A Super Talk Mississippi Media Production.

You're listening to another Thunder and Lightning exclusive here on Super Talk, Mississippi.

Brian Haydette, you know, there are some coaches, you know, I talk to quite often.

There are some coaches I don't get to talk to enough.

But when the coach is doing the kind of job that this lady is doing at Mississippi State,

we got to get her on the podcast.

Coach Julie Dardy Dennis, head coach in Mississippi State volleyball, one of the hottest teams in the country,

one of the biggest surprises in the SEC this year.

Coach, my first question is sort of a really big picture question about your program

because you think about Mississippi and in Mississippi State football,

a ton of Mississippi kids on the roster.

Basketball is the same way.

Baseball, we all know that it's a ton of Mississippi kids.

You got two on your roster.

This is not really a volleyball state.

When I was in high school, there wasn't high school volleyball.

I don't know how recent it is, but it feels like a very recent addition. How do you build a program at a place like Mississippi State when it's difficult to find people, you know, just in your own backyard to play the sport? I mean, we're logging a lot of miles. That's for sure with recruiting. But no, I mean, I'm so proud that we have two in-state kids on our roster. And this was the first year, you were correct, that they added volleyball as a high school sport. This is the first year. The first year. Wow. They got rid of slow-pitched softball, and now they have volleyball. So there's a lot of softball coaches coaching volleyball. So we're trying to grow the game and teach the game and do all these things all at once.

But one, it's so exciting that there's so many young girls who want to play volleyball that they're adding in the high schools.

It's going to take some time to get to the level that it needs to be at for us to recruit in state.

But there are some tremendous athletes in this state and there's really tough competitors. And I love the tough, blue-collar gritty kids that are in our state. And there's certainly going to be some recruiting that happens in the future now that we've got it in all the high schools. So, I mean, the recruiting, you know, started out and we had to shop and look for transfers and look for people that could be quick fixes when we first got here. But, you know, I think the SEC footprint and the area that we're in is seeing an explosion in women playing volleyball as well. So we've been able to recruit a little bit more close to home just because Atlanta is a hotbed, Texas is a hotbed. So a lot of the places that maybe basketball is going, we're going there as well. No coach is going to come out in the preseason and say, oh, yeah, I think we're going to be terrible. They're never going to say things like that. It doesn't matter how bad you were the year before. At the same time, a coach is not usually not going to come out and say, oh, yeah, I think we're going to be great. What was your feeling preseason about this team? Well, I mean, we talked at the end of last year about

how, you know, since we've been here, we've moved up one spot in the conference standings every

year and slow, steady progress is what we've been talking about since day one because we

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