The Waynesburg women’s volleyball team picked up a doubleheader victory in Greensburg on Saturday, defeating Pitt Greensburg 3 sets to 1 and sweeping Penn State Greater Allegheny in straight sets. The wins moved the Yellow Jackets to 4-3 on the 2023 season. 

Waynesburg volleyball head coach Emily Grossman said, “It felt good to get back on the winning track with her team. It just lets us know that we aren’t letting last season dictate what we are doing this year. We’re coming in with a fresh mindset, we put in a lot of work in the spring, and it feels good to see it pay off quite frankly in our upperclassman and how they’re playing and it feels good to see our recruiting class get time and putting up some big points numbers too,” said Grossman. 

Looking further at those two matches, their first against Pitt Greensburg was a much tougher battle, with Waynesburg taking the first two sets 25-16 and 25-17, but Pitt Greensburg took the third 25-22. Waynesburg eventually sealed the deal in the fourth and final set 25-21. The Yellow Jackets then took care of Penn State Greater Allegheny in straight sets 25-14, 25-17, and 25-20. Junior libero Jordan Steiner, who recorded 42 digs, 6 assists, and 3 aces over the two matches on Saturday, mentioned that being able to turn around quickly after a long battle to pick up another quick victory speaks to the mental toughness of this group. “I think it goes back to mental toughness because four sets of volleyball can be exhausting, but if you’re telling yourself that you’re tired you are not going to play your best so you got to, like, we got a new match to focus on so we just had to zone in on that and play to the best of our ability,” said Steiner following the wins.

And Grossman credits her team’s work with the Waynesburg University sports psychologist for her team’s mental toughness. “So [the sports psychologist] is available on campus to work with athletes individually, and they schedule that amongst themselves so we do have a couple on our team that see her kind of regularly to work some of their own performance anxiety and different things like that, but as a team she comes in once a week and meets with us for 30 to 45 minutes and we are establishing core values that we are going to stick to as a program. We set goals for the season and talked about how we are going to meet them, and when we are not meeting them, how do we focus on changing our process to meet them instead of thinking like “oh we’re failing, so we’re failures. So it shifted the mindset really.” Grossman said

The two wins on Saturday extended the Yellow Jackets win streak to three games following what was a three game losing streak after a weekend tournament in Virginia, but Grossman and Steiner believed that it made them better as a unit in the end, and helped them this past weekend. “I think it just taught us that, like it also doesn’t matter who is on the court with us, we have to adjust no matter where we’re at or who we’re playing, anyone can get thrown in at any time, so I think it helped us. Especially with adjusting with the freshman too, I think it helped a lot,”said Steiner.