The Nicholls State University volleyball team will begin their season playing in the first of four tournaments, starting with the Southern Miss Invitational tomorrow.

In Hattiesburg the Colonels will play against Southern University, Mercer University and the University of Southern Mississippi.

The team practices twice a day to prepare for the upcoming tournaments and season.

With having back-to-back tournaments, Kali Schwartz and Alyse Barclay agree there would be no effect in their performance and the team would have enough time to recover.

In the 2014 Southern Miss Invitational, Nicholls lost 1-3 to USM. They won 3-0 against Arkansas-Pine Bluff and 3-1 against Alabama A&M.

Last year’s record and the polls from this year do not define the team and they know they can do better, according to Barclay and Schwartz. Barclay and Schwartz also said this season the team has more experience and further ahead than it was last season around this time. There are a variety of skills on the team this year.

Head Coach Tommy Harold said they will not hold on to previous results because their goal is to win regardless of previous results. Harold said there are high expectations for the new players and he is looking forward to seeing what they can do.

“They [the team] are prepared for it. They have been training two, three times a day in the preseason before classes started. It is something volleyball players are used to and it helps fitness for later in the year,” Harold said.

Having played in the New Zealand volleyball National Team, Barclay said it helped her bring a new element to the team. It gave her a different exposure to different kinds of players. When she played in an International Volleyball Tournament in Tahiti, she said the players were slower but more powerful.

Schwartz and Barclay said the team is excited for the invitational, as the environment is different than practices and contains more adrenaline. They are ready to hit the courts and play to prove the polls do not define the team and the only people they have to prove anything to is each other.

This year the volleyball team opted to make the games free to the public. Harold said the University has a good student body and hopefully the gym fills up, as the team loves to play at home.

“We finished eight at the end of last year and we know we can do better than that,” Barclay said.