Sunday's victory marked the 400th win of Rolf's 20 year career.,”Reaching the .500 mark has been a goal of the women's volleyball team all season. By defeating DePaul on Sunday at the Al McGuire Center Marquette attained that goal, and head coach Pati Rolf reached a milestone in the process.
Sunday's victory marked the 400th win of Rolf's 20-year career. Rolf's career record now stands at 400-244, with 310 of those wins coming prior to 2002 when she was at Minnesota Duluth.
After the game, Rolf said the record is not just about quantity, but quality as well.
"A lot of people schedule their season so they can get their 20 wins," she said. "I am not interested in that. I'm interested in being a top 25, top 50 program, and if you're going to do that, you've got to play the strong teams, and if you're going to get the recruits and build your program, you've got to be able to get in that top 25."
Rolf's strong stance on scheduling tough opponents has shown this year, as the Golden Eagles are 8-8 (5-2 Big East).
Marquette is now in sole possession of third place in the Big East and has put itself in position to make the eight-team conference tournament, which will be held at the Al McGuire Center in mid-November.
"I think people are continuing to settle in," Rolf said about her team. "I do think it does take time when you have new people on the floor and as many as we did to get confidence and build a chemistry, and I think they're doing that."
Win No. 399 came on Friday night against Notre Dame, a team Rolf had never beaten before. The Golden Eagles won the match 3-1 (26-30, 30-20, 30-25, 31-29) as senior Kim Todd once again led Marquette in kills with 18. Senior Katie Weidner compiled 53 assists.
Marquette then defeated DePaul on Sunday 3-1 (30-25, 30-23, 30-32, 30-20) for number 400.
Although the current team has only been around for a small part of Rolf's career, they knew how special it was to get the win for their coach.
"I think it's a big milestone in her career, and we're all proud to be part of it and to help celebrate with her," Weidner said.
"She's worked so hard as a coach, and it's always been positive, and we knew it was going to come, so we worked very hard and are very supportive and congratulate her," said senior Tiffany Helmbrecht.
Now that the milestone is out of the way, the team can focus on smaller goals like finishing the season strong and having a good showing in the Big East tournament at the end of the year.
Wednesday will mark the beginning of a six-match road trip, starting with cross-town rival UW-Milwaukee.
"Getting to .500 was the first goal we set for ourselves after we were down at the beginning," Helmbrecht said. "Obviously we want to finish strong and make it to the conference tournament and once we make it there, play hard and go to the national tournament."
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