Up before the sun: Offseason commitment to each other and to improving catapults QU women’s volleyball team to remarkable season

QUINCY — The 4 a.m. alarms sounding the start of another long, tiring day were necessary, even if they weren’t always welcome.

“There were days for sure where we did not want to be in the weight room,” said Makalya Knoblauch, the senior setter on the Quincy University women’s volleyball team. “What’s special about our team is the people on our team, so we always kept each other motivated.

“There were some days where (senior outside hitter Mattison Norris) was tired and wasn’t feeling it, but we kept encouraging her. There was one day I just laid on the ground in the weight room when we were done and just cried because I was just so exhausted.”

Yet, each and every one of the Hawks showed up before dawn the next morning without reservation.

“Every single day, I was like, ‘No, I’m not giving in. I know this is going to pay off,’” Norris said. “I didn’t have a great season last year and I said that wasn’t happening again. I wasn’t going to be a reason my team can’t make it and I wasn’t going to be the reason these people aren’t being pushed.

“I stayed pretty motivated because I knew what we had the potential of becoming. I liked the idea of what could be rather than what was.”

So throughout the summer, the group of upperclassmen who stayed in Quincy and made it their home answered those 4 a.m. alarms, went to the weight room before sunrise, worked a full shift at a summer job or internship and returned to the gym for practice that night.

Exhausted beyond measure by 10 p.m., they crashed, seeking the rest needed to do it all over again.

So why go to such extremes?

Clearly it was for this very moment.

The Hawks’ offseason commitment forged unbreakable bonds and the improvements necessary to go from losing in the semifinals of the Great Lakes Valley Conference Tournament to being the No. 1-seeded team in the NCAA Division II Midwest Regional.

Quincy (27-2) faces eighth-seeded Northern Michigan (27-8) at 7:30 p.m. Thursday at Pepsi Arena in the final of four quarterfinal matches. This is the Hawks’ first NCAA Tournament appearance in program history, which is reason for excitement and anticipation.

“On a scale of 1 to 10, it’s like a 13,” senior outside hitter Emily Rehagen said of the excitement level.

Don’t confuse that with lack of focus. There may be no team more determined to succeed in this field.

“Our team is definitely head down, working hard, preparing for a championship,” Rehagen said.

It’s been that way for nearly a year.

The Hawks finished the 2021 season with an 18-13 record, losing to Lewis in the semifinals of the Great Lakes Valley Conference Tournament.

“Immediately after last season, we were like, ‘What can we do?’” Knoblauch said. “We got in the weight room and grinded all spring, which helped us bond, too. We were pushing ourselves physically together and working on skills. We knew what we had to get better at.”

The desire never waned.

“Our mindset has stayed the same from last spring until now,” Norris said. “That old kind of mindset ended at the end of last season. It ended right there.”

By mid-summer, the Hawks were relentless in their pursuit of success, even if it meant getting up before the sun.

“Without that motivation, it would not have been fun,” said America Galvan, the redshirt sophomore libero who returned to Quincy from her home in Fort Worth, Texas, in July. “But we all knew what we wanted to accomplish. Having the same goals within a friend group, it’s amazing what we’ve been able to do and motivate each other to do.”

The Hawks had fun with it, too.

“While we were lifting, we’d yell out teams we wanted to beat and hadn’t beat yet,” Knoblauch said. “That kept us motivated, too, those things we hadn’t touched yet but knew were within our reach.”

To grasp that, the Hawks simply had to answer the alarm day after day.

“We wanted more,” Knoblauch said. “And we still want more.”