New Cars, New Shoes, New Money: Life Goes Up for W. Volleyball

Last season, as she rode down the long highway to Pennsylvania with the rest of the Harvard women's volleyball team, a fundamental truth dawned on Jennifer Garcia:

This stank.

"Until last year, we always used to travel in vans," said the team's current co-captain. "It wasn't the most comfortable ride, going to Penn and Princeton with 15 people crammed in."

Earlier this season, the team made that same trek to Penn and Princeton. But this time, the ride was "way better," according to junior co-captain Rachel Heit.

The reason? A chauffeured charter bus.

"It's such a relief when you don't have to drive until two in the morning with five people per seat," Heit said.

Heit and her teammates will continue to feel more such relief in the future with the Department of Athletics' recently-announced $250,000 expansion of women's sports programs. While most women's teams will feel its effects, the plan targets the volleyball squad as one of the primary benefactors.

While most of the recent improvements in the team's financial resources--including the bus--predate that funding increase, Coach Jennifer Bates and her players remain hopeful about the future effects of the boost.

The Department of Athletics' announcement in early October that it would elevate the women's volleyball team from Level II to Level I status promised immediate improvements in the program.

"In brief," the department release read, "[the upgrade] means that the team will be scheduled against more competitive opponents, and more resources will be devoted to coaching, travel opportunity, and recruitment of players."

Many Benefits Intangible

While many of these benefits are still intangible, one direct product of the funding increase is the new status of Bates as a full-time coach. With a full-time salaried position, Bates can now devote her more of her energies to recruiting, scheduling and coaching.

In contrast, 1992 coach Wayne Lem ran a self-owned business in addition to his work with Harvard's volleyball squad.

"Coach Bates is getting us involved in more tournaments this year that we haven't gone to before," Heit said. "I have to think that that's at least partially because she has more time."

Many of the funding increase's other effects will be felt not now, however, but in the future, say players.

"I won't see a lot of the benefits [of the change]," Garcia said. "I'm a senior, and the extra money for recruiting and traveling obviously affects future teams."

But by attracting more top players and exposing the team to better competition, Harvard's volleyball program will get stronger in the long run.

"The other Ivy League schools are recruiting heavily in California and Florida, where the players tend to be better," Garcia said. "This [change] is going to help a lot by giving us a chance to compete with them." Freshman Heather Rypkema, who starred as a high school player in Washington, D.C., was recruited by Bates before the funding increase and said that the recruiting process was minimal at best.

"It wasn't much then, actually," she said. "I talked to Coach Bates a little bit, I met the players, and I watched a practice. Basically, I got to know the program a little bit before I came to Harvard."

But with the new money, Bates said she would pursue players more aggressively. While she said she had yet to decide the actual steps she would take, past policy would indicate a probable increase in phone calls and mailings to players' homes.

Bates said that a team trip to California or to Florida (and with it, increased recruiting) would not come in the next year or two, but after that such a trip was 'a definite possibility.'

Enthusiastic

While concrete effects of the recent expansion still seem uncertain for this year's squad, at least, Bates expressed happiness with the change.

"Oh, it's definitely an improvement," she said. "Besides the actual funding, you know, the athletes have always been working hard, and for them to get this is just a real confidence booster."

Curiously, the most tangible benefits received by the volleyball team this year have been the bus for road trips, new uniforms and new shoes--all of which the University paid for at the beginning of the team's season, in mid-September and before the expansion.

"I've seen lots of changes this season," Garcia said. "We used to go almost the whole season without uniforms, but this year we got them right off the bat. And we got new shoes from Reebok."

Sports Information Director John Veneziano confirmed that the equipment purchases had been taken out of the existing budget.

"That money predated the expansion [announced in October]," he said.

Bates pointed to the traditional strength of her team's funding--with or without the recent increase--as the source of those improvements.

"I asked for what I thought the team needed [before the change], and we got it," she said. "It's been that way ever since I got here. The athletic department's been pretty generous in supporting us. Whatever we've needed, we've gotten."

For Bates, the first-year head coach suddenly elevated to full-time status, this is a heady time. With the recent surge in athletic department support of her team, Harvard volleyball is looking up.

"The bottom line," Heit said, "is that with an increased budget comes increased benefits."