WSU volleyball begins its season Friday at the Montana Invitational in Missoula.

“I think we’ve been able to advance faster than we have in our previous pre-season,” Head Coach Jen Greeny said in an interview earlier this month. “You can tell that their conditioning is really fantastic, and just their strength level is much higher than it has been in the past.”

The Cougars open their season against Wyoming with a match time scheduled for 3:30 p.m. today. The matches tomorrow against Montana and Cal Poly will be at 11 a.m. and 4 p.m., respectively.

WSU (19-15, 5-15 in 2013) has won the opening match of the season 22 times in 23 years, according to wsucougars.com. Wyoming (21-13, 11-9 in 2013) finished last season riding a seven-match winning streak, according to gowyo.com.

This is Jen Greeny’s fourth season as WSU volleyball’s head coach with assistant coaches Burdette Greeny and Shannon Hunt. Sophomore Kyra Holt was named to the 2014 Preseason All-Pac-12 Volleyball team through a vote by the conference’s coaches. During her freshman season, Holt received an All-Pac-12 Honorable Mention and Pac-12 All-Freshman First Team member (wsucougars.com).

Sophomore Emmy Allen toured China in June as a member of the Pac-12 All-Star volleyball team. Allen was awarded a Pac-12 All-Freshman Honorable Mention after recording 166 kills with a .231 hitting percentage in 2013.

Junior Kate Sommer, the starting libero for the Cougs, ranked eighth in the Pac-12 with an average of 4.02 digs per set according to wsucougars.com.

“(The freshmen) are adapting pretty well,” Sommer said. “They’re light years ahead of where we’ve had freshman before so that’s really helpful,” Sommer said of the incoming class. “I think having them here in the summer was also really great – they’re catching on.”

After the Montana Invitational this weekend, the Cougs will be heading to the Golden Dome Invite in Notre Dame, Ind., followed by two more tournaments before heading into conference play.

Live audio and stats of this weekend’s tournament will be available at wsucougars.com.

Reporting by Bridgette Larsen