The Gators kicked off their 2015 campaign on the right foot but will now have their hands full this weekend.
Florida stormed into Harrisonburg, Virginia to sweep James Madison University 3-0 and rolled into the heart of Washington, D.C. to take down American University 3-1 last weekend.
Now 2-0 on the young season, fourth-ranked UF will face its biggest challenge so far when they square off against No. 11 Oregon and No. 3 Texas in Austin, Texas for the 2015 VERT Challenge.
Although it seems like the Gators are taking a monumental leap in competition from last weekend to this coming one, that isn’t exactly the case.
JMU, who began this season 3-0, went 17-14 in 2014, its best record since it finished 18-13 in 2011. Though their program is no volleyball powerhouse, the Dukes are an up-and-coming team who has steadily improved throughout the last few years.
AU offers a different narrative, as the Eagles went 26-7 last season and won the Patriot League Conference championship. Florida was also challenged with playing in a packed house in front of a D.C. volleyball record crowd of 2,629 fans — no easy task for just its second game of the year.
But that’s exactly what head coach Mary Wise wanted.
Wise tried to stack the odds against the Gators early in the season to see how they would respond.
“It’s what we try to do every year in the preseason is to schedule as tough of opponents as we could to help our team learn,” she said. “Because we understand that the only way you really learn about your team is by playing against the very best.”
One big challenge for Wise’s team is the amount of road games they play to start the season. UF’s first seven games are all on the road, as they head to Texas for two matches and fly straight to Honolulu for another three.
It’s also the first time Florida has opened its season on the road since 2010.
Part of the reason so many early road games were scheduled was because the O’Connell Center was expected to be undergoing renovations, but those plans were delayed in February.
“Because we thought we were gonna be playing away from the O’Connell Center we’re on the road more than normally,” Wise said. “That in itself will be a challenge, but I think with the veterans we have we’re embracing those challenges.”
One veteran already embracing the challenge is senior middle blocker Simone Antwi.
Antwi said the road games and tough opponents will help the players figure out what kind of team they are.
“They’re more like learning experiences,” she said. “Rankings are kind of just rankings, but the work we put in the gym and everything that happens in the season and postseason kind of help us learn who we are and what we need to do.”
Junior right-side hitter Alex Holston said she hopes these difficult matches will lead to another Southeastern Conference championship this year.
“Hopefully we can do the same thing,” she said. “The preseason matches will really help since we’re playing such great competition.”
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UF middle blocker Simone Antwi tips a ball over the net during Florida's 3-0 win against Ole Miss on Sept. 28, 2014, in the O'Connell Center.
