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Aly Ryan 6th YSU volleyball player to hit 1,000-point mark
By steve wilaj
youngstown
When Aly Ryan joined the Youngs-town State volleyball team as a freshman in 2012, it was a losing program coming off a 5-24 campaign. Early on that season, Ryan, an immediate starter for the Penguins, noticed a certain attitude from YSU’s opponents.
“Teams would come in and think, ‘Oh it’s Youngstown, we always beat them. We don’t have to prepare for them,’” she said Tuesday. “So it was so fun being the underdog and proving people wrong.”
The Penguins did plenty of that over the past four years as they changed the program’s culture.
On Tuesday at the Beeghly Center, Ryan — as well as fellow seniors Jessie Gerig, Nikki Thompson and Lauren Thompson — played the last home contest of their career’s since YSU will miss the Horzion League tournament and its season comes to an end this weekend.
YSU fell to Wright State, 3-2, to add to their disappointing 2015 season — which marks just the first time in the senior class’ four years that the Penguins (9-20, 3-11) will finish with a losing record.
Notching three winning seasons in their time, Ryan, Gerig, and the two Thompsons are the first class in the program’s history to accomplish the feat.
“You look at a senior class that won three of their four years — they’ve gotten us back on track,” said Mark Hardaway, who also joined YSU in 2012 along with the foursome. “I know we slid back this year, but they really have gotten the program back on track.”
In the seven seasons prior to Hardaway’s arrival, the program notched just 54 wins. With two games remaining this season, the 2012 class has already totaled 57 wins. YSU went 15-14 in 2012, 16-15 in 2013 and 17-14 last season. The Penguins also qualified for the Horizon League tournament for the past three seasons, reaching the semifinals in 2013 and 2014.
“Every year from my freshman year, we were ranked at the bottom [of the conference] except for this year,” Ryan said. “But we beat everybody’s expectations. My freshman year we were ranked ninth and we finished way above that. Then my next year we were ranked eighth. — just every year was fun beating people’s expectations.”
Which has made the 2015 season so difficult to swallow. In another typical outcome for this season, the Penguins fell to Wright State, 15-13, in the fifth set on a hand-in-the-net call for game-point. YSU battled back twice to win the second and fourth sets — Sam Brown led with 19 kills, Nikki Thompson had 25 digs and Val Jeffery notched 49 assists — but couldn’t quite climb all the way back.
“I’m [upset], but we did a pretty good job this year because we had a lot of fight even though we had a lot of adversity in different angles,” said Lauren Thomspon, who had 10 kills. “We had a lot of ups and downs and injuries, but I think what’s important is we never acted like a losing team. We always fought hard and gave it our all.”
In the loss, Ryan scored career-point 1,000 to become the sixth player in YSU history to reach the mark. Hardaway said it’s just another indication of the senior group’s special impact.
“I can’t say enough about [Ryan],” he said. “It’s hard to replace players like her. She’s done a good job for us, a good job leadership-wise and she’s a phenomenal student.”
Next year, the Penguins are slated to return 12 players from this season’s roster. Considering how far YSU volleyball has come under Gerig, Ryan and the Thompsons, the plan is simply to continue the progression under the values the foursome will soon leave behind.
“I think our work ethic is still there and we still have a winning attitude even though we didn’t have a winning season,” Ryan said. “So I think that the girls next year will be OK, but they’ll still have to work hard for everything.”