It will be a whole new ballgame for coach Andrea Hudson and the Lee volleyball team as they enter the 2013 season. The Lady Flames will parade several new faces onto the sport court in Walker Arena on Friday and will also see plenty of new opponents as they enter play in the Gulf South Conference and NCAA Division II competition.
“We don’t start conference play for a couple of weeks so we’re hoping this tournament (Lee Invitational) will help us get our new players warmed up a little bit and ready to go for the season and the GSCC. Of course playing at home helps to settle some of the nervous jitters early on.”
The Lady Flames will be joined by Bethel College (Ind.), Indiana Tech University, College of Coastal Georgia and Bryan College for the two-day event. Lee will open tourney play against Bethel (4-4) at noon on Friday. They will take a break and return to test Indiana Tech (1-7) on Friday at 7 p.m.
On Saturday it will be back-to-back matches for Hudson’s team. The Lady Flames will be pitted against Coastal Georgia (7-2) at 2:30 p.m. and battle Bryan College (4-0) to close out the invitational at 4:45.
Competition against GSC foes begins on Sept. 20 when (Memphis) Christian Brothers and West Florida visit for a big weekend series. West Florida is projected to win the regular-season title and Christian Brothers is picked as a close second.
“One of the challenges will face this year (after this weekend) is playing all brand new opponents and not knowing much about their style of play or history,” Hudson commented. “That will probably be a big challenge for us, but we have some highly competitive girls on this team and we’re excited to get started and are going to love playing new competition”