Despite a 5-19 record, 0-10 in conference play, volleyball players say their coach, Natalie Rawson, has brought a new style of leadership and a can-do attitude as the team enters the second half of the season.
“She really opened the eyes of the players that we can be more than what people were four years before us, and that’s one of my big things. I know that I won’t see the complete change, since this is my last year here. She raised the curtain to a bright future,” Hunter Porter, a mass communication senior, said.
Rawson, who was the coach at Newman University in Wichita, Kansas, said she knew things wouldn’t change over night.
“It’s most definitely a process, which I knew coming in,” said Rawson, an assistant coach at MWSU from 2010-2013. “First year is a lot of rebuilding and retraining. You have to train the kids to fit in to the system, which is going to work for the program down the line. It’s a lot of, you gotta get worse, before you get better.”
At least one of the players said she was ready for a change. Porter, who leads the team in kills this season, said Rawson changed the team’s path.
“I enjoy her take charge attitude, instead of just, fix it and doesn’t really give you away to fix it,” Porter said. “She shows you, and then she’ll break it down.”
Last year, the team finished 9-20 overall and 3-13 in conference pay.
“We just had this dark cloud around us,” Porter said. “We were really the joke of the athletic program and that’s not fun, so I think we just needed a change in general.”
Porter said she likes Rawson’s coaching style and hopes it will help the team improve.
“Before we just weren’t at the same level as the other teams in the conference and now I feel like we are,” Rawson said. “Just the second round has started for us. It’s fun going into the teams we’ve seen before, knowing we’re a whole different team now.”
And Porter said she believes the players will continue to improve under Rawson’s coaching.
“There’s so much these kids are going to accomplish and they have no idea how amazing they will be in the next two years. She set the path and gave guidance,” Porter said.
NEXT GAME: Oct. 30, 5:30 p.m., Cameron University
Volleyball v. ENMU
