New Season, New Expectations for St. Francis Brooklyn Women's Volleyball

In year two of a rebuilding campaign begun when she arrived last August, St. Francis Brooklyn head women’s volleyball coach Abigail “Abra” Rummel believes her squad is ready for the next step: being competitive in the Northeast Conference (NEC). To get there, the Terrier coach is making drastic changes — including sitting out her top player for the first two matches this season — to transform a culture of losing that has permeated for more than a decade.

Arriving in Brooklyn Heights just days before last season started, Rummel, previously an assistant at New Jersey’s Rider College, endured a difficult head coaching transition. In 2014 St. Francis went 2-28, with 24 straight losses to close out the season, making the Terriers one of the worst squads in NCAA D1 volleyball.

“I started my job five days before report date [when players return to campus to prepare for the season],” Rummel said by telephone last week. “I had no idea what I was getting myself into.”

Included in the season’s low lights was an 0-14 conference record, extending a two year long NEC losing streak that began in November 2013 with a loss to Central Connecticut State.

St. Francis last made the Northeast Conference tournament in 1997, when all teams qualified. Rummel has elevated hopes going into her second season: capturing one of four NEC playoffs spots.

“Making the conference playoffs would be huge,” Rummel said. “Huge for me, huge for the program, huge for the girls. It’s something I’d absolutely love to see happen.”

With a full year of experience under her belt, and sporting her inaugural recruiting class, Rummel’s team opened the season this weekend with matches against host James Madison, Lehigh and Northern Arizona at the JMU Classic in Harrisonburg, VA.

For 2015 St. Francis recruited four freshmen: Angela Hudelson a 5-10 setter from Redwood City, California, Mireya Ramirez a libero from Kansas City, Missouri; Shannon Tice, a 5-11 outside hitter from Colts Neck, New Jersey and Emily Kriebel, a 5-10 outside hitter from Stratford, New Jersey.

All had one quality in common: success.

“I tried to find girls who had experienced success in volleyball, in life and in other sports — girls that know how to win, girls who could come into this program and raise expectations automatically,” Rummel said.

Of the four, Ramirez and Hudelson will get the opportunity to contribute immediately to shoring up the Terrier defense.

There’s also the players Rummel inherited when she accepted the St. Francis job. With little opportunity during the season to make drastic changes, the Arizona native used spring semester practices to install an up-tempo offense. This new system will take advantage to the athleticism of returning players, including sophomore Brooke Haliscak, junior Domenique Gerard, and seniors Kelly O’Halloran, Leah Zitting and Maggie Niu.

Niu, the Terriers’ captain, has been a St. Francis staple since arriving in Brooklyn Heights. “I can put her anywhere on the court and have faith that she’s going to do her job and do it well,” Rummel said. Last year Niu played all three front line positions before settling in as right outside hitter.

Another player being counting on for a big season is Haliscak, a 6-1 outside hitter.

“Brooke has got a cannon for an arm,” Rummel said. “She’s able to hit around the blocks or even hit through them.”

Gerard, a 5-9 outside hitter who last year led the Terriers in kills and points, is “very fast, very athletic, very explosive,” her coach said. “The type of offense we’re trying to employ this year is designed for the type of player she is.”

That didn’t stop Rummel for sitting Gerard out of the Terriers’ first two matches this season and a majority of a third, the result of violating team rules last semester.

St. Francis dropped all three matches: 3-0 to host James Madison and 3-1 to Lehigh on Friday before being swept 3-0 by Northern Arizona on Saturday.

Zitting – another player in a new position — will play middle hitter in the reconfigured lineup.

“She’ll be in the middle this season, which speaks to all the strength she has — fast, athletic, very quick arm swings,” Rummel said.

Add in setter O’Halloran, whose team high 541 assists (5.82 per game) ranked seventh in the NEC, and there’s realistic hope for a change in Terrier fortunes. St. Francis has gone 24-132 the past five seasons, including 11-65 in conference play.

The squad’s 2015 win total will be the most obvious measure of improvement, but the best indication of Rummel’s impact will be how St. Francis fares in conference play. So far her fellow NEC coaches are unmoved by the Terriers’ rebuilding effort; for the 14th consecutive year the Terriers were picked last in the annual NEC Preseason Coaches’ poll.

Not surprising, the poll result inspires Rummel to work “that much harder, to do a better job as a coach in order to do everything I possibly can to ensure we have the best chance to succeed.”

An early benchmark of her efforts will come October 10 in Fort Greene, the first of two matches against local rival LIU Brooklyn. The Blackbirds —winners of nine of the past 11 championships — have been at the top of the NEC for as long as the Terriers have been at the bottom. St. Francis has dropped 21 straight matches to LIU since October 2001.

The three-time NEC champs lost two of the conference’s best players to graduation as well as head coach Kyle Robinson, who in seven seasons led LIU to a 90-10 conference record. With all the change across Flatbush Avenue this season, could the Terriers accomplish something amazing?

After a year in Brooklyn Heights Rummel has learned to temper her expectations.

“It’s hard to go into conference and say ‘I want to take a set off of LIU,’ or ‘I want to beat Bryant,’” she admitted. “When it comes to building the program… every week we need to be better than we were the week before.”

For now there’s non-conference play to contend with. The Terriers travel to Fordham on Wednesday then open their home slate on Friday when they host Rider, Rummel’s former team, in the opening match of the St. Francis Brooklyn Terrier Invitational. The four invited teams — including New Jersey Institute of Technology, Valparaiso, and St. Peter’s of Jersey City — are “very similar” to NEC competition, offering St. Francis fans a chance to preview how the Terriers will do in conference play.

“It’s a great opportunity for the community to come out to see D1 volleyball,” Rummel said. Citing the post-season popularity of the St. Francis men’s and women’s basketball teams, she added: “I’m hopeful with our success we’ll see that it’s a good sport that fans will rally around and support us.”

The Terriers begin Northeast Conference play on the road at Bryant (September 26) and Central Connecticut (September 27) before play NEC-foe Saint Francis, PA at home (October 3). For information about St. Francis Brooklyn Athletics, contact (718) 489-5490 or visit www.sfcathletics.com

PHOTO CAPTION: St. Francis Brooklyn Women’s Volleyball team huddles up before first match of the 2015 season