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Courtesy of Radford University

Marci Jenkins, the Highlanders' first-year volleyball coach, hopes to turn around a program that hasn't had a winning record since 2001, when the team won the Big South Conference regular season. She said there's no big secret apart from the team forgetting the past and believing in itself.

RADFORD -- Golfer Nancy Lopez wasn't speaking to Radford University's volleyball team, but she might as well have been.

"Doubt yourself and you doubt everything you see," the LPGA Hall of Famer once said. "Judge yourself and you see judges everywhere. But if you listen to the sound of your own voice, you can rise above doubt and judgment. And you can see forever."

Marci Jenkins, the Highlanders' first-year coach, has been delivering a similar message.

"One of the hurdles we are trying to get over is to forget about the past and focus on the future," Jenkins said. "The first thing we wanted to be is more competitive and be more mentally focused. The kids are not used to winning and not being competitive."

Coach to team: Doubt not and don't expect easy.

"That is something you can't look past and not something you can wake up and it be over. We have to continue to work towards that."

Radford senior Melinda Clelland prepared her teammates for what was coming from the new coach.

"I basically warmed the team up to her," said Clelland, a middle blocker who played for Jenkins at Mills Godwin High. "In practice Coach is very vocal. She spends about 95 percent of practice talking and giving positive feedback, which is different than in years past."

Jenkins, a 1995 graduate of Virginia Union, came to Radford from Division II Chowan University. There she engineered a 22-game turnaround. Before that, she'd had a winning 10-year run coaching at two Richmond-area high schools.

The challenge for Jenkins is to turn around a program that hasn't had a winning record since 2001, when the Highlanders won the Big South Conference regular season.

One of the biggest keys to the rebuilding job will be enhanced communications.

"She talks and talks and let's us know what we are doing wrong," said sophomore transfer Laura Waddell, who played club volleyball for Jenkins. "Then, she corrects it in a positive way."

All that was in play a recent team-building trip to Camp Roanoke. Communication and trust were themes of the day.

The agenda included tasks that required team members to talk to and trust one another if they wanted to complete them successfully.

"We got a lot closer and learned to trust each other," Waddell said. "The activities forced us to communicate and trust each other, and that has transferred onto the court."

Close is good.

"It helped us be more comfortable with each other," Clelland added. "In one day the team was able to grow so much and learn to trust. ... It helped us get open with each other."

The togetherness the team gained got Radford off to its best start since 2001.

This season the Highlanders won five of their first seven matches before a tough weekend left them at 5-5. The conference schedule began this weekend with the annual trip to South Carolina to face Coastal Carolina and Charleston Southern.

All agree focus is the key component if they are to accomplish their goals for this year.

"We are trying to stay ahead of the curve," Jenkins said. "When we take four steps forward, we don't want to take six steps back. The ultimate goal is to get back to winning conference tournaments and making the NCAA tournament. That may be two years, three years down the line. But to get to the goal, you have to set the foundation, and I think the foundation is there."

Amid all that, the team has had to adjust to new quarters at Peters Hall because of the ongoing renovations at the Dedmon Center. Trying to turn a negative into a positive, that's being spun as a new sort of home-court advantage. Ceilings at Peters Hall, where Radford's varsity once played, are unusually low.

"At first I was a little disappointed that I wouldn't get to play my final season in the Dedmon Center," Clelland said. "But Peters Hall is like the small homey place, and we've made the best of it and are going to let it be a home-court advantage."

The home opener is Saturday against new conference member Gardner-Webb University.