UCLA men’s volleyball stays strong with sharp focus

The UCLA men’s volleyball team has stressed all season that its sole concern is its team, not its opponents. That showed at practice Wednesday night in the Student Activities Center, where two scrimmaging sides – each a solid mix of starters and sideline contributors – matched each other kill for kill, with each point followed by emphatic shouts and spirited high-fives.

Judging by the resonating cries and team cheers, a passerby might have thought it was a close competition, not the sound of practice winding down. This is just a typical midweek practice scenario for No. 3 UCLA, which needs to maintain its intensity as it prepares to leave Saturday for a two-game road trip to Northern California that will see it take on University of the Pacific Sunday afternoon before heading to Maples Pavilion to face No. 9 Stanford on Monday.

“To be a great competitor, you need to be able to do two things: one is control your focus and the other is to control your emotions,” said assistant coach Andrea Becker.

Both these factors will be especially important for the next two games, as redshirt sophomore middle blocker Trent Kersten listed missing school and opposing home crowds as the main challenges to playing on the road.

“We have to be really good about our academics. It’s really tough and we have a lot of freshman crew on our traveling squad, so we need to prepare them for what’s going on,” Kersten said. “There’s going to be hecklers and we’ve trained for that. We’ve trained our focus and so I think we’ll be OK.”

Freshman middle blocker Mitch Stahl believes this mental training will be just as important as physical preparation, especially when it comes to playing away from the Bruins’ home court of Pauley Pavilion.

“Playing on the road is always tough,” Stahl said. “We don’t have the energy from our home crowd and we have to feed off each other within the court. We don’t have any outside energy coming in. We just have to train, be mentally prepared and zone out everything else that’s happening in our lives.”

UCLA’s ability to do just that is what the team believes is the reason it is off to a successful 11-3 start on the season.

“What I love most about this team is that we’ve provided a vision for what they’re capable of achieving but they’ve really taken a hold of that and they’re steering that vision and driving that ship,” Becker said. “If we keep moving in the right direction, then hopefully we’ll get the right results.”