For the second straight season, the Uni girls varsity volleyball team has won a school-record 20 matches. As the Illineks head into the Class 2A playoffs, their record stands at 20-9 overall, 9-3 in the East Central Illinois Conference. The girls still have a chance to break the record by winning their opening regional playoff match Thursday against St. Thomas More. That contest will begin at 6:30 p.m. at St. Joseph-Ogden High School.

Midway through this season, Gargoyle reporter Lor Sligar interviewed Palla to find out some of the keys to her success and learn a little more about her background and her plans. Here's the transcript of that Q&A.

Coach Amanda Palla takes a break for the camera during varsity practice. Gargoyle photo by JoEllen Machesky (click to enlarge)

Go ahead and introduce yourself.
My name is Amanda Palla and this is my fourth year as the head [volleyball] coach at Uni. I was a graduate of Uni — I graduated in 1997, so it's been about 11 years now.

What coaching experience have you had?
I coached one year of volleyball at Urbana High School as the freshman coach before I came here, and I've also assistant coached JV girls basketball, and then I was the head subbie girls basketball coach as well.

Who are the other coaches?
Jessica Van Dyke, this is her third year, she's the head JV coach. And then Nicole Winkler, this is her first year.

So you used to play volleyball. How long did you play for?
I played a year in middle school, two at Uni (we only had a team for two years), then I played two years and a spring season in college [University of Chicago].

Do you still play?
Yes, sometimes. I play [on] co-rec teams at Champaign Park District.

What was Uni volleyball like when you were here?
My friends and I, we take credit for starting Uni volleyball. We really wanted to play, and we didn’t have a team, so my sophomore year we talked to Sally [Athletic Director Sally Walker], and she said that if we started a club, and if we had enough people show up every week, that we could maybe have a team the next year.

So we started the club my sophomore year, [and] by my junior year we had enough girls, so we had a JV-only team, then we had even more people join so we had JV and varsity. We had boys basketball shorts, T-shirts as our uniforms. We were actually pretty good. Until I started coaching here, we had the school record for wins. We had 10 wins my senior year, and won a regional game, and had a really good season. Rebecca Murphy [current girls varsity basketball coach and PE teacher] was the coach of the volleyball team, [which was] fun. We just had some really great chemistry, and I think it was a lot more low-key than it is now because the program was just starting.

Palla leads her players through a drill during practice. Gargoyle photo by JoEllen Machesky (click to enlarge)

What position did you play?
I was a middle.

How do you like to run practice?
I try to focus on one thing per practice. Sometimes when we get into the season it's hard, because there are a lot of skills that we need to work on, but especially in the beginning weeks we'll do defense one day, hitting another day, serving another day. I feel like when the girls are first learning the skills it's better to do that than overload them with everything at once.

The other thing is that we always have some consistency, so we always start out with what we call a dynamic warm-up, [which is] a warm-up that involves movement, as opposed to just static stretching.

Then we have a ball warm-up that we always do, and we always do a drill with JV and varsity together so that the girls can intermingle and learn from each other. So we always start practice with that, and then we split up into JV [and] varsity, and always come together at the end for "team" [a cheer] and stretching.

What do you think the Uni volleyball team's strengths and weaknesses are?
I think one of our biggest strengths are the girls who are on the team. I think we have some girls who are really committed and who want to be here. I think we have a really good chemistry this year, actually on both the JV and the varsity teams. In volleyball, chemistry makes such a huge difference. In basketball, one person technically could dribble the ball down the entire court and score. In volleyball, that's just impossible. You can't have just one good person, you HAVE to work together. So I think chemistry is really important, and I think we have great chemistry this year.

We [also] just have a number of really good players. Rachel Skoza has set the career blocks record this year [on Sept. 13 with her 93rd career block]. She’s going to have the career kills record [she set the record on Oct. 4 with her 393rd career kill], and she's going to have the season kills record [she broke Amanda Palla's own record on Oct. 4 with her 175th kill of the season]. Annie Machesky just yesterday [Sept. 30] tied the career digs record, so she’ll take that at our next game [Annie set the record on Oct. 2, with her 487th career dig]. I've just been really lucky to work with some really good athletes.

So, no weaknesses?
[Laughs.] No, every team has weaknesses; we just don't like to focus on those. If anything, we start losing games when our communication on the court breaks down — when the girls aren't talking to each other, when they're expecting everyone else to go after the ball instead of going after it themselves. I wouldn't say [that's] a weakness, but that's when things start to break down.

Palla coaches during the Senior Night victory over DeLand-Weldon on Oct. 14. Gargoyle photo by David Porreca (click to enlarge)

Why do you think the record has improved so much since you've been coaching here?
I don't know. I walked into a team that had a lot of talent. My first year, Annie Fehrenbacher and Josie Chambers were my two seniors, and when I had heard that they had won two matches the year before I couldn’t believe it.

Ruthie Welch was still there, she's [still] our career assists and aces leader. I mean I don't know what happened the year before, but I really think it was chemistry, and I think that I've tried to make sure that the girls work together as a team and treat each other with respect. I think that as long as you have some basic skills and you can get the chemistry and the teamwork in place, then the wins are just going to follow.

The team lost a lot of key players when the Class of 2008 graduated. How has that been affecting the team?
Obviously, we really miss them, but other people have stepped up. I think Michelle Wong has done a really nice job of stepping into the setter position that Ruthie [Welch] left, and of course we still have Sheri [Grill] from last year. You just have to deal with what you're given and who you have, and we've tried to rotate people and use people in positions so that we can utilize their strengths. Where they do have weaknesses, we try to cover those up by hiding them in the back row or doing something different with the passing rotation. I think we try to play to our strengths, and for the most part, from year to year we should remain pretty consistent.

Do you think you'll have trouble next year, without the current seniors?
Yeah. We have five seniors this year [Skoza, Machesky, Grill, Jessi Sullivan, Jasmine Alvarado] who obviously play a really big role on the varsity team. I think next year will be a tougher year, if only because we have three freshmen and three sophomores, so the team has been getting smaller and smaller. Unless we get a big incoming class, it's going to be a really small team next year.

What's really hard about that is, if someone gets hurt then you have no one to fill their position. We're kind of in that boat right now on varsity. I have three people for my left sides, but my middles I have been having two. Jamie Blue['s] ankle is finally better, so now I have three, but when one person gets hurt it can have a huge impact, and so I think that those are probably the bigger things they're going to run into next year.

What are you doing now, to prepare for next season?
Right now I have a two-setter rotation, which means that at all times I'm having two people setting. I'm doing that because I want both my senior setter and my junior setter to have experience. We did that last year. I could have had Ruthie set all the way around (she was our senior setter), but I had Sheri and Ruthie split that time to get Sheri ready for this year. I'm doing the same thing with Michelle to get her ready for next year.

I think that, yes, as a coach, I don't think we would have been this good for this many years if I [hadn't] been looking ahead. I think one of the hardest things about coaching is making sure that you utilize the talent that you have, but that you're [still] planning for the future well enough to give those people who might not be quite good enough to be on the court yet, but who can get there, the experience so that next year they're ready.

So you're pregnant! Are you going to continue coaching next year?
That's a decision I haven’t made yet. This is our first child, so we have no idea what to expect. We're going to just play it by ear and see how things go. But I've loved coaching and I've loved working with the girls. I get off a day at work that's been really stressful and I come here and it just makes everything better. I would hate to give that up, but we'll just have to see how it goes.

Amanda Palla (left) watches a drill. Behind her from left are seniors Annie Machesky, Rachel Skoza, Sheri Grill, and Jessi Sullivan. Gargoyle photo by JoEllen Machesky (click to enlarge)