By James Brooks, News Staff

Volleyball
Head coach Ken Nichols
Featured Student Athlete: Jasmine Marta, junior from Cold Lake, Alberta, Canada

Head coach Ken Nichols and the volleyball squad will welcome back nine players this year, as well as one walk-on. Aside from the core 10, the squad will have four new faces to lean on this fall.

Nichols raved about his incoming class, which features three incoming freshmen and a transfer student from a junior college in Texas.

“With this group … the two words you can attribute to them [are] “painfully athletic,” Nichols said. “They are all very significant physical specimens – These kids have strength, vertical leap, twitch fiber and so on. We’re very pleased about them.”

Although all four players grade out equally according to their future head coach, one player stands out from the pack based on experience.

Jasmine Marta is a transfer from Lee College in Baytown, Texas, where she was an all-conference selection as an outside hitter her freshman and sophomore years.

“Jasmine obviously has experience, maturity, very solid academically,” Nichols said. “She’s an ideal physical player at attacker. She has a perfect approach; mechanics and timing are how you would demonstrate. [With] a lot of those subtle skills that we try to teach our players by their third or fourth year, she’s there already.”

Women’s Hockey
Head coach Dave Flint
Featured Student Athlete: Kendall Coyne, freshman from Palos Heights, Ill.

According to women’s hockey head coach Dave Flint, the squad landed arguably the best recruit in the nation this year, 18-year-old Kendall Coyne of Palos Heights, Ill.

Coyne was the youngest player on a USA national team that recently won World Championships in Zurich, Switzerland.

“We worked hard to get Kendall Coyne,” Flint said. “Every school wanted her. She was number one on everybody’s recruiting list. She was on the U-18 national team three years in a row. We’re pretty fortunate to have her sign.”

Despite never having played a shift of college hockey, Coyne has already earned her own article on USA Today’s website (Kendall Coyne, 17, has Olympic Hockey Aspirations,  Aug. 20, 2009), and has a Wikipedia page dedicated to her.

Coyne isn’t just a big name; she has immense talent as well. The incoming freshman dominated the competition in her last year of high school, in one of the most prestigious hockey conferences in the country. Taking a post-graduate year at Berkshire School in Sheffield, Mass., Coyne scored 55 goals and had 22 assists in just 25 games, good for over three points a game. The future Husky was subsequently named D1 New England Prep School Player of the Year.

Swimming and Diving
Head coach Roy Coates
Featured Student-Athlete: Anna Schegoleva, freshman from Cyprus, pharmacy major

The swimming and diving team may have gained their best recruit in program history, landing Anna Schegoleva of Cyprus, a small island country in the eastern Mediterranean.

“She’s the national record holder in butterfly, backstroke, freestyle and IM events,” Coates said. “She has competed at a world level, and on top of that she’s enrolled in the pharmacy program at Northeastern and is fluent in French, Greek, Russian and English.”

Her resume is just one reason why Coates and his squad hope that Schegoleva can turn the team into Colonial Athletic Association (CAA) championship contenders.

“This class is very similar to other classes we’ve had in the past,” Coates said. “It’s extremely strong, we have six athletes who are really good. The difference between this class and other classes we’ve had is we have one swimmer who is world class.”