The Drake University volleyball team begins its 2021 season Friday evening at Hilton Coliseum against in-state foe Iowa State. First serve is set for 6:30 p.m. on ESPN+.
The Bulldogs continue their season opening weekend in Ames Sunday afternoon with a 1 p.m. match against Omaha.
The Bulldogs enter the season with higher momentum and expectations than they have in a generation after a historic 2021 spring season. The team finished second in the Missouri Valley Conference standings, its highest finish since 1996 and tied for the highest finish in program history.
Drake was picked second in the MVC preseason poll with 77 points and three first-place votes, just two points behind preseason league favorite and defending champion Illinois State.
The team returns nearly its entire roster from the spring, including reigning MVC Player of the Year
Haley Bush. Bush led the league in kills and is just the second-ever Bulldog to earn the league honor and the first since 1984. Two other All-MVC performers in outside hitter
Emily Plock and libero
Kylee Macke also return to continue their re-writing of the Drake record books.
Iowa State returns five starters return from the 2020 squad, led by All-Big 12 Preseason Team selections Candelaria Herrera and Eleanor Holthaus.
The contest against Iowa State is Drake's first regular-season meeting with the Cyclones since 2009. The two teams last met in 2018 in a postseason National Invitational Volleyball Championship contest that Iowa State claimed, 3-0. Drake's last win in the series came in 1999.
