Finally, the Eastern volleyball team is home sweet home.

With only six matches left in the season, the Panthers are back home and will stay for the duration of the season.

The Panthers have a six-match home stand to end the year and are playing, arguably, their best volleyball of the season.

The Panthers will kick off their home stand with a “Dig for the Cure” night in support of breast cancer research on Friday against UT Martin.

“It’ll be nice to play at home again, we’ve played a lot of road games this season,” head coach Alan Segal said.

The Panthers have only played in a handful of home matches at Lantz Arena.

The team has seen some rough matches in 2009 including a nine-match losing skid that stretched into the month of October.

Through all of the hardships they endured, they have been able to bounce back and compete for wins match after match.

If any team in any sport at Eastern is deserving of a six game home stand to end their season, it is the volleyball team.

Though it may be a tad too late to change their 2-11 Ohio Valley Conference record into a winning one, the Panthers are 9-17 overall which is a drastic turnaround from last season when they managed to win only five matches the entire year.

As Segal said at the beginning of the season, you don’t change things overnight.

If this season is any indication of the progress the volleyball team will be making each year, there is no reason to believe the Panthers cannot turn into an above .500 team within the next couple of seasons.

In fact, the Panthers may have been closer to the .500 mark this season had injuries not plagued them early in the season.

The 9-17 record is a little misleading considering the fact the Panthers suffered numerous injuries.

They include foot injuries to juniors Erin Hake and Kelsey Orr earlier in the season.

The Panthers have also lost some close matches that could have gone either way, including a hard fought battle between top ranked Jacksonville State, which the Panthers took the first set of the match and seemingly had control.

The point is: The volleyball team is a lot better than the record shows, and their current six-match home stand to end the season is well deserved.

Kevin Maras can be reached at 581-7944 or kjmaras@eiu.edu.

Senior defender Chris Pearson said the Eastern men’s soccer team has a simple mindset going into today’s match against Drake.

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