Roster turnover not a concern for Ray Bechard and KU volleyball

By Braden Shaw     Jan 23, 2020

John Young
Kansas coach Ray Bechard shouts in instructions from the sideline during the Jayhawks' volleyball match against in-state rival Kansas State Wednesday evening, Sept. 23, 2015, at Horejsi Center. The Jayhawks bested the Wildcats, 3-1, and improved to 13-0 on the year.

Kansas volleyball coach Ray Bechard knows that the bevy of recent departures from the Kansas volleyball roster has made it look like the Jayhawks might have trouble fielding a team next fall.

“I know at one time, looking at our roster it’s like, ‘Wow, what’s going on?'” Bechard recently told the Journal-World.

But the steady flow of former Jayhawks out the door in recent months has not created cause for concern, Bechard said.

KU volleyball has been victim to increased roster turnover in recent years, losing key players who’ve made an impact: sophomore outside hitter Camryn Ennis, redshirt freshman middle blocker Kailea Carrier, freshman outside hitters Rachel Hickman and Morgan Christon and former all-Big 12 outside hitter Jada Burse to name a few.

Bechard said their leaving has been a mix of voluntary and involuntary departures from the program.

“You’re going to have a percentage of kids that feel pretty fulfilled and a percentage of kids that don’t based on what they view as being important,” Bechard said.

But what’s really changed the game — and caused plenty of concern — is the transfer portal.

“So I think you add up all those variables, and you get a situation like this where the (roster turnover) number for us is certainly higher than it’s been before,” Bechard said.

The transfer portal was first instituted by the NCAA in October 2018 to help facilitate the transfer process and allow student-athletes more exposure to coaches. It was also put in place, Bechard said, to take out “people who weren’t supposed to be involved,” such as in previous years when club coaches would shop around their players to various colleges.

“I think a kid thinks, ‘If my name goes in there, everybody’s going to know I’m in there and I know I’m going to get an opportunity,'” Bechard said. “Versus before, where if a kid told the coach, ‘I’m not coming back,’ it wasn’t a sure thing that their name would get out there to everybody.”

The transfer portal has received the most exposure in football and men’s basketball — a parallel that Bechard drew himself as three of the four starting quarterbacks in the 2019 College Football Playoff were transfers.

But it’s also become a larger focus in non-revenue sports, especially volleyball.

Bechard said he’s talked to his coaching friends from the ACC, SEC and Big Ten about how it has affected other schools. What he learned was that roster turnover is common, as coaches are losing as many as seven or eight players a season at big time volleyball programs, Bechard said.

Volleyball is also different than the more mainstream sports in that it has a one-time transfer exception, meaning a player can be immediately eligible instead of sitting out a year.

“It’s turning into free agency a little in some ways,” Bechard said.

Coaches also can’t contact recruits until their junior year of high school, where as before coaches and student-athletes could talk at any age. Bechard said the contact rule is a positive change because it allows student-athletes to make more informed decisions.

“You probably shouldn’t decide where you’re going to school before you can drive a car,” Bechard said. “So hopefully we’ll see a general decline in the transfer portal numbers because kids are now being forced to (make later decisions).”

Not only that, but now the recruiting process is an ongoing endeavor where coaches have to recruit kids before, during and after their commitment to a program, something that has forced a shift in the entire process.

Still, Bechard said he’s never had more faith in his staff and the athletic department to “support these kids at the highest level.”

“And I think our generation that we’re coaching right now might well be more into instant gratification, might not be quite as patient,” Bechard said. “They might seek something more immediate instead of having more patience and going through the process. But we’re not alone in dealing with that — everybody’s dealing with that.”

Bechard said that KU’s roster typically fluctuates from year to year, usually sitting between 15 and 18 players, although the current 2020 roster sits at 20.

KU recently brought in two transfers to the program — redshirt-junior right side/outside hitter Anezka Szabo from Nebraska and junior outside hitter Paige Shaw from Mississippi State — and Bechard said there will potentially be more before the 2020 season begins.

Bechard also has seven new recruits coming in, rounding out a class that he said he was very excited about.

The veteran KU coach does not want to compare the 2020 class to past classes that have made a Final Four appearance or won a Big 12 championship, but he said the potential is there.

“Not saying there’s (former KU All-American) Kelsie Payne in that group, but overall (we like) this group,” Bechard said.

That exposure of the 2015 Final Four and 2016 Big 12 Championship still pays dividends in recruiting because “that vision is still permanently in people’s head.”

Bechard said it’s obviously always the goal to get back there — KU hasn’t made an NCAA tournament appearance since 2017 — but it takes adapting to the new way things are done.

“Get a little lucky, get a little unlucky at times,” Bechard said. “There is a lot of ebb and flow to it, for sure.”

Situations in roster turnover have been either “controllable or uncontrollable,” for Bechard, but student-athletes switching majors, home-sickness and playing time have been the most common causes.

A plus this upcoming season is that six players live within 45 minutes of KU’s campus. Bechard also said incoming setter Molly Schultz, from Rockford, Minn., would “walk here to get here.”

Because of that influx of talent and the continued hard work by his staff, Bechard said the Jayhawks were “in a really good place,” even with the recent departures and roster turnover.

“We’re not immune to it and we get a chance to respond to it,” Bechard said of the transfer trend. “And I think the true story is when we roll out our roster there in the fall. I think that’s when we can really tell the story.”

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