The Milan News-Leader
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Some Big Red response to season change positive
Marshall says move to fall season could help volleyball team
By Jerry Hinnen, Staff Writer
PUBLISHED: April 12, 2007
The MHSAA's lawsuit loss and subsequent rearrangement of seasons might have been met with disappointment and confusion across much of the state (and led to the resignation of Milan girls' basketball coach Scott Stark), but Big Red volleyball coach Andrea Marshall is looking on the bright side.
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"With the Milan program, there's been some of the same things and the same approach for a long time," Marshall said. "With the season change, it's a good time to start changing up that approach."
Many of those changes will involve the opportunities presented by entering volleyball season directly after summer, in the fall. Marshall is looking forward to moving the team's conditioning work outside and is planning a brand-new weight-training program, tentatively planned to being in June.
Just as important, she believes, is the tighter calendar for the upcoming 2007 season and the urgency it could create in the program.
"Everything's happening quicker," she said. "I'm going to have to be ready sooner, my staff's going to be ready sooner, and hopefully some of that tempo will bleed over into the players and the team ... Hopefully everyone will pick up the pace."
Scheduling practice will also be easier for the Big Reds as they will be the only Milan team using the gymnasium during the fall season.
The biggest negative, Marshall said, was that she might lose a few players to cross country or swimming. But she didn't see any conflicts with the current squad and in any case, was more than willing to let those players go if they preferred the conflicting sports.
"If there's a girl who's better at cross country than she is at volleyball," Marshall said, "she should run cross country. I'm fine with that."
Besides volleyball and girls' basketball exchanging seasons, the court decision also swaps the tennis and golf seasons, with girls now playing golf in the fall and boys playing spring golf and fall tennis.
Milan principal Ron Reed said this week he believed that for every athlete that might be inconvenienced by the new seasons, there would be another who would benefit.
"You might have a girl who now can't both golf and swim, but you might also have a boy who can now play tennis and baseball," he said. "There are some kids it's going to hurt, and some it's going to help."
Reed expressed some doubt about the officiating and coaching crunches during the simultaneous basketball season (a doubt only exacerbated by Stark's departure), but added that in the long run, he thought the season switch would have a negligible impact on Milan athletics.
"We're going to have some challenges," he said, "but long-term, I don't think there's going to be any drastic drop in our numbers. I don't think it's either going to be good or bad. Just different."
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