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Lady Bison Volleyball: From 1 To 21 … Just Like That!

BisonVolleyballBy HOWARD MANN

Coach Shaun Kupferberg’s initial season at Howard got off to a bad start and got worse. Match after match and week after week, his volleyball team ended on the wrong side of the score. The Lady Bison lost their first 22 matches before finally cracking the win column in their next-to-last contest.

The season finale left them with a 1-23 record. But they went from one win to 21 this year, one of the biggest NCAA turnarounds in two decades.

Believe it or not, the foundation was laid last year. Progress was imperceptible from the outside, but “Coach Kup” saw steady improvement.

“Every single week we got better,” he said, basing his assessment on in-depth analysis of wonkish statistics that don’t show up in box scores. “They put in a lot of work and showed what kind of focus they had as players. To keep that focus while losing that many matches was impressive on their part.”

The Bison fell last week in the MEAC tournament semifinals – their deepest run since 2004 – to finish at 21-11. It marked the team’s best season since 1995 and showed how far the Bison have come since Kupferberg was named coach in July 2012.

Best of all, much of the success was achieved through holdovers. MEAC Rookie of the Year Katherine Broussard obviously stood out among Kupferberg’s initial recruiting class – the conference’s first-ever to earn national recognition – but four of the seven top players suffered through the 1-23 carnage last year.

“When we met some of the recruits he had coming in, we knew we had to start working in the spring,” junior setter Stephanie Shultis said. “We knew they were going to be really good. We just improved a lot from last season, working out and practicing together.”

One newcomer, junior libero Allyson Lods, transferred from Antelope Valley College (Lancaster, Calif.). She was sold after looking at Kupferberg’s track record in stints at Jacksonville University, Northwest University and Miami (Ohio) University.

“He talked to me about (Howard’s program) and explained the changes that were going to be made,” said Lods, a second-team all-MEAC performer. “You could tell he had a lot of experience building teams. When he takes over programs he does really well.”

Kupferberg was upfront when he interviewed for the job, telling officials that wins would be infrequent in his first year. But he believes Howard is a great institution and building a winning program shouldn’t be tough “because of the name and the quality of education,” he said. “I thought it was possible to turn it around quickly.”

The biggest challenge was changing the culture from one where losing was OK and expected, to one where contending for conference championships was the standard. Perhaps his biggest thrill this year was watching players who were sick and tired of losing during 1-23, having a chance to celebrate and enjoy the game again.

“The whole chemistry was different this year,” said junior middle blocker Assata Conway, who like Broussard and Shultis was named to the all-MEAC first team. “Last year we were more like playing because we had to, not because we wanted to. Winning does make everything a lot better.”

And there’s no need to worry about complacency, either, not with talented reserves pushing the starters… while both groups keep watch for the next wave of recruits.

Kupferberg doesn’t believe in guaranteed spots, whether you’re a highly-touted freshman or a returning all-conference player. One of the latter at Northwest was beat out by a freshman during spring practice. The all-conference player tried another position and won the same accolades at that spot, too.

“My job is to bring in the best possible talent,” he said. “The players job is to learn and compete. Everybody gets a ring. I keep friendships and my personal feelings for players separate from the competitive aspects of the program. Practices are intense and focus is intense and everyone knows they have a shot. No one is brought in here to sit the bench.”

But everyone has to hit the books. Six Bison were named to MEAC’s all-Academic team, including Conway and Shultis. A Howard education is one of Kupferberg’s biggest selling points. “I tell recruits they’re not going to be playing volleyball in 20 years,” he said. “They’ll need a good degree from a good place and a good education. They can have athletics and academics here.”

Kupferberg didn’t have any hesitation about taking the job. “Not really,” he said. “It is a little underfunded compared to other schools, so funding was probably the only reservation. I don’t have any paid assistants or anything like every other school in the conference. But it’s that whole ‘Hoosiers’ mentality where you deal with the players on the floor and you compete.”

It helps to have someone like Broussard, an outside hitter and three-time all-America in high school who won Louisiana’s Player of the Year as a senior.  Kupferberg called her “a rock.”

“I definitely wasn’t expecting all of the awards,” said Broussard, who won MEAC Rookie of the Week accolades five times. “I also wasn’t expecting such a winning season, going from 1 to 21. That was a big surprise. But we all worked hard during preseason and throughout the season to get better.”

It actually started during 1-23.

But who’s counting?

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