just have a lot of natural athleticism in that class,” Strasser said. “Kyra Doran and Rilyn and Makenna all wrestled last year, and none of them had ever wrestled before, and look at the success Kenna had and Kyra had. … Kyra is a naturally aggressive person, and Makenna McKee is super athletic too. It’s exciting to have all these sophomores.”

In the back row, Strasser said she is going to have a libero, but she has not decided who it’s going to be yet between Clevenger, Honkomp and Howdeshell.

Lett is crucial in being able to terminate points, according to Strasser.

“She’s gained more confidence in the front row,” Strasser said. “Last year was the first year she had to be the go-to hitter, and I don’t know that she handled that pressure that well at all times. This year, she seems OK with that role: ‘Give it to me. Put the ball in my hands, and let me put it away.’ She understands that that’s her role this year, and I think she just feels more settled in it as well. … But she’s one that I think Game 1, you’re going to be like, ‘Oh, OK, this is a different Lillee Lett.’ And that’s exciting to me. It’s exciting to me for her senior year that everything’s come together, the mental side and the physical side of it.”

Lett stands 5-6, and she might be symbolic of a team that will have to find other ways to win since it will not tower over its opponents.

“Absolutely we were outsized by opponents last year, and I don’t see that going away this year either,” Strasser said. “We obviously didn’t grow a whole lot from last year to this year. So like I said, you have to get stronger to either use the block, or you have to get smarter, and our defense has to be relentless as far as that goes too. … We just have to be smarter on our attacks and our offense. … There’s different, quicker approaches that can trick your defense a little more, and I feel like they’re more capable of that this year because they do have some more experience.”

After the scrimmage

Rochester’s varsity split two sets with host North Miami in a scrimmage Thursday. This marked the first time Rochester had seen North Miami since the Lady Warriors eliminated the Lady Zs from last year’s sectional.

North Miami’s Grace Sailors, a state qualifier in the high jump last spring, was formidable in the front row with her height and athleticism.

“They definitely had a little bit of height on us, but I think we handled it just fine,” Strasser said. “The first segment when we played the fives (teams traded off five serves at a time), when they had two of their bigs in the front row, we struggled a couple rotations, but then we adjusted, but they also didn’t put them back in the front row together at the same time, so that was a blessing. But I think we handled it fine. We talked about Sailors is going to be their go-to person, and our blockers did a good job getting touches on her, and we kind of took her out mentally as far as we picked on her when she started struggling, so that helped.”

Strasser was asked if the team diversified their offense like she had been hoping.

“They’re getting more comfortable with each other,” Strasser said. “They trust each other more. Our passes were much better. We didn’t struggle with being out of system the entire time. We still have to be able to mix up our offense even if we’re out of system, and we’ve practiced that a lot more this year too.”