Heading into another exciting week of Southern Oregon University Athletics which features the SOU Volleyball team taking on rival Oregon Institute of Technology, OIT and opening Cascade Collegiate Conference play whereas the Cross Country team is opening up their season by traveling to Humboldt State University for the Humboldt State Invitational.

In Volleyball, the Raider’s have been struggling through the first 10 games of the season and are finding themselves 4-6 heading into conference play.

But head coach Josh Rohlfing believes that his team can rebound in the “second”-phase of the season as they try to make another run into the National Tournament in November.

He describes the volleyball season to be in three separate seasons, with season one being the “Pre-Season”, season two being the “Conference Play”, and season three being for the “National Tournament” season.

But for now, the Raiders are looking at it at one game at a time as they are facing the Owls of Oregon Tech Tuesday Night in the newly refer bushed Bob Rheim stadium that the team just practice on today.

As for the Cross Country team, coach Grier Gatlin has been pushing his team hard this week in preparation for the Humboldt State Invitational on September 8th in Arcata, California.  After five days of practice, Coach Gatlin has said that these first couple of practices are meant to be the harshest practices of the season and are going to get easier after this week as some of his athletes would be pushing 80-85 miles in one week alone.

The team, he said, has at least three to four athlete’s on the third-ranked Men’s squad and the 13th-ranked Women’s squad that can bust out during the four-race season.

“The season is going to help these runners that are part of the Track and Field team, for during the winter and spring terms and for the Track and Field season.” he said.