Last year’s volleyball team reached the regional semi-final with a starting six that had played together for three seasons. Five of them graduated in June. What remains, as the rebuilt squad opened training this month, is one returning starter, nine underclassmen, and a coach determinedly refusing to sandbag.
“I’m not going to stand here and say we’re rebuilding so nothing counts,” said coach Eva Lindgren. “We’re young. Young teams lose sets they should win and win sets nobody expects. Both are coming.”
The returning starter — setter and new captain Yuki Tanaka — inherits the unusual job of being the only player on court who remembers the system working. “I spent three years being the youngest voice,” Tanaka said. “Now I say something in training and everyone writes it down. It’s terrifying.”
The plan: lose the right way
Lindgren has set the season’s public goal as development, with a private points target she declined to share. The visible changes: every underclassman will start at least four matches, service pressure is being drilled “to the point of tedium,” and post-match reviews now include the players’ own video notes.
The semi-final team was built in exactly one way: a group of first-years lost together for a season and refused to split up. That’s the project again.
Eva Lindgren, head coach
The season opens at home in two weeks against a Riverside team that graduated almost nobody — a fixture Lindgren called, with evident satisfaction, “a free education.”
The schedule as a teacher
Lindgren has weaponised the fixture list. The season’s first half is front-loaded with the league’s strongest opponents — a quirk of the draw she declined to appeal, against the advice of nearly everyone. “A young team learns from losing to good teams in September or from losing to average teams in a playoff. I know which lesson costs less.” The back half of the schedule softens considerably; if the plan works, that is where a season that starts painfully could finish respectably.
The rebuilt roster has one unusual asset: three of the graduated starters remain in town and have standing invitations to training, where they now serve — in every sense — as the opposition. “They graduated from the team,” Lindgren said. “Nobody graduates from being useful.”
