Madelynne McKeown’s collegiate volleyball career is on the move.<\/p>\n
After spending the last two years in the Arizona desert playing for Yavapai College, McKeown is now one of the newest members of the Quincy University Hawks. Quincy is a small private school in western Illinois and the home of almost 20 NCAA Division II programs, including women’s volleyball.<\/p>\n
McKeown, a four-year varsity player for Juneau-Douglas High School, reported to preseason earlier this week with the Hawks, who went 8-21 last season. The Empire reached the 2016 JDHS graduate in Quincy by phone on Thursday in between practices. The interview has been edited for length and clarity.<\/p>\n
Juneau Empire<\/strong>: What’s been your first impressions of the school and team and culture there?<\/p>\n Madelynne McKeown<\/strong>: The culture here is really relaxed but we have a super athletic team and everyone’s just really driven to get better. That’s really exciting to me to have such an energetic team that is always striving to get better. I just have high hopes for this season, I think we’ll do really good.<\/p>\n Empire<\/strong>: What was that path like going from Yavapai and then getting recruited to playing in the NCAAs?<\/p>\n McKeown<\/strong>: It’s actually been a really smooth transition. The only major transition for me is probably the size of the school — obviously because my junior college is much smaller — and the size of the program. My coach at my junior college was very Type A and very strict and the culture here is a lot more relaxed but also focused, like it’s not unproductive by any means. I just feel a lot more relaxed here at this new school but I definitely feel like my old coach prepared me for this. Ability-wise, I’m there, and I don’t feel unprepared by any means.<\/p>\n Empire<\/strong>: How did that junior college experience specifically prepare you to play at this level?<\/p>\n McKeown<\/strong>: I’d say the speed of the game. My conference in Arizona was super competitive and we were always in the running of being one of the top-20 (Division I) jucos in the country, definitely a very competitive program.<\/p>\n Empire<\/strong>: What kind of role do you hope to carve out with the team and how do you hope to make an impact on the season?<\/p>\n McKeown<\/strong>: I hope I can be a good leader by example. And just always have high energy at practice and in games and have a positive attitude so we can always have a good time when we’re playing and we’re never stressed. … I think the most important thing is being a good teammate so that’s my goal is to be a good teammate for my fellow teammates.<\/p>\n Empire<\/strong>: I’ve heard Quincy has a rare men’s volleyball team — do you think the women’s team would be able to beat the men’s?<\/p>\n McKeown<\/strong>: Maybe defense-wise but they’re all giants so it might be a little bit of a battle.<\/p>\n Empire: <\/strong>Was there anything else you’d like to like to add?<\/p>\n McKeown<\/strong>: I’m just really thankful for my coaches in high school that helped prepare me for the college-athlete life: Lesslie Knight, Dale Bontrager, and Pat (Gorman). Really thankful for them. I think about them a lot.<\/p>\n \u2022 Contact sports reporter Nolin Ainsworth at 523-2272 or nainsworth@juneauempire.com. Follow Empire Sports on Twitter at @akempiresports.<\/b><\/p>\n Madelynne McKeown’s collegiate volleyball career is on the move.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":425,"featured_media":1783,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":4,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,6],"tags":[217,218],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-1782","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-sports","tag-juneau-douglas-high-school","tag-volleyball"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1782","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/425"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1782"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1782\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1783"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1782"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1782"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1782"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=1782"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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