After capturing their first victory of the 1999 season against Virginia Tech Wednesday night, the Virginia volleyball team prepares to host the annual Jefferson Cup Tournament this weekend at University Hall.
The Cavaliers will play a total of three games in the tournament, facing Ohio today and both Furman and Alabama tomorrow.
"The Jefferson Cup is also is a 'come out and show everything we got' series," middle blocker Deanna Zwarich said. "We've been in here seven or six hours a day, and the Jefferson Cup is always where you put everything together and prove how hard you've worked.
"It's the tournament where all the families come to town, so we look forward to putting together our game," Zwarich said.
The Cavaliers enter the tournament with a lack of knowledge about their opponents' style, but the team plans to play each match this weekend with the same fury they used against Virginia Tech.
"We expect matches that were a lot like [Wednesday night] where we're going to have play hard to win," coach Melissa Aldrich Shelton said. "We expect Ohio to be a tough team on the rise and also Alabama to be a hard-hitting team."
Of the three games, the one against Alabama may be the toughest, factoring in the element of fatigue.
"It's always tough to play three matches in two days," setter Mary Frances Scott said. "The other teams are also going to be on the pace that we are as far as the number of games so they'll be right there as far as exhaustion."
Since Virginia's focus will not rest on defeating any certain aspect of one competitor, the team will continue to improve the mistakes they found in Wednesday's game.
"We found out some things we need to work on from [Wednesday's] game," Aldrich Shelton said. "We just need to be blocking more balls. We need to work on our passing - every team goes through this at the beginning of the season. Everybody needs to figure out where their hitters are going and how you're going to approach each game."
Along with working to prepare a strong team, Aldrich Shelton and the older team members will try and give the younger players the experience and support they need to prepare for the rest of the season.
"They did really well" against Virginia Tech middle blocker Jessica Parsons said. "Kiersten [Kaufman] did very well in her first time on the court. That's so difficult when it's your first game, but she performed well. It's great that we can get them in and get them experience because we're going to need them down the road."
With the Cavaliers hosting the Jefferson Cup in their new home court in University Hall, and with the support of a growing number of fans, the team faces this weekend's competition in high spirits.
"There's no team there that scares me," Scott said. "They're coming to our house. They should be scared of us"
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