2009 RUTGERS-CAMDEN VOLLEYBALL
|
|
||||||||
|
During his first season as the Rutgers-Camden Head Coach in 2008, Mat Ogin led his team to more success than the volleyball program had accomplished in its previous eight-year history. With several major hurdles out of the way, Ogin is continuing to focus on his goal of making the Lady Raptors a perennial contender in the New Jersey Athletic Conference. Ogin’s team set a program record for victories during an 8-14 season, breaking the previous club mark of six wins set in 2006. It also vaulted Ogin to the top of the list for the best winning percentage (.364) among the four coaches in program history. He already ranks second on the list for most career wins, trailing only Joe Gillespie, who won 14 matches over the program’s first six seasons (2000-2005). By the end of the 2009 campaign, Ogin should own the program record for coaching victories and is confident he’ll secure the first winning season in club history. The 2008 campaign will provide a nice springboard for the Raptors’ future success. Rutgers-Camden won its first match last year, marking the first time in program history the Lady Raptors were ever over .500. That win also snapped a two-season 26-match losing streak, which included the entire 2007 campaign (0-23). By winning two of three matches on their opening day, the Lady Raptors set a program mark for victories in one day. Later in the season they raised the bar by sweeping three Penn State campus teams on Oct. 12, marking the first time they had ever won three matches in a single day. That sweep also allowed Rutgers-Camden to tie its program record of three consecutive wins. The third win that day was the team’s seventh of the season, shattering the old program mark from 2006. Rutgers-Camden’s final victory of the season was another historic occasion for Ogin’s team. The Raptors rallied from a 2-0 deficit to post a 3-2 win at Kean University (Oct. 16), marking only the second NJAC win in program history. It also snapped an 18-match conference losing streak. Among individual honors, Ogin’s first team included senior Julie Grochowski, who was named to the All-NJAC Second Team, both the NJAC Academic Second Team and the Philadelphia Inquirer Academic All-Area Volleyball Team, and became the first Lady Raptor to ever earn Player of the Week honors in the NJAC. Freshman Katherine Crosby and sophomore Krista White were both named the school’s Raptor of the Week, Crosby finished as the team MVP, and sophomore Alisha Laws captured NJAC Academic Honorable Mention. Grochowski finished her career as the Lady Raptors’ all-time leader in numerous categories, while White moved to within 37 assists of tying the program’s career mark in that category. It was an impressive start for Ogin, who spent nearly two years as the Lady Raptors’ assistant coach (2006-07). He was elevated to the interim head spot at the tail end of the 2007 season when a coaching change was made. With his first real team in 2008, he started the ball rolling toward a new era in Rutgers-Camden volleyball, adding to his own impressive resume in the sport.
A graduate of Rowan University, where he majored in Language Arts Education, Ogin is a player on the Association of Volleyball Professionals (AVP) tour. During the summer of 2007, he qualified for, and finished 25th at, the AVP event in Brooklyn, New York. |
|||||||||
 |
 |
 |
| © 2008 Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey. All Rights Reserved. | ||