First, a little story:

The first major sport I covered for the Daily Cal was volleyball. I went on calbears.com to do some research before my first interview with coach Rich Feller. Up in the top right corner of the volleyball page, there’s this picture of him, yelling, pointing and looking rather intense. It scared the shit out of me.

I went into the interview thinking I was about to get a chair thrown at me. Turns out, the guy was pretty damn nice. Now, a year later and covering Cal volleyball for the second season in a row, I can definitively say that people don’t come as nice and personable as Rich Feller. It’s been my pleasure to work with him. The man is a true class act.

So now I’m returning the favor. (Click here to read more…)

Earlier this week, Cal volleyball coach Rich Feller said the team was going to be watching more video of itself before practice each day. The idea was to get the squad to recognize more of its own tendencies and mistakes. Looks like it worked.

This weekend, the Bears ran all over Arizona and Arizona State, hitting an average of .379 while holding their opponents to a .132 mark. Not too shabby, especially in conference play.

“I feel like the video (session before practice) was 40 minutes long instead of 20,” setter Carli Lloyd said. “We’re doing podcasting so we get videos at home.”

The podcasting Lloyd speaks of involves iTunes. Assistant coach Matt McShane loads videos onto iTunes, so that the players can watch their game tape whenever they’re in front of a computer. Pretty handy.

But the learning from video didn’t end with practice for the Bears this week. The team added extra meetings and study sessions to get even more out of their video sessions.

“We meet as a team now without the coaches and do video. And that’s even bigger for all of us,” Lloyd added. “I send out to the setters questions and they have to send me answers. We discuss it and try to have a game plan as a team rather than having the coaches do all the work.”

Apparently, it pays to do your homework.

Last Friday, a record-setting crowd watched the Cal volleyball team defeat Stanford in a thrilling five-setter in the Big Spike at Haas Pavilion.

During the victory, sophomore outside hitter Tarah Murrey took the event’s name to heart, rising high for an attack attempt against the Cardinal.

Daily Cal photographer Emma Lantos was on hand to capture the action, and she left the arena with this week’s “Points and Shoot” image.

Ain’t it pretty?

For more fantastic photos from the past week in Cal athletics, check out the “This Week in Cal Sports” slideshow. For more coverage of the Bears volleyball team, click here.

Coach Rich Feller’s squad continues Pac-10 play this weekend when it travels to Los Angeles to face USC and UCLA.

Bad news for the Cal volleyball team. Sophomore middle hitter Shannon Hawari is officially out for the entirety of the 2009 season.

Hawari incurred a full tear to her left ACL in the first set of the match against Hawaii on Sept. 6 and was seen sporting a tight ace bandage around that knee in the last week. She’ll be having her season-ending surgery next Thursday.

In her stead, there are a few freshmen who will need to step up. Tia Gaffen has done nicely in Hawari’s spot. Gaffen had six kills and three assists against San Jose State last Saturday. After Kat Brown returns from her minor ankle injury, she should also see some time in Hawari’s vacant spot. Hawari will petition for a medical hardship waiver, which would give her another year of elibigility.

For Cal fans who are horribly disappointed by this unfortunate bit of news, take solace in the fact that Hawari was just a true freshman middle hitter herself last season. And she ended up being a freshman All-Pac-10 selection. Could Gaffen or Brown be the next? We shall see.

This is my second year on the volleyball beat, and at this point in the figural game, I consider myself pretty well acquainted with the team. And while I’ve written dozens of times about Hana Cutura and Carli Lloyd, there’s another fascinating personality that I haven’t spent much time discussing: coach Rich Feller.

I hope to someday write a health and wellness book with Coach Feller. Seriously. The guy is like a walking testament to the power of diet and exercise. I’ve long known about his prodigious exercise habits. He bikes to work every day and then hops on the treadmill while the team is in the weight room. But only last week did I find out about his eating habits.

I caught up with Feller and the team at training table, the official name for, well, lunch. As the team ate their delicious-looking assortment of pastas, proteins and mashed potatoes, Feller piled his plate with something else: eggs.

“Whenever eggs are here, that’s my dessert,” Feller said. “I just eat the whites.”

Feller had no fewer than three eggs which were all gone by the time I finished interviewing him. When I told him how healthy he was, he shrugged his shoulders and admitted he’d eaten a piece of bread. Based on the amount of mashed potatoes on Hana’s plate, I think Feller was doing well in the carbohydrate department.

Feller’s healthy ways don’t just extend to himself and his team though. Assistant coach Matt McShane lost over 20 pounds over the past few months. Looks like Feller’s taking the job of team nutritionist.

Just got word that true freshman Correy Johnson will get the starting nod for the Cal volleyball team tonight against UC Irvine.

Johnson is tapped as the starting opposite. She certainly looked good in last week’s scrimmage, so it’s not a huge surprise that coach Rich Feller is looking to her as another huge body on the front row.

The Bears face the Anteaters at 4:30 this afternoon.

If you’re a Cal student, welcome back! The joys (and pains) of school are again upon us, but the good news is that it also signals the beginning of fall sports. Yay!

There are lots of sports starting up again this week, and a few play in Berkeley in the next few days. For freshmen, it’s the perfect way to get introduced to Cal and school spirit, and for everyone else, it’s a nice warm-up to the Big Show — the first Game Day of the season against Maryland.

So until you can cast your gaze upon the football team on Sept. 5, keep your eyes on these other (equally enthralling) sports to whet your appetite:

Friday, Aug. 28

Field Hockey v. Towson at 4 p.m. at Maxwell Family Field

Volleyball v. UC Irvine at 4:30 p.m. in Reno, Nev. (three-day tournament)

Sunday, Aug. 30

Men’s Golf at the Golfweek Conference Challenge in Riverside, Iowa (three-day tournament)

Thursday, Sept. 3

Volleyball v. Texas at 8 p.m. in Honolulu, Hawaii

Friday, Sept. 4

Men’s Soccer v. Georgetown at 1 p.m. in Georgetown, Maryland

Women’s Soccer v. Texas A&M at 4:30 p.m. at Edwards Stadium

10:43 p.m.: Final: Penn State 3, Cal 0 Turns out there’s a reason that Penn State hasn’t dropped a game in the tournament. Question about the legitimacy of a non-Pac-10 team in the final four is very, very unfounded. The Nittany Lions were overpowering from start to finish, holding Cal to a .121 hitting percentage. Hana Cutura hit -.065, and the Bears were outblocked 14.5-4.0, an astounding number with the way that they’ve dominated the net throughout the season. The Nittany Lions put the exclamation point on with a 30-16 win in game three.
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