At the start of the 2003 LSU volleyball season, the team did not want to focus on its youth and inexperience.
“In the back of everybody’s minds it’s ‘we’re going to be dynamite next year’ but you really have to focus on this year and what’s coming,” said sophomore Megan Heinz during the season.
But in the end, the youth of the senior-less team manifested itself through errors and last-minute losses.
“I think it has to do with us being inexperienced,” said junior setter Beth Cowley during the season. “We’ll win the first game and not be able to finish. We haven’t found that factor that will pull it all together – the last piece of the puzzle.”
The Tigers ended the season 11-19 overall and 6-10 in the Southeastern Conference.
“The win-loss record could have been a little better, but given the youth of the team we had, we made great strides,” said LSU coach Fran Flory. “The young kids now have a great appreciation for what it takes to be successful.”
The start of the season brought a lot of shifting and mixing up of the starting lineup because of injuries to Cowley, Daniela Romero and Megan Heinz. Flory said the injuries kept the team from establishing offense early on.
Cowley, Romero and Heinz eventually returned from their injuries to enter the starting lineup.
Heinz finished the season ranked No. 7 in the SEC in blocks per game with a 1.21 average. Heinz finished third on the team in kills this season with 181.
Romero finished ninth in the conference in assists with 10.97 per game.
The team leaders this season, however, were junior Regan Hood and freshman walk-on Lauren Leaumont.
Hood finished the season leading the team in kills with 472 and averaging 4.25 kills per game. She ranked in the top five in the conference in kills per game.
Leaumont followed just behind with 342 kills on the season and an average of 3.08 kills per game.
Hood and Leaumont would go on to earn SEC honors for their efforts this season. Hood was named Second-Team All-SEC while Leaumont was added to the All-Freshman team.
“Regan had a great year,” Flory said. “She was the most experienced returning player. She was the only player on the court with a significant amount of experience. She matured into a much better player. She gained experience as a go-to player.”
Leaumont led the team in digs with a total of 273 this season and an average of 2.46 digs per game.
“She’s somebody who plays for the right reasons,” Flory said. “She’s a solid person and player. She’s committed to striving for excellence.”
This season was littered with five-game matches for the young team. The first five-game match for the Tigers came against the University of Alabama-Birmingham and ended in an LSU win.
The Tigers defeated conference foes Auburn and Kentucky in five-game matches.
The first game between the Tigers and the Wildcats threw freshman Markeisha Constant into the spotlight.
Constant recorded a career-high 18 kills and six blocks in the match.
“Markeisha was a huge key for us,” said Flory after the game. “Her performance is the reason we won the match. Megan Heinz and Regan Hood were limited in their ability to control the match like they have in the past and we needed others to step up. Markeisha and Lauren Leaumont did that for us. It was good to see the freshmen step up and create the opportunity for us to win.”
In fact, the Tigers pushed the Wildcats into five games in the second match as well. However, LSU failed to take game five in the second match that ended in a Kentucky victory.
“We’ve shown signs of an awesome team but we’ve failed to be consistently good,” Cowley said midway through the season.
The inconsistency could be written as a tale of two teams.
LSU would go on to defeat Tennessee, one of the top teams in the SEC at the time, in a four-game win that gave Flory her 200th career victory with the Tigers.
“Tennessee is a very good team so this is a significant win for us,” Flory said after the match. “We won every hard point today, which showed that we played with heart and desire throughout the match.”
However, the next weekend the Tigers were humbled by a five-game loss to Mississippi State.
In that loss, Hood recorded the first double-double for LSU in two years. Hood hit 24 kills and had 18 digs in the match. Freshman Lauren Leaumont also had 24 kills while recording 16 digs.
The Razorbacks caused trouble for the Tigers throughout the season, as they beat LSU in their first meeting and defeated them again late in the season before knocking the Tigers out of the SEC tournament in the first round.
“You have to give credit to Arkansas for making the plays they needed to,” Flory said following the second match with the Razorbacks. “We had to score when Sara Kincaid was on the back row, and we did not take advantage of all of those situations. She is a great player and we had no answer for her.”
Flory said the team needs to get stronger mentally and physically over in the offseason.
“I think they now understand and know what is expected,” Flory said. “We need to understand that winning is important and establish a tougher mental attitude.”