VIDEO: Kody DuBarry Interview
JEFFERSON CITY, Tenn. – The Carson-Newman beach volleyball team prepares for the commencement of its fourth season with an opening match against Lincoln Memorial this Saturday starting at 1 p.m. at the C-N Sand Courts.
Saturday's match will be the first of two head-to-head meetings that the Eagles will host against the Railsplitters this season. The two teams will meet up three times total for the duration of the season.
"Practices have been going good," head coach Kody DuBarry said. "The girls have been in their pairs and working really been working hard with their partners and continuing to grow within themselves and the team so it's been good."
Carson-Newman returns just one player from last year's squad in Morgan Harlan (Ladera Ranch, Calif.). The senior collected a 2-3 record in 2017, splitting most of her time at the top-two spots on the roster with teammate Alex Biro. An injury cut Harlan's season short, however.
This team is the first in program history that is strictly devoted to beach volleyball whereas former teams also included indoor volleyball players. This season, only one member of the team, Harlan, has also spent time with the indoor Eagle squad.
DuBarry's youthful squad of 10 freshmen and one sophomore is led by Harlan and two other seniors.
Last season, the Eagles won just two of their eight matches on the season. Just seven players from that 2017 squad return to Harrogate this season including sophomore Lindsey Nartker who 11-11 last season, teaming up with Kiera Holland where they split their time at the No. 3 and No. 4 spots. They were undefeated in the six matches they played at the third-seeded position.
Head coach Jenny Michael's LMU team starts its third year as a program. The Railsplitters are coming off of a 2017 campaign that saw them garner a program-best record at 10-12, improving from 4-18 a season prior.
A season ago, LMU swept all three matches against Carson-Newman by a combined score of 13-2.
Since the series' inception in 2016, both teams have won three matches against each other.
The last time the two teams faced off was on April 22 of last season in the Austin Peay Tournament. Lincoln Memorial swept the Eagles that day, 5-0, winning four of the matches in straight-sets. The No. 1 match saw C-N's Taylor Lowe and Anna Patton take a 23-21 first set that was subsequently answered with a 21-12 second set victory by Abby Cash and Jamie Jehne, forcing a third set tiebreaker. In that set, despite the fight shown by the Eagles' duo, LMU cruised to a 15-8 set victory to win the match.
"Obviously we want to win, of course that's definitely what you want," DuBarry mentioned of his expectations. "Realistically, the goal is to go out and compete as hard as you possibly can. Some of the girls haven't played a real match in nine months' haven't played something that is a competitive against somebody else with a ref, with a whistle, with a scoreboard, so for them it's just to get out there and compete."
The season-opening first serve between the Eagles and Railsplitters is slated for 1 p.m. at the C-N Sand Courts. Final results and a recap will follow at cneagles.com.
