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The Seminoles will open at home on Sept. 1

May 17, 2006

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. - The Florida State volleyball team released its 2006 schedule and the Seminoles will battle four teams that competed in the 2005 NCAA Tournament and three programs that were ranked or received votes in the final USA Today/CSTV Top 25 Coaches poll, FSU head coach Todd Kress announced today. The Seminoles, led by preseason All-American candidate Summer Weissing, return eight veterans and welcome six newcomers.

Winning seven of its last nine matches, Florida State concluded the 2005 season with a 13-17 overall record, 11-11 Atlantic Coast Conference mark, and a tie for sixth place in the league race. Eight letterwinners return this season including Weissing, senior standouts Kim Crawford, Sarah Griffin, Jessica Skower and Zrinka Tomic, juniors Makini Thompson and Lauren Walker, and sophomore Gabrielle Rivera. The six freshmen are: Jackie BonSalle, Brittany Byrd, Brianna Barry, Nikki Baker, Malorie Wessel and Lauren Young.

Florida State opens the 2006 season on the road for the first time in the Kress era, facing Mercer University on Friday, August 25 at 6pm. FSU returns home Sept. 1-2 as the Seminoles host the FSU Invitational with Eastern Illinois, Mississippi State, South Alabama and Stetson traveling to Tallahassee.

"The opening month of August will be a very important time for us because we have so many new faces," said Kress. "It's a great opening weekend in the fact that we have some good talent participating in the FSU Invitational. It will be a good test for us right out of the gate and a time for us to see how our team chemistry is developing and where some people fit in."

The Tribe will embark on perhaps its most challenging portion of the schedule during the following two weeks, as a tournament at South Carolina finds Florida State facing back-to-back national champion (2002, 2003) Southern Cal on Friday, Sept. 8 at noon. Matches against St. John's (Sept. 8 at 5:30 pm) and South Carolina (Sept. 9 at 1:30 pm) are also slated for the tournament. On Tuesday, Sept. 12, the Seminoles host the Florida Gators, a squad that finished the 2005 season with a final national ranking of No. 3. The FSU/UF match will be the final pre-conference tune-up for the Seminoles as league action gets underway on Sept. 19 when FSU travels to Miami.

"The tournament at South Carolina is going to be very competitive," said Kress. "Obviously Southern Cal has won a number of national championships including back-to-back championships a couple of years ago. Florida is a perennial Final-Four or Elite-Eight program and a huge instate rival. South Carolina is another up-and-coming team in the SEC and and JoAnne Persico-Smith always has a great team at St. John's.  That is probably going to be the toughest pre-season tournament that we've had since I've been here. We will definitely find out where we're at with some of the youngsters on the court heading into ACC play."

Twenty-two ACC contests are planned throughout the months of September, October and November for the Seminoles. The team will play its final home match on Sunday, Nov. 12 against Virginia Tech, before closing out the regular season with four ACC matches on the road. For the second year in a row, there will not be a conference tournament at the end of the season.

"The ACC continues to improve. Last year as a conference we were very young. This year the teams are stronger with some of those freshmen and sophomores now being sophomores and juniors. I think that if you look at any five or six teams [in the ACC] any of those schools have a legitimate shot at winning the conference title. I think you can look at Duke and Virginia as the frontrunners in the fact that Duke was in the tournament last year and Virginia returns absolutely everyone. Georgia Tech has everybody back, too. A lot of those teams have their entire starting unit back...and we are going to have a few new faces on the court. That's not necessarily a bad thing, though, because we'll be able to surprise some people with that."

One goal of the team is a trip to the NCAA tournament in 2006. Post-season play begins on Nov. 30-Dec. 1 or Dec. 1-2 with first-round and second-round matches on the site of participating institutions. Regionals will be played on campus sites the week of Dec. 7-8, 8-9, or 9-10. The 2006 NCAA Semi-finals and Championship will be held in Omaha, Neb., at the Qwest Center on Dec. 14 and 16.