For the Ball State University men's volleyball team it's a matter of disproving more than 30-year-old stereotypes this weekend in California.
With a West Coast team winning every NCAA championship since 1970, the Cardinals said they enter their matches against Pacific University at 10 p.m. and No. 6 Stanford University on Saturday wanting to discredit the belief Midwest volleyball is inferior.
"If you talk to kids from the Midwest they feel like the West Coast is stuck up, over-confident," coach Joel Walton said. "There is a feeling in the country, and not an accurate one, that all the best volleyball players are out in California, and it's something our team works to disprove."
Since the 1977 season, the champion from the Midwestern Intercollegiate Volleyball Association, which receives an automatic berth to the Final Four, has advanced to the NCAA Championship game four times.
Setter Ethan Pheister said anytime the Cardinals play a West Coast team they are representing the entire Midwest.
"I don't think many teams on the West Coast have respect for the Midwest and the way we play," he said. "Anytime we get to play teams from the West Coast we have a little extra in our step because they obviously don't have that respect for us."
In the most recent men's volleyball coach's poll, which was released Monday, 11 of the 15 ranked teams are from the West Coast, including the No. 15 University of California, San Diego, which currently has a 2-5 record.
Ball State enters this weekend on a three-match winning streak and is currently listed as the No. 16 team in the country, receiving seven votes in the coach's poll. In addition to being winless against West Coast teams this season, the Cardinals are 0-5 against nationally ranked teams.
Walton said the Cardinals are at a crossroads during this weekend's road trip, but he thinks his team is ready for the challenge.
"If we go out and play well on the coast we'll gain more respect," he said. "If we struggle out there we are going to go right back to where we were the last couple weeks with coaches not feeling we are not a very good team this year." We've been making a lot of progress and it's important to me that our guys go up and play to their ability, which I think is potentially good enough to win two matches."
Since the 2006 season, the Cardinals are 1-6 against teams from the West Coast. However, the lone win occurred last season when Ball State defeated then-No. 9 Pacific in five games at Worthen Arena.
"[The Pacific Match] gives us a chance to prove that what we did here at home wasn't a fluke," Walton said.
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