Thursday Cardinal Couple - Let's Get It Started

THURSDAY CARDINAL COUPLE

( JEFF McADAMS writes today about the weekend ahead, where three of the UofL women's sports squads take to the fields and courts to excel. It's been a long time coming, let's get it started!) LINK BELOW:

Let's Get It Started (Black Eyed Peas)

O frabjous day!  Callooh!  Callay!

With apologies to The Black Eyed Peas ("Let's Get It Started") and Lewis Carroll ("Jabberwocky"), its a great time for us here at The Cardinal Couple as we get to start writing about sporting events actually occurring again.

Women's Soccer

Women's Soccer starts their last season playing in Cardinal Park with a Friday evening season and home opener against Butler.  Our visitors from Indianapolis get to meet the Cards kickers coming off of two good warm-up exhibition wins against Vanderbilt and Purdue the past two weekends.  They had to go to overtime against Purdue to get the job done, but wins they were.

Of course, now the games start counting.  Coming off of a 12-5-4 season last year, and an early 2012 season loss to Louisville, it seems that Butler is not exactly a powerhouse of a soccer team, but not a team you want to take for granted, either.  This year, Butler claims a 3-2 win over Ball State in exhibition play.

Sunday sees Illinois joining us at Cardinal Park.  The Illini had a nine loss season last year, which would tend to suggest that they aren't all that competitive of a team, though all of their losses were to some pretty tough teams, so perhaps they just scheduled a really tough schedule.  One of the joys of the very early season is not really knowing how strong the teams are that you're competing against.

Friday's game is a 7pm first kick, and Sunday kicks at 1pm.  A slight chance of rain on Friday, diminishing towards the evening, and the forecast is for dry and warm on Sunday...early in the year is a good chance to check out Karen Ferguson-Dayes' team without having to dress like Nanook of the North.  It should be a good couple of days out at Cardinal Park.  Adult tickets are $5, under 18 are $3, and under 2 years are free.

Field Hockey

Justine Sowry's Field Hockey team has a scrimmage Saturday against IU in Bloomington, IN.  This is a great road-trip through the rolling hills of western Indiana.  The game is a 1pm start, which should leave you enough time after the game to make it back to Louisville for...

Volleyball

Saturday at 6pm is the annual Volleyball alumnae match.  Last year there weren't enough

alumnae willing to play to field a team so this event turned into a Red v Black scrimmage.  No word yet on whether enough alumnae have committed to playing to field a team, though I certainly hope so.  I would certainly love to see great players like Justine Landi, Lindsey Mango, and Maci Wachtel back out on the court.  Sarah Drury-Petkovick, Directory of Volleyball Operations, is also an alumna and could, in theory be on the opposite side of the net.  Of course, Coach Anne Kordes is also an alumna, but she'll be too busy coaching, and being pregnant, to play on the alumnae team.

The alumnae event is a free, ticketless event at Cardinal Arena and is great fun every year.  If you've never been to Cardinal Arena, its a fantastic, cozy arena that's great for watching Volleyball action.  Any seat you sit in gives you a great view of the action...well, maybe not if you're directly behind the Up Referee.

Volleyball Preseason Honors

Speaking of Volleyball, yesterday saw the announcement of The American Conference preseason coaches poll, and preseason All Conference Team.  Louisville claims the preseason conference number one ranking...which isn't all that much of a surprise, honestly...and placed 4 players on the preseason All-Conference team.  Hannah Kvitle was the only one of the four that wasn't a unanimous selection, though she is the only setter to make the team.  Caitlin Welch is the only Libero to make the team and did so as a unanimous selection.  Emily Juhl and Brooke Mattingly also were both unanimous selections, and also were tabbed as co-Preseason Players of the Year.

Louisville Volleyball is starting the season with a 19th rank in the AVCA preseason poll, a drop of only two positions from the end of season poll from last year after graduating approximately 70% of the offensive kills on the team.

Volleyball opens their season next weekend, the 30th and 31st, with matches against non-conference-foe-for-a-year Syracuse and host Penn State at the Penn State Invitational.

Jeff McAdams