Kansas State Volleyball coach Suzie Fritz talks to players last season during a match with Nebraska at Ahearn Fieldhouse. Staff photos by Rod Mikinski.

The Kansas State volleyball team will have a difficult task when it opens the 2009 season this today at the Runza/AVCA Showcase tournament i in Omaha, Neb. The annual tournament features select programs from premier conferences across the nation.

The 2009 edition features No. 22-ranked Wildcats and No. 3 Nebraska from the Big 12 as well as No. 11 Minnesota No. 16 Michigan from the Big Ten conference.

K-State will meet Minnesota tonight at 6, then take on Michigan at 6 p.m. on Saturday. While the youthful Wildcats will face the elite competition early in the season, head coach Suzie Fritz is excited about the opportunity from her program to participate in a national showcase to start the year.

"From where we started on August 10th, and where we are at now, we are significantly better," Fritz said this week. "To their credit it helps a great deal that they all stayed here this summer, even the incoming players came in a month early."

The Wildcats' summer workouts and fall practices leading up to their first tournament have been focused strongly on the development of their younger players. Fritz's team is facing the challenge of replacing five seniors -- including outside hitters Natalya Korobkova and Rita Liliom. The two combined for 889 kills last season, more than half of the team's total for the season.

Meanwhile, Fritz's class of five freshmen is undergoing the transition and maturity process within the program, as well as in the classroom.

Fritz said that transition process has been a focus point for her team during early practices.

"It's difficult," she said. "They start to get a sense of what their academic course load is going to be, they start thinking a little bit fur

ther ahead in terms of school and travel, so it is a little be more difficult to keep their focus once that starts. But that is why we are here...we are kind of in that mode right now."

Yet it is clear that the players have made that transition from offseason workouts to the game speed, as they completed their annual Purple and White scrimmage last Saturday.

"We are really excited to get in and play someone else,"
junior Lauren Mathewson said. "We have been beating up on each other and we are excited to play someone else and have the opportunity to play someone at that level."

That level of play will include a Minnesota team that returns two All-American outside hitters in Brook Dieter and Lauren Gibbermeyer.
Dieter averaged 3.57 kills per set, and Gibbermeyer added 3.24 kills per set.

"We will take it as it comes,"
junior JuliAnne Chisholm said. "We'll adjust to what they give us and however the coaches decide we need to play them."

The Wildcats will get several answers concerning the depth of their rotation this weekend, yet it is clear that they are ready to begin the regular season.

"We are excited and it has been a big challenge for us,"
Mathewson said. We are all competitive people, so we have enjoyed this challenge, and we have enjoyed learning all of this stuff."