SEASON RECAP: Forced To Be Resilient, Vikings Respond Behind Strong Offense, Dominant Home Record in 2023

PORTLAND, Ore. — Two and a half sets into its 2023 season, things changed dramatically for the Portland State volleyball team.

With the Vikings level at a set apiece against a quality Kansas State squad at the team’s home tournament, the Hotel Vance Rose City Showdown, two-time All-Big Sky first-team selection Makayla Lewis went down with a season-ending ACL injury. In a moment, the Vikings lost their best offensive player and one of their best passers.

The Vikings went on to lose in four sets to Kansas State that night. But the next night? A 3-0 sweep of Cal State Fullerton. And the following day? A 3-0 sweep of San Diego State. That resiliency in the face of what could have been a devastating injury for not only Lewis but the entire team came to define the Vikings’ 2023 season.

“I’m very proud of how everyone kind of adjusted,” Portland State head coach Michael Seemann said of his team which finished 16-12 overall and 9-7 in Big Sky play. “A lot of people played roles that they weren’t necessarily planning for at the beginning of the year. But they were able to step in and I thought did a really good job. There wasn’t a player in our gym who wasn’t called upon at any level. Whether it was someone else who ended up starting because of an injury, or in practice.”

Lewis’ injury was just one of the ways the Vikings were tested this season. When Lewis went down, the Vikings were already without All-Big Sky first-team setter Madison Friebel, who suffered a concussion during preseason practices. That left the Vikings with only two of their planned four returning starters at the start of the year.

The injury absences would continue throughout the fall. Besides Lewis and Friebel, four-year starter Ashleigh Barto missed the team’s match at Idaho State. Freshman libero Paige Stepaniuk missed a chunk of time early in the season with a concussion, while right-side hitters Kendra Duffey and Delaney Nicoll battled through a number of injuries throughout the year. All told, 10 of the Vikings’ 16 players missed at least one match due to either injury or illness.

That made integrating new players into a team that was trying to replace multi-year starters at libero and on the right side all the more challenging.

And yet, the Vikings finished 7-4 during non-conference play for their best preseason record since 2017. The seven wins in non-conference play included three wins over Pac-12 teams between one over Utah and two over Oregon State. The Vikings came into the season with only six wins over current Pac-12 teams during the program’s Big Sky era (1996 to present), so recording three this year represented a gold rush.

The first one came against Utah in an odd noon match on a Tuesday. The Vikings were without Stepaniuk for that match and still without Friebel, not to mention Lewis. But that didn’t seem to matter as the Vikings came back from a set down to beat the Utes in four.

The two wins over Oregon State came over the final weekend of the non-conference schedule. The Vikings dominated the match in Corvallis on Sept. 14, sweeping the Beavers in a road match for the first time since 1980. The Vikings outhit the Beavers .315-to-.090, the Vikings’ second .300+ hitting performance out of six the season.

It was a more competitive match two days later when the teams faced each other again at Viking Pavilion. The Beavers outhit the Vikings .500-to-.278 in the first set, but the Vikings still won the opener, 25-23. The Vikings then topped .400 in the second and fourth sets, closing out the program’s first season sweep of the Beavers since 1986.

“Going down there, I was very pleased with how we played and how we beat them. I think, just watching them and scouting them, we believed we were the better team. But still being down there is always difficult,” Seemann said of the victories over the Beavers.

“I thought the harder match was coming back up here. They made some good adjustments and there’s a certain level of, whether you like it or not, complacency when you win the first match against a team. Maybe it’s that the expectations are different, I don’t know, but I was happy with how we wrapped that up.

“Part of that, too, was we were able to dig deep into some different personnel as well, so we were able to give them a different look. Something that came out of Makayla getting hurt was us using more people and being more adaptable.”

That adaptability saw other people step up. Sophia Meyers shifted into a bigger role with Lewis out and couldn’t have performed better, going on to be a unanimous All-Big Sky first-team selection. But somebody then had to replace Meyers as the team’s other outside hitter. Gabby Hollins stepped into that spot and did so seamlessly despite not playing a single match as a junior in 2022.

Hollins responded immediately, recording 17 kills on .452 hitting against San Diego State, the team’s second win of the year. She followed with 18 kills in the win over Utah, then had 14 on .357 hitting in the team’s second win over Oregon State.

Hollins’ best match came against defending Big Sky champion Northern Colorado when she hit a career-best .636 while recording 15 kills in the Vikings’ 3-1 win over the Bears. Hollins’ .636 mark was the third-best mark ever by a Viking in a four-set match, and came in another .300+ hitting performance for the Vikings, who hit .328 as a team.

“I thought she was key in that immediate response to Mak’s injury,” Seemann said of Hollins. “Because I think we could have easily just slumped our shoulders and gone, ‘well, Mak’s out.’ But the fact that she came in like she did and the way that she did, I thought everyone was like, ‘we’re not missing a beat. We’re rolling.’ That was inspiring.”

The team’s adaptability showed itself again after a midseason swoon. It wasn’t Hollins at the forefront as much as a number of Vikings this time that led the team out of a stretch in which they lost four of five into almost a reverse of that in which they won six of seven.

Better distribution led to an overall better offense for the Vikings. During their stretch of four losses in five matches, the Vikings were hitting just .153 with Meyers and Hollins combining for more than half the team’s kills. But during the Vikings’ six wins in seven matches, the team hit .262 with the Vikings getting contributions out of their middles, Barto and Lauryn Anderson, and right-side hitters Duffey, Nicoll and Jasmine Powell.

The better distribution freed up Meyers for her best stretch of the season. She averaged 3.85 kills per set on .278 hitting to go with 0.52 aces per set during that stretch. But it wasn’t just her. Barto and Anderson combined to hit .417 and average 4.00 kills per set between them during the win streak. Compare that to their numbers when the Vikings were losing (.215 hit%, 2.56 k/s), and the improvements are clear.

The boost in numbers led Anderson to setting a new single-season program record with a .384 hitting percentage for the season. That gave Anderson, who also went on to receive All-Big Sky second-team honors and be named the program’s third straight Newcomer of the Year, the conference lead in the category. Barto finished the year seventh in the conference at .306.

The Vikings also found right-side hitters Duffey, Nicoll and Powell better, as they combined for 3.26 kills per set during the win streak. Friebel, now healthy again, and fellow setter Ella Hartford led the resurgence offensively. Friebel averaged 6.37 assists per set during the team’s win streak, while Hartford added 4.62 per set.

“That’s the key to those huge wins and the wins where we hit over .300,” Seemann said of the team’s improved distribution. “It’s been a huge emphasis this whole year to get [the middles] involved, especially in transition. Which is on the middles, for them to work hard off the ball like that, but also for our setters to find them.

“That was a game changer for us. Because then all of a sudden you have Sophia and Gabby hitting well over .250 because you have to worry about those middles. Even just those middles getting up in transition and not setting them, there were gaps in the other team’s block more frequently than in the past.”

It’s easy to pinpoint the turning point, which was clearly the team’s match against Montana State on Oct. 19. Specifically, the moments between the second and third sets against the Bobcats. Through two sets, the Vikings were hitting .104 while being out-blocked 10.0-to-1.0. Not surprisingly, they were trailing 0-2 in the match. But after that, the Vikings balanced their offense, hitting .245 over the final three sets while completing only their second reverse sweep over a conference school since 2010.

Meyers recorded 12 of her match-high 21 kills after the first two sets of the match while hitting .440 over the final three frames. She added 20 digs, too, to complete the first 20-20 match of her career and the first by a Vikings since 2019.

Meyers became more open over the latter half of the match because of the better distribution. Six of Barto’s season-high 13 kills came after the second set. Anderson, meanwhile, recorded all seven of her kills after the second set, including five on .714 hitting in the fourth set when the Vikings saved four match points.

“That switch of winning the third set just almost gave us a relief. That’s what I would call it,” Seemann said in reflection of the Montana State match. “More of a release valve. Like, ‘we can do this. We can win.’ And that just built on itself. The fifth test wasn’t even contested. We knew.”

The Vikings followed with a quality win over Montana two days later, then hit over .300 in wins over Northern Arizona and Eastern Washington to go with a four-set win over Idaho over the next few weeks.

The midseason breakthrough culminated in a 3-1 victory over Sacramento State on Senior Day. The Hornets came into the match having lost just one Big Sky match to that point, and they’d go on to win the conference regular-season title outright the following week.

But the Vikings were up for the challenge. They became the only team all season to hit over .300 against a Sacramento State defense that came into the match leading the Big Sky in opponent hitting percentage (.158 at the time) and blocks per set (2.59). The Vikings played bigger in the big moment as they closed out the match by winning a fourth set that featured 21 ties, saving five set points before pulling it out, 32-30.

“We just went bonkers,” Seemann said of the win over the Hornets. “Good serving team [in Sacramento State]. I know they missed a lot, but you’ve got to account for the ones that they did strike in. I thought that was one of our best passing performances and obviously led to a very well-distributed offense.

“I felt like that was another retribution match, for the lack of a better term. We felt like we didn’t play well against them at their place, and this was a good opportunity to make it right.”

In addition to their adaptability that led the Vikings to a more balanced offense, tough serving buoyed the Vikings throughout the season.

It was a them that emerged early for the Vikings when they finished one short of the program’s three-set match record with 16 aces against Cal State Fullerton on Aug. 26. The Vikings finished the season averaging 1.72 aces per set, the team’s sixth-best average during the program’s Big Sky era. Meyers led the way with 0.47 aces per set individually, bettering the single-season program record that Ellie Snook set at 0.42 in 2021. Meyers’ serving average also led the Big Sky Conference, while she was joined among the conference leaders by Anderson, who finished the season eighth in the Big Sky with 0.33 aces per set.

“It’s one of the things that we talk about every year. It’s something that I like to hang our hats on in terms of a program. It has to be the number one thing that we’re proud of. That’s our pride point, our serving,” Seemann said.

“I do think that between Sophia and Lauryn, it became contagious, even in our own gym. To feel good about striking the ball well and serving tough balls. I love that that spread out. Because all of a sudden, you have Madi starting to strike it better. And there were days where Paige was striking it, and Kate had a couple of tears. I thought that was a great skill that became contagious and more of a culture thing for the program.”

The Vikings were an especially strong serving team at home where they averaged 2.00 aces per set compared to 1.51 per set in true road matches. That spark led the Vikings to a 10-3 record in home matches, the team’s best home record since they went 14-4 in 2013. The team’s record at home included wins over Utah, Oregon State, defending Big Sky champion Northern Colorado and eventual regular-season champion Sacramento State.

“It was a fortress here, there’s no question,” Seemann said of playing at Viking Pavilion. “This is the first year where I felt like, not only are we comfortable at home and confident at home, but I would say this is one of the first years in recent history where the atmosphere also helped us a ton. You don’t want to depend on that, but that helped catapult us, for sure.

“There are so many people who came to their first volleyball match this year who were like, ‘I’m coming forever. This is the greatest sport ever.’ I feel like we’re growing it and I think it’s a good start to a good, solid fanbase.”

The strong home record meant that the Vikings beat almost every team in the Big Sky Conference at least once this season. The only team the Vikings didn’t beat at some point was Weber State. Ironically, the Vikings played the Wildcats at home on Oct. 14, but that was during the Vikings’ midseason funk. The Vikings got another crack at the Wildcats in the quarterfinals of the Big Sky tournament, but a heartbreaker in the second set, in which the Vikings held eight set points before losing 31-29, led to a 3-0 sweep and the end of the team’s season.

Growth for the Vikings will come with a better road record next season. The Vikings went just 4-8 in true road matches this fall, which came with clear statistical differences between matches at home and on the road. While at home, the Vikings averaged 13.5 kills, 2.00 aces and 15.4 digs per set while hitting .236 as a team. But those numbers dropped to 12.6 kills, 1.51 aces and 14.4 digs per set while hitting .205 on the road.

“The road will always be somewhat of a mystery and a challenge to figure how to do that best,” Seemann said. “It’s something we have to get better at. I couldn’t even put a finger on it because we practice well, we rest, we provide them with all the competitive advantages that we can, and ultimately it comes down to performance in that moment.”

Some of that will come as the team matures more. A number of starters should be back, as will several of the team’s bench players who got time amid all the early-season injuries.

Seemann also hopes to solve the road issue with an offseason emphasis on leadership. Losing Lewis in the first match of the season meant the Vikings didn’t just lose her production, they also lost her on-the-court leadership.

“I think Mak’s reactions in moments where things go poorly allow those around her to be like, ‘oh, screw it. Let’s go.’ And I think there’s value to that,” Seemann said of missing Lewis. “When we didn’t have that on the road, there was no one being like, ‘hey, it’s okay. We’re golden.’ We need to identify some people who can do that and give them skills to lead in that regard.”

Lewis will be back next season, but Seemann will also look to others. Barto, who served as captain alongside Lewis this season, should be back and capable of leading, too.

Meyers will have earned a leadership role with her play this season as well. Forced into being the dominant, six-rotation player for the Vikings with Lewis out, Meyers responded with a career year in which she ranked third in the conference in both kills (3.52) and points (4.17) per set. She was a stalwart throughout all six rotations, as she became the first Viking to average over 3.00 kills and 3.00 digs per set since Whitney Phillips in 2010.

Meyers recorded 17 double-doubles throughout the year, 10 of which came in the Vikings’ 16 conference matches. 

“If you could pull a positive out of Mak going down, besides the resiliency and deepening the roster, the most immediate would be Sophia’s performance,” Seemann said of Meyers. “She had to step up. She took a bigger role. Even her skill set, I thought, just continued to get better as she continued to take on more.

“I couldn’t speak enough about that and how she stepped into that role. And that could be a huge plus if Mak comes back at 100 percent. Now you’ve got two all-conference first-team outsides. That’s a pretty good place to start.”

It won’t just be on-the-court leaders that Seemann will look to develop over the offseason. He also wants people ready to lead from the bench. As much of a staple as serving has been in the program’s identity, depth has been the other. Seemann always wants a deep bench, not only for more options within matches, but to push their teammates in practice day in and day out.

And for that you need people to lead from the bench, too.

“I was listening to a coaching podcast on lacrosse, and in lacrosse, basically two-thirds of your team is on the sideline. Because they carry these huge rosters. And the guy was like, if you just rely on your best player to be your leader, then what’s happening when the majority of your team is over here [on the bench]? And so, you need someone on the bench who is leading,” Seemann said.

“That’s where I’m not going to just look at our best players and performances, I’m also going to look at people who have earned some of the respect of the team and who have charisma. We can develop them and give them some of those tools to be in those situations going, ‘let’s get this going.’”

The Vikings should have plenty of options in that regard considering all 16 players on the Vikings’ roster saw time in critical situations this season. All three freshmen – Stepaniuk, Devon DeNecochea and Naomi White – started matches for the Vikings this season. Additionally, 11 of the Vikings’ 16 players played in at least 60 of the team’s 102 sets during the season.

The Vikings would have played their bench a lot this season, regardless. But it became the only option when they lost Lewis two-and-a-half sets into their season.

The injury made for a difficult start to the year, but the fruits of that should come in 2024 after a resilient 2023.