Widboom setting standards

After a near-perfect match Saturday against Toledo, junior middle blocker Rena Widboom broke the all-time NIU record for hitting percentage with a .800 mark.

Widboom broke the record while obtaining 12 kills on 15 attempts with zero errors. Widboom surpasses current teammate Jen VonderHaar’s record of .750, which she set on Oct. 6, 2000. “I really didn’t even pay attention to [the record] during the game, but it’s nice,” Widboom said.

With her stellar play Widboom has been awarded with the MAC Player of the Week.

Blankenship back

While outside hitter Carrie Blankenship was expected to miss this weekend’s matches with an ankle sprain, she made an unexpected return to action in the middle of game two against Toledo.

“I called her down and I said, ‘Can you play?'” said NIU coach Todd Kress. “I just wanted to know if she was an option.”

While Blankenship responded by saying she was fine defensively, passing-wise and that she could block, her main problem was in transitions. While Kress was mainly looking to establish the block, that was all he needed to hear out of the 5-foot-9 senior.

“At that time I was a little worried about our blocking scheme,” Kress said. “I wanted to wait and see if we could do it without her in there, and Daren [Poe] did a nice job in there. She didn’t put up the numbers, but as a freshman you’re not going to do that. When you have senior leadership, you need to take that. [Senior leadership] is tough to replace, so I just wanted her in there to be a part of it and see what she could do. If she couldn’t do it we would’ve had Daren back in there, but she was fine.”

Pulling out Game 3

While the Huskies have had their troubles winning third games in the past, as the Kent State and Toledo matches two weeks ago can attest to, they seem to have rectified their problem.

After losing its third game against Central Michigan, 28-30 on Friday, it looked like the same troubles for NIU.

But Kress feels it was a different attitude shown by NIU on Saturday versus Toledo.

“[Against Toledo] I think this team was really focused,” Kress said. “You look at the best and worst of what this team can do, and against Central Michigan you see the effort when we are not as focused and you see against Toledo when we are focused. We are a dangerous team when we are focused and execute our game plan.”

Emotions run high

Tenisha Wilkins knew that both Toledo and her squad were teams that thrived on emotions for success, so she felt it was important to come out strong from the onset Saturday night.

“We knew that we had to come out strong because we are an emotion team too, and we knew that we had to go blow for blow with them,” Wilkins said.

“I’m an upperclassmen so I think it’s very important that we [upperclassmen] be emotional out there,” she continued. “If I could do that by stepping up and getting kills or getting into the right place at the right time or whatever, then that’s great.”

Overcoming distractions

Due to mid-terms and celebrations for the 95th homecoming last week, distractions for the NIU volleyball team were in full force for their matches against CMU and Toledo.

In addition, because the basketball team is starting practices, some of the volleyball team’s practices have been shifted.

“I think the conglomeration of the entire week was tough on our kids,” said Kress. “We practiced late on a couple of nights this week with basketball starting. But the basketball staff has been so helpful in working with us so that we could keep our normal practice time on the day before a match and any fluctuation on those type of things you’re afraid of how your kids are going to react.”

Kress said that he could tell how the Huskies were going to perform in the games this weekend before they even started, as he saw their focused demeanor in the locker room prior to the game.

“We had a number of things that were going on that could’ve pulled them in different directions, but it didn’t,” Kress said. “They were focused and that was as focused as I’ve seen this team all year.”

Redbirds come to town

Continuing their eight-game home stand, the Huskies invite Illinois State into Chick Evans Field House tonight at 7 p.m.

The Redbirds enter DeKalb with a 10-6 overall record and present a roadblock to the Huskies weekend.

With Kress getting his team focused for MAC matches against Kent State and Akron, ISU is somewhat of an afterthought for him.

“We’ll see how we do against Illinois State, but right now we are focusing on conference matches,” Kress said.