Women's Volleyball

Bears on cusp of program-changing journey

Northern Colorado volleyball team leaves this week for 10-day China tour

May 6, 2008
By SCOTT WARD

GREELEY, Colo. -- Northern Colorado volleyball coach Lyndsey Benson knows that the road to a successful collegiate program is paved with hard work, dedication and a commitment to solid fundamentals.

Pre-trip journal

The Great Wall was great!

From shopping to Kung fu!

Forbidden City and more

Fun with lists!

But for the Bears, that road also includes some planned detours -- like, say, 6,500 miles West to Beijing, China. That's where Northern Colorado is headed on Sunday, May 11, and that's where Benson and her assistant coaches and players hope to learn some more lessons that will help them this coming season and beyond.

The trip has been in the works for more than a year. But the time for planning, fundraising and practice is almost over. Benson has plans for her team to take international trips once every four years -- the maximum allowed under NCAA rules -- and she hopes this first trip, to the country of this year's Olympic games, will set the tone for a strong 2008 squad and an even stronger Northern Colorado volleyball program.

"It's a huge step for us (going to China)," Benson said recently amid the clang, clatter and cheers of one of her team's offseason weightlifting sessions. "It's a once-in-a-lifetime experience for the girls, individually, but for the program as a whole, it shows a lot that we care about our student-athletes -- and more than just how they're performing on the court. We want them to have this cultural experience because it's going to take them out of their comfort zone and allow them to grow up in more areas than what we could have accomplished on the court here in our own gym."

"It's a huge step for us (going to China). It's a once-in-a-lifetime experience for the girls, individually, but for the program as a whole, it shows a lot that we care about our student-athletes -- and more than just how they're performing on the court. We want them to have this cultural experience because it's going to take them out of their comfort zone and allow them to grow up in more areas than what we could have accomplished on the court here in our own gym." Lyndsey Benson, Northern Colorado volleyball coach

"It's been such a long time coming, so it's good that it's finally here. All the details are in place, and it's actually going to be real now."

The Bears, following connecting flights to Seattle, Wash., and Seoul, South Korea, will land in Beijing on Monday, May 12. They will stay in this year's Olympic city until Sunday, May 18, when they are scheduled to board a plane and finish the rest of their 10-day China stay in Shanghai.

Along the way, Northern Colorado's traveling party has plans for sightseeing, but only when the schedule allows. The Bears will compete in four matches against Chinese university-aged teams during their stay in the Far East as well as take in any available opportunities to gain an insight into what makes China one of the world's premier volleyball superpowers.

"Our No. 1 priority while we're over there is volleyball," said Northern Colorado assistant coach Jenny Glenn. "So our focus is to improve as a team while we're gone. Whether that's through team-bonding or what, that's the goal. Really a lot of it is, I hope, learning from the Chinese and seeing what they do. They lead the world in volleyball, so we'll be studying them a lot and seeing what kind of offense they run, what kind of defense they run, and we'll be studying how they interact with each other."

Some wins in those matches would obviously be nice, but this trip is about much more than that. Off-the-court growth is a key goal, as is making inroads into Chinese-player recruitment. Benson and her staff are always looking to learn and improve, even if the classroom of those lessons is an entire hemisphere from Greeley.

"We hope to have opportunities to train with the Chinese and have them train us while we're over there," Glenn said. "And we hope to have the opportunity to watch practices while we're there -- even of the national team -- so that we can take ourselves out of the equation a little bit and give us a chance to actually see how they operate and get an eye-opening experience and broaden our horizons.

"We hope to gain some recruiting contacts while we're over there, too -- somebody who can help us gain information on potential players who would be interested in playing here (at Northern Colorado). It won't be our main channel of recruiting, but it's definitely something we want to look at."

And it won't be all work and no play for the Bears. The trip does, after all, come just a few days after the end of finals. Relaxing and leaving campus life behind are definitely on the agenda, as are stops at some of the world's most recognizable Chinese tourist spots -- the Great Wall, the Forbidden City, Tiananmen Square, and Shanghai's Bund street. A traditional Peking duck dinner will be had, too.

"I think everyone is anticipating seeing the different forms of volleyball over there," Northern Colorado sophomore Breanna VanDerMost said. "China is a volleyball leader in the world, and the way they play is just so different than us. We're excited to just learn their techniques and to take that back here and to enter next season with some new approaches. I'm excited to see other players and to interact with the other players.

"I think everyone is anticipating seeing the different forms of volleyball over there. China is a volleyball leader in the world, and the way they play is just so different than us. We're excited to just learn their techniques and to take that back here and to enter next season with some new approaches. I'm excited to see other players and to interact with the other players." Northern Colorado sophomore Breanna VanDerMost

"I'm excited, as a freshman, to be able to do something like this," Northern Colorado's Ashley Lichtenberg said. "I've never been out of the country before, so getting to go all the way to China is definitely going to be a great experience."

Perhaps more important than anything, though, is the perspective that a trip like this will give to Benson's Northern Colorado program as it continues to grow into its NCAA Division I shoes. The Bears were playing at the Division II level just a few years ago, but now they are set to travel the world and play and learn from some of the very best international competition.

Northern Colorado's volleyball program is at the forefront of a whole new world -- literally and figuratively.

"A trip to Flagstaff (home to Big Sky foe Northern Arizona) will seem like nothing compared to a trip to Beijing and Shanghai," Benson said, "so it should make us tougher on the road next year. Certainly, training-wise, the Chinese play a very different system. They train different, they use different techniques. They also approach the game different, mentally, than we do here in the States. So there's a lot to be learned from them. They dominate the world in this sport, so there's a lot from them that we want to study and observe and find out why they do what they do and see what we can bring back and incorporate into our program.

"We really want to broaden our horizons, challenge ourselves and try new things. All those aspects are going to be beneficial to us, individually and in the fall."