Boys Volleyball Season Starts Today

Bump, set and spike—the three steps to a running a standard volleyball offense. Sounds simple, right?

Only, for the last several seasons, it hasn’t been that easy for the boys’ volleyball team.

Not by a long shot.

Often struggling to get beyond the bump, otherwise known as the pass, the Big Macs stumbled to a 3-18 (0-14 WPIAL Class AAA) record in 2010 — a hard season that continued a long stretch of rough years at Canon-McMillan. Since 2004, the Big Macs have gone 11-87, and have won only three section games during that time (3-63).

But things may be about to change.

With a renewed focus on the passing game and a pair of seniors to lead them, the Big Macs are hoping for a turnaround in 2011. The players’ confidence is slowly on the rise, and they’re already talking about picking up what would be their first section victory since 2009 en route to a winning season.

A winningseason that the Canon-McMillan boys get a chance to embark upon tonight, when they open at Upper St. Clair tonight at 6 p.m.— if only their ability to bump passes the test.

“Our biggest improvement by far is passing,” senior outside hitter Jace MacDonald said. “Last year they’d serve the ball and we’d pass it into the bleachers. Fifty percent of the time it was going to be a souvenir for somebody.”

The Big Macs hope to keep the ball in play off the serve a bit more often this season, and so too does their new coach, Gary Woodruff, a former assistant at Canon-McMillan who previously coached the Chartiers-Houston girls team for seven years. Woodruff doesn’t plan on making any big changes to his team’s style of play from last season. But through repetition, focus and playing time, he does expect his
team to improve on the basics of the game.

“It’s basically the same style they’ve had for the last three years,” Woodruff said of his approach. “They have to have confidence in themselves to do it. And the more they play, the more confidence they’ll get in themselves.”

Another big influence on the Big Macs’ confidence will be the play of its two top seniors—MacDonald, and middle hitter Quarry Trest. Woodruff expects big things from both players, who will help set the tone and pace for Canon-McMillan in both the offensive and defensive aspects of the game.

“We’ve got to build around these two to win,” Woodruff said. “I’ve got some guys that can step up. We’ve got some potential—if they put their minds to it.”

And Woodruff believes that his team is taking strides in that direction already. He saw great improvement in the team’s passing, defensive coverage and blocking in a preseason game against North Hills, and said that if his players continue to improve, it could allow his team to open it up on the floor.

“Once our passing gets better we can run a fancier offense than we have been running and be quicker than our opponent,” Woodruff said. “And if you can set a little faster offense, it stops other teams from running their defense against you.”

The Big Macs will get a tough test of their improving skills tonight when they take on Mt. Lebanon. But even if they stumble out of the gate, the Canon-McMillan players believe that this will be the season that their program begins to turn around.

“I just expect 100 percent effort all the time. We’re improving every day,” Trest said. “A winning season, that’s our goal. We’ve never had a winning season here.”