Penn State women’s volleyball, led by coach Russ Rose, made a major change in their offense, switching from a five-one offense to a six-two offense. The five-one, meaning five attackers and one setter, is more commonly used, compared to the six attacker-two setter offense, which can on occasion cause a little more confusion on the court. Undefeated so far in the regular season, it is obvious that this offense is working.

The Women’s Volleyball Team, run by coach Russ Rose, who in his coaching career has 1,220 division wins and seven NCAA Titles, in the past has used the five-one offense successfully resulting in wins and NCAA titles. But within the first week of the 2017 season, Rose switched the defense to a six-two, playing setters Abby Detering and Bryanna Weiskircher, resulting in a 11- 1 record and being ranked the number two team in their section so far.  

By using the “new” defense, players are hitting career highs in kills, assists, and digs. Abby Detering, one of the setters for the team had 11 kills, 23 assists, and 10 digs, posting a double triple and career high.  

Rose has used the six-two offense in the past, such as in 2007 with the sophomores Alisha Glass and Jessica Yantz. Later in the season Glass won the title as setter, which resulted in four straight NCAA titles. It is still early in the season, so Rose can easily change back to the five-one if he needs to, but so far it has been successful.  

Rose’s main goal is to get as much offense on the court as possible. “We have a couple positions that aren’t producing scoring opportunities.” Rose says, ” We have to find a way to spread out the offense so teams can’t say it’s the Alli-and-Simone Show or the Haleigh Show. Our best teams were when we had five people that could legitimately lead the team in scoring on any given day and nobody was competing to lead the team in scoring. Everybody was competing together to lead the team.”  

Coach Rose’s determination to win has pushed him to make this change. Rose says,” If we have success playing with two, I’ll play with two. I want to win. In spite of what other coaches are interested in, developing character and things like that, I’m not opposed to thinking about winning is being a nice byproduct of what we are doing.” In his 38 seasons of coaching, Rose obviously knows what he is doing, between setting records for the school and the NCAA, he has become one of the most successful coaches in women’s volleyball.