GREAT FALLS — The Frontier Conference volleyball season begins this upcoming weekend for a few select teams, with the defending outright league champion Providence Argos unofficially starting their season Friday night in a scrimmage.
Providence made a run to the NAIA national tournament group stage where it ultimately fell in a one-set tiebreaker to Bellevue (Neb.) — which is now in the expanded Frontier. But the Argos have unfinished business on their minds heading into the new campaign donning a preseason poll prediction of second place behind the aforementioned Bellevue.
WATCH THE VIDEO:
"We have a great group," Cabry Taylor, an all-conference first-team member from last season, said Tuesday at UP's McLaughlin Center. "Everybody's attitude and efforts are just amazing, and it's just a great feeling when you step on the court."
"I feel like we're already at a point, at a spot in our season and on our team where we can do a lot of good things and work well together," reigning conference player of the year Bella Thompson said. "So that's super exciting."
"I felt like the summer went by super fast and we're already back and going two-a-days," Sadie Giles, another all-conference first team member from last year said, "It's been crazy, but I'm excited."
Taylor, Thompson and Giles, among others, are three of the big returning pieces for the Argos.
"We've had a solid seven girls with us for the past like three years, and they've been rocking with us and the whole rest of the team that we got," Thompson said. "It's been such a blessing with all the recruits we got."
"Our chemistry is just super strong, and we've all built super good, strong relationships," Taylor said. "It's just going to be so fun with them."
Head coach Arunas Duda said that all the returning players the team has is key.
"We've got a lot of returning veterans, which means a lot of maturity, which helps quite a bit," Duda said. "Then our freshman are doing awesome, our newcomers and freshman are coming in, assimilated really quickly and they're doing awesome as well. So, excited for the year."
Although, the Frontier Conference has expanded with six new teams entering in.
Like mentioned, Bellevue is one of those schools, and Providence looks forward to playing the Bruins again as well as facing the other newcomers.
"There's going to be a lot of battles in the Frontier Conference, day-in, day-out," Duda said. "We're just excited, we're going to take it one step at a time."
"By working hard and getting after it in practice will just play a huge part in us succeeding and overcoming those challenges," Taylor said.
"We know what we did last year, we know what we can bring — what we're going to bring to the table this year," Thompson said. "I'm just really excited to see how we compete because we know we're going to bring it always."
"I think it'll be fun to face (Bellevue) again because we have some new players, and we're working hard and they're working hard," Giles said.
Considering the Argos were one set away from the national quarterfinals last December, this team has eyes set on accomplishing more this time around.
"Making it to nationals and winning a national title," Taylor said.
"The sky's the limit, there is no roof on what we can do," Thompson said.
"We want to go far obviously, but we're just going to take it one day at a time and do our best," Giles said.
Providence's first official match is Aug. 22 against Nelson University (Tex.) in Butte at the Big Sky Challenge.
