Friday, October 14, 2011

MUH volleyball team captures league title


By Bob Ratterman
New coaches and two seniors new to the team led the Miami University Hamilton campus volleyball team to a league championship after a losing record a year ago.

The Harriers defeated Ohio State University’s Lima campus team 3-1 Wednesday, Oct. 12, at home to clinch no worse than a tie for the championship, heading into the final match of the Ohio Regional Campus Conference West Division schedule against Wright State’s Lake campus at 1 p.m. Saturday afternoon, Oct. 15.

Their final regular-season match will be a nonconference one Sunday afternoon at Southern State.
The team celebrated Senior Night Wednesday, honoring their two seniors, Dana Hamblin and Devon Wells. The two played at Miami Middletown for three years and both joined the Hamilton campus team this year and both contributed the turnaround in Hamilton.

The MUH volleyball team ran their record to 11-5 overall and 6-1 in the ORCC West Division Wednesday, their only ORCC loss Sept. 28 at Ohio State Lima. This season marked a turnaround for the Hamilton campus volleyball team which posted a record of 7-10 a year ago with a 4-4 ORCC mark.

Wednesday’s win means they can do no worse than share the title with Middletown, but, having beaten MUM twice in league play, they hold the tiebreaker. A win over WSU Lake Saturday means an outright title and coach Sarah Dennis expects to see that happen.

“I’m not planning on tying,” she said after Wednesday’s win. “We talk about playing our own game.
We can’t give anything away. More often than not when we lose, we beat ourselves.”

MU Hamilton volleyball coach Sarah Dennis and her father, assistant coach Dan Dennis, watch Wednesday as the Harriers defeated OSU Lima 3-1 to win at least a share of the division championship.—Photo by Lisa Back


Wednesday’s match found the Harriers starting slow in each game, but building momentum, except in the third game.

In the first, they ended a bit slowly, too, but held on. A 15-9 lead turned into a 17-12 lead but they managed a 25-20 win. They trailed early in the second game but finally broke a 7-7 tie and went out to a 13-7 lead, which became a 20-13 lead and then shrunk to a 20-18 lead. MUH had a timeout to settle down and ran off four points, gave up one more and then won 25-19.

That timeout may have been a major turning point because it gave MUH a 2-0 lead in games. OSU Lima came back with a third-game win, 25-23, in a game which saw the score tied 13 times and neither team able to build more than a two-point lead.

In the fourth game, however, Hamilton jumped to a 9-3 lead after an early 1-1 tie and widened that lead to 13-3 with Wells serving. The Harriers turned a narrow lead into a 10-point lead, on the way to a 25-12 game and match win.

“We showed we are something to be scared of. Tonight was amazing. My team pulled together,” Wells said, adding of the string of points on her serve in that deciding fourth game.“  I just kept going and thought about the point in front of me.”

She said she is confident that the team will have the outright league title after Saturday’s match with Wright State Lake but insisted the team is not overconfident.

Dennis added, “In that fourth game, we meant business.”

Dennis has her father, Dan, as her assistant coach now, but she was an assistant coach for him for two years when he was girls’ basketball coach at Finneytown High School. Later, she was the head girls’ coach at Deer Park High School, which meant they coached against each other twice, her dad winning both.
“We played against each other twice,” she said. “It was pretty awesome. He had a far superior athletic group of women. It was two of the most surreal nights of my life. I could hear his voice in my head telling me what I needed and there I was coaching against him.”

Her father is responsible for her getting the Miami Hamilton volleyball job. He learned of the opening last year when he was taking youngsters to the MUH games as part of a pep club he formed as youth director at the Lindenwald United Methodist Church.

She applied and got the job but then had to find an assistant coach.

“I’ve had assistants in the past I did not get to choose and I wanted someone who was behind me unequivocally and he knows more about sports than any other human being,” she said.

She called having her father as her assistant “weird,” but said he has no ego about being in charge and wants only to see the players improve.

“He’s different from the stereotypical dad,” Dennis said. “He taught and coached me in high school. As a family, we are close, but the take-charge role is strange. The selflessness I ask for from the girls, he does, too. It’s not shocking that it works so well.”

Dan Dennis credits his daughter and the players’ hard work with the team’s success.

“This team is mentally together. I’m proud to be part of the staff as a team player,” he said. “(Sarah) knows more about volleyball than I do.”


She said she feels the job is a great mach for her and her players are working hard.

Sarah Dennis holds a bachelor's degree from Wittenberg University where she was a member of the Tigers' basketball team. She was a Graduate Assistant Coach for women's basketball at The Ohio State University. She is currently a teacher at Lakota East High School, teaching English to sophomores and creative writing to seniors.

“I am super pleased with the results,” she said of her first MUH volleyball squad. “This is a phenomenal group of young women. I love these girls. They are willing to work and willing to try. They are open to all I’m trying to do here. The results speak for themselves.”

Wells, a graduate of Middletown High School, played volleyball at the Miami Middletown campus for three years with Hamblin, but both switched to the Hamilton campus program this year. Wells said Middletown lost their coach after last season and she was coming to the Hamilton’s open gym to work out over the past summer. She saw Dennis there and was impressed.

“I watched her and just knew this was where I was supposed to be,” she said. “Coach is awesome, funny and crazy.”

Still ahead after this weekend is a league tournament being held Oct. 21-23 at OU Chillicothe and the state tournament the following weekend. Wells said the team is not resting on their laurels from a division championship.

“The (league) tournament and state will be a challenge,” she said. “There will be a lot of teams. It is all about skill at state because there are teams we have not played. The (league) tournament is about knowing your opponents and their tendencies.”

Friday, October 7, 2011

MUH volleyball team building toward strong finish


By Bob Ratterman

Three conference matches next week will decide where the Miami University Hamilton campus Harriers finish in the final conference standings.

The Harriers will be at home on Saturday, Oct. 8, hosting a nonconference match with Clark State and then begin a stretch of three Ohio Regional Campus  Conference West Division matches in seven days.
Two of those conference showdowns will be on the home court in the Hamilton campus gym.

They will be on the road Sunday, Oct. 9, for an ORCC match at OU Chillicothe but will be home for West Division matches with OSU Lima on Wednesday, Oct. 12, at 7 p.m. and with Wright State Lake on Saturday, Oct. 15, at 1 p.m.

The Harriers enter this crucial stretch of games with a league record of 4-1 (8-5 overall) and winners of  their last two ORCC matches on the road, at WSU Lake and Miami University Middletown. The win over MUM was the harriers’ second in league play and came in five games Wednesday, Oct. 5.

Those two league wins were sandwiched around a non-league loss in three games to UC Clermont.
Senior Dana Hamblin leads the team with 184 digs while freshman Erin Sharp leads in blocks with 31. Hamblin’s season high was 41 digs in the team’s first league meeting with Middletown while Sharp had her season-high nine blocks in that same match.

Wednesday’s match with OSU Lima will also be Senior Night for the Harriers, who will celebrate the contributions of two seniors, Hamblin and Devon Wells.