Current Michigan Tech volleyball coach Cindy Pindral (left) served as an assistant under Matt Jennings from 2016-22. This season marks her first as the team’s head coach. (Photo courtesy of Michigan Tech University)

HOUGHTON — It is not normal for a new head coach to be as familiar with the team they are taking over as Cindy Pindral is with the Michigan Tech Huskies volleyball program. However, the reality is she has been around nearly the entire team, either by coaching them, recruiting them, or advising them in some manner.

“That was part of the easy transition,” she said. “I recruited everybody on the roster except for Paige (Wagner) and Madeline (Elsen) and Amara (Beaudoin), who’s a freshman this year, and Maddie Kreider, slightly to an extent. But, I did help her a couple years ago with her recruiting video. Funny how life works. Lo and behold, I ended up being her coach.

“We’ve been family friends with them, and we work the Kingsford camp every year. So, we already had that relationship set up. So, yeah, it was easy. It wasn’t like I had to meet everybody new for the first time.”

Despite that, Pindral has still felt as though she needed to really get to know her team.

“At the same time, you only get to know people so much during the recruiting process,” she said. “You have a couple of in-depth conversations, and when you’re doing the offers and all that stuff, but you never really quite get to know them all the way until you’re interacting with them every day.

“Everyone’s been great and they all work very hard. They’re just genuinely good people. That’s something we hash out during the recruiting process. I’m pretty sure all the other coaches do that as well. We kind of filter a little bit based on GPA, and if you’re not really cutting it in high school, you’re likely not to cut it at Tech either. It’s no offense to those students, but we were recruiting people that are on the higher GPA spectrum of things.

“People that are coming in with good test scores and all that stuff. That tells me intrinsically that you’re taking care of business already in high school. So ,it should be a fairly easy transition for you going to college. During the recruiting process we have a lot of talks, honestly more so about academics than athletes.”

In terms of volleyball, Pindral replaces Matt Jennings, who went 206-145 in 12 seasons with a stretch of four straight appearances in the NCAA tournament from 2017-21. Pindral was an assistant under Jennings from 2016-22, so knows all about the expectations.

“I was right hand man the whole time for it, so I was in the trenches that whole time, and recruiting people that were of that ilk to try to continue it,” she said. So yeah, I’m not intimidated by it. It’s just tightening of the screws of expectations, making sure that we’re playing with certain standards, making sure our reads are crisp, and the way that we play defense is crisp. It’s more just making sure that the players understand the potential, and getting us back to a place where we, I guess, live out that potential.”

In order to help facilitate that level of play, Pindral and her assistant coach, Mallory Nickelson have created a manual for the players.

“Two parts, one is the nuts and bolts structure of it, so in the off season we, Mallory and I, created a manual. It’s a digital manual with a page on just about everything, offense, defense, norms, expectations, my office hours, stuff like that,” said Pindral. “Just having everything centralized, all the information is there. These girls have been playing these systems in club for years and years. But, when you get to the next level, and everyone’s coming from different teams and all that stuff, it’s just making sure they are on the same page.”

One of the focuses that the Huskies have spent a lot of time on is back row play. Pindral feels that defense is situational, and that can lead to chaos and confusion, so she is trying to get the team to look at it in terms of touches, which is helping.

“The tough part about defense is it’s so situational, and defense is tough, because you have to teach the ins and outs of ‘OK, we expect for this person to go here, this person to go here in this situation.’ But, you’re always at the mercy of the block, the speed of the set, the capability of the other team, stuff like that, the humidity sometimes,” she said. “So defense is tough, but we’ve definitely been working a lot on our ability to control chaos. This preseason, and in the spring a lot too, we were working on just little things. We play a lot of short court, so you’re having to react really fast to things. We play a lot of balls out of the net.

“We do a lot of intentional, one-hand touches or kind of unconventional touches, so that in the moment when you find that the ball is just on you, you have tools in your toolbox to be able to react. Hopefully, athletically, but just pop it up in a reasonable manner so we can live to see another day, instead of panic, and it’s seems like you’re getting shot by the ball. We can still have some poise and be able to just play a little bit unconventionally. I think my favorite quote on defense that I took from my coach in college was, everything’s a platform, from your head to your toes, everything is a platform. So, if you can just have your wits about you, pop it up, and play it high, then we can roll from there. As soon as you get on your heels, or as soon as you get scared of the ball, then you’re in trouble.”

In terms of blocking, Pindral is taking cues from beach volleyball, which should standardize how the Huskies approach that aspect of the game.

“We’re standardizing our calls, our reads and our strategy, so that we know, and we can just reinforce in the moment, like, ‘OK, I know if I’m playing defense behind the blocker. I know that she’s blocking line, therefore, I don’t need to be dug in down the line, because she’s covering it, so I can maybe creep in a little bit.’ It’s just getting on the same page, and then it’s constant reinforcement of what we’re doing in each situation, all that stuff.

“We are very fortunate that we have a lot of gifted jumpers, and a lot of people that can get in the way from time to time. I was noticing as we were going through the spring, every other would be a big stuff block, but then there’d be moments where they weren’t even close to the ball. So, we’re having to break down, we did most of this in the spring, but breaking down the angles of the attacker getting in front of it, what it actually means to block line, what it actually means to block cross, because it’s very technical in where you go. So, standardizing everything has been the big theme.”

With the loss of Meg Raabe on the outside, the Huskies go into this season with uncertainty at that position for the first time in eight years. Raabe is still around as a graduate assistant, but Pindral is actually excited about working multiple players in at the pin positions.

“We’re getting to a point where we don’t need one person, and that’s the beauty of it,” Pindral said. “We have so many capable outsides right now. That’s gonna be the toughest battle in terms of it’s a good thing and a bad thing, right? Because only a handful of them can play at a time. But, they’re all very capable. Our scrimmages are very competitive and very high quality. We don’t have a group of goods and a group of not so goods. They’re all good. So, it’s finding the right combination of personalities, and the consistency factor, and then also who can pass the best.”

Lastly, Pindral has expectations for how the team will carry itself on the floor during matches.

“We have a ton, tons of norms, expectations, about how we play,” she said. “We don’t talk to the ref, stuff like that, lots of different things. So, we’re trying to operate at like a six or a seven on a 10-point scale. That’s kind of like our normal. So, if you win that championship point, obviously, go to 11, but just if it’s point-four, you don’t need to be at a 10, and, at the same time, we’re trying not to dip and have crushing moments in the middle of that. You have so many more points to play. So, our general operating level, I suppose, is like six or five or six, six to seven.”

Season opens Sept. 5

The Huskies open their season on the road at the McKendree Tournament on Friday, Sept. 5. They will play Missouri-St. Louis and Southwestern Oklahoma State on Friday and then the host McKendree on Saturday afternoon.