The WSU volleyball team will play their first home game of the season Thursday, hosting four other teams in their annual Cougar Challenge tournament in Bohler Gym.

WSU will play four games over the course of the tournament and will start things off at 1:45 p.m., playing Incarnate Ward, a team who has had all of their games cancelled due to Hurricane Harvey.

Later that day, the Cougars will take on Baylor at 8 p.m., who is off to a 3-1 start and made it to the second round of the NCAA tournament last season.
On Friday, WSU will take on Quinnipiac (0-4) and the College of Charleston (3-1) in another doubleheader.

The Cougars are looking to carry on their momentum from a successful trip to Washington D.C., where they started the year off strong by beating American and Howard University both by a score of three sets to one.

“I’m proud of this team that we came away with two wins on this tough road trip,” Head Coach Jen Greeny said in a postgame interview.

Junior outside hitter McKenna Woodford led the attack with 26 kills and sophomore defensive specialist Alexis Dirige solidified the back end with 56 digs on the road trip.

“I went after every ball and was ready to dig anything that came to me no matter how hard it was being hit,” Dirige said. “We won because we were aggressive and went after every ball.”

This year, the Cougars are looking to build off of an impressive season last year, arguably the best season they’ve had in recent history. In 2016, they went 22-12 with three wins against AVCA Top-10 nationally-ranked teams and earned their spot in the NCAA tournament, where they won a first round match for the first time in 14 years.

Behind junior middle blockers Claire Martin and Taylor Mims, WSU led the nation in blocks in 2016 and were third best in blocks per set with (3.23 bps). Mims was third in the country in blocks with 191 while Martin was 24th with 156. Mims and senior outside hitter Casey Schoenlein were named to the 2016 All Pac-12 honorable mentions team.

The Cougars will be without four of their seniors from last season though, including key player Kyra Holt. Leading her team on and off the court, Holt was a two time All Pac-12 selection and the fifth WSU player to reach 1,000 digs and 1,000 kills in her career.

WSU is looking to keep their momentum going by having a strong tournament, and recording more wins before conference play starts on Sept. 20 against the University of Washington.