By: KSU Sports Information
2012 Schedule
KENNESAW, Ga. – The Kennesaw State Owls volleyball program has announced their schedule for the upcoming 2012 season. The slate includes 12 home dates, and will pit the Black and Gold against three teams who competed in the 2011 NCAA Championship as well programs from 12 different conferences.
The Owls kick-off the 2012 campaign on Friday, Aug. 24, as participants in a two-day tournament at Mississippi State, that will see them face Louisiana-Monroe on Friday before squaring off against Jackson State, the reigning Southwestern Athletic Conference champions on Saturday morning at 10 a.m. EDT and then concluding the weekend on Saturday evening at 7:00 p.m. against hosting MSU.
Kennesaw State’s tournament at Mississippi State will be the first of four straight weekends that head coach Karen Weatherington’s squad will spend in early-season tournaments, with the squad playing in four matches at Savannah State on Labor Day Weekend against Savannah State, Southern Utah, New Mexico and Maryland-Eastern Shore. Eastern Shore is the defending Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference champion.
Fans can see the Black and Gold at the KSU Convocation Center for the first time starting on Friday, Sep. 7, when the Owls host North Carolina Central, Tennessee-Chattanooga, Troy and Tennessee State in the Second Annual KSU Owls Classic, a two-day event. The Owls will face North Carolina Central at Noon on Friday before squaring off against Tennessee State that evening at 7 p.m., before facing Chattanooga and Troy at those same respective times on Saturday.
They wrap-up their early-tournament participation the following weekend at the 49er Invitational on Sep. 14-15 at UNC-Charlotte, where they will face-off against the hosting 49ers, Wake Forest and UNC-Asheville.
“We are really pleased with the schedule that we were able to create for the 2012 season. We have some very strong match-ups against teams from major conferences such as Mississippi State Wake Forest and New Mexico.
Competition like that should help us prepare for conference play and will certainly put ourselves in a position to grow competitively,” said Weatherington, the 2010 Atlantic Sun Conference Coach of the Year. “It is also exciting to see our conference schedule return to a true round-robin format, where we will definitely see a good amount of parity between all of the teams this year in what will definitely be a challenging A-Sun slate.”
Indeed, the A-Sun schedule will expand to 18 matches this season, up from 13 in 2011 and 10 in 2010. In the new format, each team will have home-and-home series with one another.
The Owls return eight members of the 2011 squad that finished fourth in the A-Sun with an 8-5 league mark, and a 13-16 overall record. Among the returnees for 2012 are 2010 A-Sun All-Freshman honorees in rising juniors Sara Metroka and Camille Pedraza. Metroka, who set the program’s career-assists record on Sep. 24 of last season, finished second in the A-Sun in that category last season with 1103, while Pedraza, a Libero and Defensive Specialist, played in all 109 sets for the Owls last season.
Weatherington will also welcome a class of seven newcomers to the Black and Gold this fall.
