Men's club holds strong after losing All-American player

The men's volleyball club looks to make quite a splash this year within both Midwestern and national club sports. The optimism amongst the team is not unfounded. \nLast year's team took fifth in the nation, while losing only two senior players in the process. While Mike Pingeron, an All-American starter on the team last season is gone, the rest of the team is quite confident with this year's roster. \n"We're returning five out of six starters, so I think we're going to be pretty tough this year," A-Team starter and vice president JT Gripe said.\nThe team as a whole is doing well together even after losing an All-American. "We lost a good player, but we're doing pretty well, we're molding as a team," Gripe said.\nHis thinking is also supported with year-long cohesive experience between the returning starters. Team captain and president Jeremy Levy said all of this year's starters will be returning next year providing potential for another ground-breaking run.\nYet returning starters are not the only positive for the team this year. \n"The bench is good, this year we're much more deep than last year, we have two good freshmen who are going to step up this year," Gripe said. "Even if there is an injury amongst the club's starters, there will be an adequate player there to back him up." \nTo further safeguard any shortness of players, the club has a farm system of sorts provided by the B-Team's roster. For most players, the B-Team is not the last stop within the club's road either. \n"If the guys stick with it, next year they have a shot at making A, as long as they work hard," Gripe said, continuing, "We take this very seriously, we work in the off-season a lot on our game."\nThe year's first challenge came Saturday during the Hoosier Illini Classic where the team was in action for the first time this year. The tournament was thought of as a tune-up.\n"It's a small tournament, it's kind of a gear-up tournament for our next weekend which is a lot of good teams in the nation, there's four Top 15 teams in the nation," Levy said.\nWithin the small invitational, the team's bench was strengthened by providing some A-Team players with more playing time.\n"We put three of our A-Team guys on the B-Team just for this tournament, so they can get a little more experience," Gripe said.\nThe Classic proved successful for the team, winning the tournament championship in three games against the Marquette Golden Eagles.\n"We came into the tournament expecting to win and we did what we wanted," starter Jeff Foott said.\nThis successful performance provided a good tune-up for the team, but also showed problems the team can work on while gearing up for next week's tournament at Northern Illinois University.\n"Our defense hasn't been played as strong as we'd like, our passing had been a little bit off, but we hit up front pretty hard," Levy said. \nIf play improves, the team hopes to make an impact nationally.\n"We wanted to make a statement to the other teams in the Midwest that we're going to be the team to reckon with," Foott said. "IU's team can be sure the statement has been made"