Inside Minnesota volleyball, with shin guards

There’s an interesting article about the Minnesota volleyball program. Its focus is on a trio of freshmen who graduated from high school early to start at the university in January. That let them go through the Spring training cycle with the team. This is something you see more of these days. It’s related to some of the arguments made by Nebraska coach John Cook for moving the season to the Spring.

Here’s something that made me chuckle, though.

They took off shin guards and unraveled athletic tape and had an air of accepted exhaustion about them that brought to mind something Landfair said about playing sports at a high level your whole life: You mature a lot faster.

At first I was like, “Shin guards? Why would they be wearing shin guards? Ohhhhhh.”

This being a non-volleyball person writing the story, he mistook knee pads for shin guards. That says something about where players wear their knee pads these days.

Though it does also beg the question why anyone would think volleyball players would need shin guards. Seems like something you ask about, but maybe that’s just me.

Diversion aside, the article is worth reading to gain a little bit of insight into how the Minnesota program operates. It’s quite well written, even if the author is a non-volleyball type.