Still four months away from the opening match of the 2013 season, the Illinois volleyball team is laying the foundation for success.

The Illini have been holding practices since the semester began and have entered a slate of exhibition matches that will take place over the next four weeks. The first such exhibition was last Saturday at Kentucky, a team that made the Sweet 16 in the 2012 national tournament.

No official statistics were kept of the game, but for the players, it was an opportunity to improve other areas and get more playing time on the court. As to be expected in the first action of the spring, head coach Kevin Hambly said the team has been up and down to start the exhibition season.

“We’re not going to be smooth, it’s going to be sloppy,” he said. “It’d be frustrating to watch to a casual fan, but there’s a lot of teaching moments as a coach that we need to go through to get better.”

While winning the games is always a focus when two teams compete, the priority in the spring is improving as a team.

“One of the main visions this spring was to make everyone a good, all-around volleyball player, not just good at their position,” right side hitter Liz McMahon said. “We’re just trying to play the whole game.”

Along with becoming more versatile, a focus of the spring has been competing. Half of Illinois’ 16 losses in 2012 came in the fifth set, leaving some to be desired on a team that missed the NCAA tournament a year after they were one win from a national title. To try and fix those errors, McMahon said the team has been told to simply stay within themselves when the score gets into the 20s.

“For us, we tried and changed our mindset when games are at the end,” the junior said. “We try and win too hard, rather than just doing what we’ve been doing to get us to that point.”

Although the games are just exhibitions, that doesn’t stop the players from getting excited about seeing another team across the net.

“It’s always fun to get out of the gym and finally play someone new,” defensive specialist Courtney Abrahamovich said. “We’ve been playing each other for so long, hours a day.”

Abrahamovich, a player Hambly praised for her play against Kentucky, said playing a new team highlights flaws of the Illini team that aren’t as exposed when they scrimmage against each other.

Playing without seniors due to graduate in May, as well as incoming freshmen not around for spring practices and games, more players are getting opportunities to see the court. Along with having starting middle blocker Anna Dorn out with a knee injury, the Illini are down to just 11 players. There are four players from the men’s club volleyball team that practice with the Illini to help out and fill positions. 

“It’s a mixed-bag group and we’ve been playing some mixed-bag lineups,” Hambly said. “We haven’t really settled into any lineups yet.”

The departing seniors not only leave a hole on the court, but a need in the locker room for leaders. Abrahamovich mentioned McMahon and senior libero Jennifer Beltran as players who can be vocal leaders and also lead by example in making plays and preserving the culture for the 2013 season.

“We discovered last fall that we need to keep our culture alive both inside the gym and out,” Abrahamovich said. “We didn’t realize how everything was so interconnected.”

The exhibition season continues Saturday at Huff Hall, when the Illini host a trio of teams for a tripleheader of exhibitions against Loyola, Northern Illinois and Indiana State.

Stephen can be reached at [email protected] and @steve_bourbon.