Wisconsin volleyball head coach Pete Waite is looking for his 500th career win as the No. 14 Badgers return to the Field House this weekend to host the InnTowner Invitational.
“For me it’s just another number,” Waite said. “We’ve got a lot of high goals for this year and in the future. It’s a number that just makes me think about the assistant coaches that have been with me since 1988 and the players that have all put in the time and worked hard and trained hard in the offseason. We really battled for a lot of those wins—they don’t come easily. You really have to do some things right to get those wins.”
Waite, with 499 wins in 21 years of coaching, ranks 15th among active Division I coaches in overall winning percentage and looks to join Penn State’s Russ Rose and Minnesota’s Mike Hebert as one of three Big Ten coaches to reach the 500-win plateau.
“Those guys are another generation ahead of me and they’ve done great things with their programs,” Waite said. “That says a lot for consistency, endurance and just being able to hang in there. There are a lot of coaches that come in, burn out early and burn out fast, so I’m pretty proud of the fact that we’ve had winning seasons on a regular basis.”
One reason for this season’s success has been the stellar preseason play of junior opposite hitter Katherine Dykstra, who leads the team with 3.43 kills per set and was named to both all-tournament teams.
Dykstra and company will look to take home Wisconsin’s seventh straight InnTowner Invitational championship Friday and Saturday as they take on Central Michigan, IUPUI and No. 23 BYU.
“We’re at home, we have our home crowd and we’re going to have our families and friends all here cheering for us,”
Dykstra said. “It’s going to be our atmosphere and I think that’s going to help propel us. We want to get out there and just attack.”
The Badgers (5-1) open with Central Michigan, who is coming off a 3-0 weekend after winning the Country Inn and Suites Championship in Chattanooga, Tenn. CMU’s freshman middle blocker Katilyn Shultz earned the tournament MVP honor. The Chippewas (5-1) have not played Wisconsin in 25 years, but CMU owns a 5-4 record against the Badgers, including a 2-1 record in Madison.
Wisconsin returns to the Field House Saturday at noon against IUPUI—a team averaging an NCAA second-best 20.04 digs per set. The Jaguars finished as runners-up last weekend at the Tiger Invitational in Memphis, Tenn. and defeated Ball State on Tuesday to move to 6-2 on the year.
Saturday night, Wisconsin will play BYU, a team that dealt the Badgers its first loss of the season in a thrilling five-set match last year in Provo, Utah.
While the Cougars average a tournament field low 10.5 kills per set, BYU will look to win the tournament title in its first ever trip to Madison.
“For us, we look at every match and each opponent brings a different style and some excellent coaching on the sidelines,” Waite said. “Obviously BYU we played last year when we went to their place, so we have a more recent history with them. BYU definitely is the ranked team coming in and that’s going to be an exciting match.”
The tournament field also includes Boise State (0-6) who Wisconsin will not play.
