Titans volleyball team prepared for a tough conference season

The Eastern Florida State College volleyball team heads into the conference season with some confidence after a strong start to the season.

The Titans are 8-4 and have played some tough opponents in the early portion of the schedule.

"I feel pretty confident because the matches that we have played so far will prepare us for the stronger part of our season," Eastern Florida State College volleyball coach Andrea Rasmussen said.

That part of the schedule begins this week as the team opens the Southern Conference schedule on Tuesday night with a road trip to Broward College. Then they will host Indian River State College at 6 p.m. Thursday night.

"The conference has improved greatly this year, last week four of the five Southern Conference teams were ranked in the (Region 8) top 10 so that shows that we will have our work cut out for us," Rasmussen said.

Eastern Florida is one of those teams to crack the top 10, led by the trio of Malvis Ortiz, Rachael Gunn and Delaney Smith who all have at least 75 kills apiece after 12 matches.

"I told them the other night that our stats are never going to jump off the page and scare anyone but if you look at the distribution between our stat leaders, we have three or four girls that are contributing at different positions where a lot of teams have one or two players getting all the balls. We have girls who can score anywhere," Rasmussen said. "That makes it better for us."

And she feels like this team is just beginning to show what kind of team they can be.

"I think we are hitting our stride. You can tell by the way we are playing. We are coming together as a team and not just a group of individuals. I think we are doing a nice job and am confident heading into the conference season."