Utah volleyballers are young, not necessarily inexperienced

It's a young team, but inexperienced? Not necessarily.

Utah volleyball coach Beth Launiere, whose team opens the 2005 season Friday night on Crimson Court hosting Idaho State at 7, had some big holes to fill due to graduation, but Utah's big freshman class hardly has novice status.

New setter Shannon Krug of Colorado and three freshmen from Utah — Airial Salvo of Farmington, Kathryn Lovell of North Salt Lake and Lori Baird of Murray — have played on club teams that are among the country's best. The three Utahns played in the finals of the Global Challenge against the Russian junior team, and Salvo has "almost 40 international matches under her belt," Launiere said.

"We'll be young, but we'll be really exciting. I don't think they're your typical freshmen," Launiere said of a group that was ranked the country's eighth-best recruiting class by Volleyball Magazine. They will all "play quite a bit, we expect to have some of them on the court for sure.

"We're not going to buy into that 'we're young' thing. We're very excited, and our goals are the same."

Salvo was two-time Class 5A player of the year in Utah while at Viewmont High, Baird was 4A player of the year and Lovell (1,504) broke national team member Logan Tom's state kills record.

It may take a while for a Ute team with nine players who are freshmen or sophomores to get everything working smoothly, but Launiere anticipates a team that just gets better through the season with the talented youngsters and impressive leadership from senior outside hitter Shelly Sommerfeldt, a two-time and preseason all-conference pick, and 2004 Mountain West Conference libero of the year, junior Connie Dangerfield.

Sommerfeldt has an abdominal strain that kept her out of practice, but she may play Friday.

Utah won the 2004 Mountain West Conference regular-season championship, set a school record for conference victories (13-1, 24-7 for the season), finished second in the MWC tournament to Colorado State and made its seventh straight NCAA Tournament appearance, though losing in the first round to Long Beach State was a deep disappointment.

It lost setters Kelsie Karchner and Tracy Neumeier and all-MWC middle blocker Lyndsey Henderson, among others, to graduation.

With senior Katie Theurer or Krug expected to handle setting, Utah goes back to a 5-1 set from the 4-2 it used last year.