Last Monday, Sharon Dingman, head volleyball coach for Iowa Hawkeyes and two players, junior Mallory Husz and freshman Rachell Bedell, visited the KRUI studio for an in-studio conversation. (I like to say conversation, not interview.)
We scheduled the interview- I mean conversation - for this week because the Hawkeyes are now preparing for two home matches, against Indiana and Purdue. We thought it would be good timing to encourage attendance during homecoming week. Unfortunately, the Iowa volleyball team was coming off a Big Ten opening road trip in which they went 0-2, including a 3-0 stomping at the hands of #22 Michigan.
They now sit at 5-6 and have lost 5 matches in a row.
It would be easy for the Iowa volleyball team to be sulking.
They weren’t, or at least, they didn’t seem to be.
Of course I didn’t start with the “what happened this weekend?” question, but I wouldn’t be a very good radio host if I didn’t bring it up eventually.
The team owned it.
Dingman talked about how the team came out flat at Michigan, and both players felt the team played distracted and uninterested. Dingman apparently even did something that seems uncommon for her. She yelled at her team. She got mad!
For those of you not familiar with the program, shouting and ranting is not Dingman's MO.
Bedell claims coach Dingman even directed a little of her ire directly at her. Furthermore, Bedell says she deserved it. That seems like pretty mature character from an 18 year-old.
So now the Hawkeyes go into Carver-Hawkeye Arena with a chance to swing things around.
Indiana is an obvious challenge. They sit at 12-2 overall, and are also coming off an 0-2 start in the Big Ten. The Boilermakers have fought their way to a 10-3 record.
So there you go- a combined 22-5 record coming to Iowa City this weekend.
No time to sulk, time to play ball.
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