After winning one conference game last season, Oregon women’s volleyball coach Jim Moore didn’t set lofty expectations for a team that was about as likely to flounder as it was to succeed.
Instead, he challenged the team to be better, to have confidence in they way they played on the court. He wanted them to play with passion rather than being complacent after so many seasons of losing. He wanted them to care.
After coming off a season-defining win against then-No. 8 Cal on the road last week, Moore has set a new standard for the women’s volleyball team.
“Jim and the entire coaching staff have changed this program around,” senior middle blocker Kristen Bitter said. “They’ve taught us how to be a winning program and this is only the beginning.”
Last year Moore took on a team that had five conference wins since 1999. His predecessor, Carl Ferreira, had a conference record of 4-68 in five years coaching at Oregon. When Ferreira left, the open position wasn’t one of the most desired coaching jobs considering the program’s history.
This year, the Ducks (15-4 overall, 5-4 Pac-10) have already matched the previous six seasons’ conference wins and are looking to add more.
But Moore is reluctant to claim responsibility for changing Oregon’s image.
“There’s so much that goes into a team being successful,” Moore said. “I can do the best I can to prepare them, but I have zero kills, zero digs – I don’t do anything other than sit there and go ‘Yay team’ once the match starts.”
After beating Cal on the road Thursday, the team reached a high point in its season only to lose in embarrassing fashion the next night against No. 3 Stanford.
“We did everything that we normally do, we just didn’t hit well,” Moore said. “We walked out of the Cal match and were completely, thoroughly exhausted. It was more of an emotional thing.”
But for Moore, the loss didn’t come as a surprise and the week was already considered a success because of the victory against Cal.
“When you’re trying to develop yourself as a program in this conference and if you’re going to worry about how you play against Stanford when you’re trying to go from the eternal 1-17 team to now I’m going to beat Cal and Stanford back-to-back – you got be foolish,” Moore said. “It would be foolish to even worry about what we did at Stanford.”
“I said to them on the bus before we went down, ‘You’re going to beat Cal in four but you’re going to have to lose to Stanford in three, you going to be okay with that?’ There isn’t a human being on the planet that wouldn’t say ‘Yes, I’ll take that in a heartbeat’,” Moore said. “We were so emotionally drained after the Cal match, that’s the way it goes.”
Moore’s influence has changed the team’s mindset to where they believe they can beat any opponent.
“Since I’ve been here, we’ve made huge strides as a program,” Bitter said. “I’ve always believed that any team can win on any given night.”
Even though Moore told the team if it beat Cal, it would okay to lose to Stanford but for this year’s team, losing is never an option.
“Last year we might have said ‘We’re playing bad, but it’s Stanford’, this year we’ve said ‘We’re playing bad, that’s not acceptable,” Bitter said. “It doesn’t matter who we’re playing.”
Sophomore libero Katie Swoboda said the team’s turnaround is evident in some of their games against the Pac-10 elite.
“We taken games off USC and Washington and beat Cal on the road,” Swoboda said. “I think we can compete with anyone if we just focus on our side of the court.”
Even with the embarrassing loss against Stanford, the Ducks were still able to take something away from it.
“The team didn’t play well and we know we didn’t play well,” Swoboda said. “You have those games sometimes and you have to learn from that.”
And no one believes that a loss against Stanford reminded anybody of last year’s team.
“This is a different team, it’s a different year. We’re working harder and it’s a different mindset,” Swoboda said.
And for something that was unthinkable at the beginning of the season, the women’s volleyball team is comparable to the football team in the national polls. Oregon football is ranked No. 25 in the AP poll, volleyball sits just outside of the top 25 at No. 26 with 47 votes.
“We thought we’d be ranked higher, actually,” Swoboda said. “We’re hoping to get some respect from people.”
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