Wake Forest Athletics
Wake Forest Announces 2010 Volleyball Schedule
5/19/2010 12:00:00 AM | Women's Volleyball
May 19, 2010
2010 Schedule | 2010 Schedule in PDF 
WINSTON-SALEM, NC - The Wake Forest women's volleyball team has announced its schedule for the 2010 season. Sixth-year head coach Heather Kahl Holmes and her Demon Deacons are set to compete in three invitationals and for the third-straight season, will play a pair of them at home.
The 31-match schedule will feature seven teams that competed in the 2009 NCAA Tournament.
The season opens with the Deacon Invitational on August 27-28. Wake will host 2009 Big South Champion Coastal Carolina in the first match of the year. The Chanticleers', who were 20-14 in 2009, made their first NCAA appearance in 11 years but it short lived as they fell to Nebraska in the opening round.
The other participants in the Deacon Invitational will be SEC-power Georgia and East Tennessee State. The Bulldogs were 17-14 in the SEC last season while the Buccaneers boasted an 11-18 mark in 2009. Last year at the Deacon Invite, Jacksonville State won three-straight matches to take the title. The Deacs, who were hit by the injury bug early last season, lost a pair of tough five-set matches over the weekend.
The following weekend, Sept. 3-4, Wake will travel to St. Louis, Mo., for the St. Louis Invitational. The Deacons join host St. Louis, Creighton and Iowa for three matches. The host Billikins were one of the hottest teams at the end of the season last year, winning 20 of their last 21 matches heading into the NCAA Tournament. But like Coastal Carolina, St. Louis bowed out early with a 3-1 defeat to Wichita State.
Iowa notched a record of 13-19 in the always tough Big Ten Conference last season. Creighton went 14-17 in 2009 and earned a trip to the Missouri Valley Conference Tournament, where they fell in the semifinals to eventual champion Northern Iowa.
This will be the third-straight season the Demon Deacons have hosted the Black & Gold Challenge in Reynolds Gym. Wake Forest will open the tournament with West Virginia on Friday, Sept. 10, and then take on Campbell and East Carolina on Saturday, Sept. 11.
The Mountaineers won 17 matches in 2009, which was a 10-match turn-around from the year before. East Carolina got off to a good start last year but had a tough run in Conference USA, ultimately finishing with a 9-19 mark. Campbell enjoyed one of its best seasons in 2009, winning a school-record 10 matches in the Atlantic Sun and posted the most wins (17) since 2001.
After almost a week off, the Demon Deacons will then open the ever-grueling 20-match ACC season in Durham, NC, against Duke on Sept. 17. Throughout the rest of the year, Wake will play a home-and-home series with every ACC team except for Florida State and Miami. The Deacs will travel to the sunshine state on Oct. 22 and 24, but the Seminoles and Hurricanes will not make the return trip to Winston-Salem.
Mixed in with the 20 ACC matches will be a pair of non-conference tilts. On Tuesday, Sept. 21, Wake travels to UNC Charlotte for a 7:30 match. The 49ers were 15-17 in the A-10 last year and claimed a five-set victory over Wake in the opening match of the season.
Then on Tuesday, Nov. 9, the Eagles of NC Central make a trip to Reynolds Gymnasium for a 7:00 pm match. The match with NC Central is sandwiched between road trips to NC State and North Carolina the weekend before and Maryland and Boston College the weekend after. Following the UM and BC trip, Wake will host Virginia Tech and Virginia on Nov. 18-19, before finishing the season with a match against Duke on Nov. 23.
Last season, Wake finished tied for seventh in the ACC with a 9-11 mark and was 11-20 overall. After a slow start due to injuries, the Deacons won six-straight matches, including two at the Black & Gold Challenge and starting ACC-play 4-1.
