GREAT FALLS, Mont. – The #5 University of Providence volleyball team will begin their postseason run on Saturday at 2:00 p.m.  when they host Florida College in the McLaughlin Center in the 2021 NAIA Women's Volleyball National Championship Opening Round.

"It's a great opportunity," head coach Arunas Duda said. "Being #5 in the country is such an honor and we're so excited about it. To be able to showcase our team to the Great Falls community in an NAIA Championship format is really exciting. That'll be a lot of fun for us. We have one last time at home to show who we are. We're excited about what we're doing here as a program."

The Argos (25-2, 10-0) are one of 48 teams that have qualified for the NAIA National Tournament. Each team will play an opening round game at the higher seed's campus. The 24 winners will then head to Sioux City, Iowa for the NAIA National Championship, where they will be split into eight pools of three teams. Each pool will play a round-robin schedule, with the eight pool winners playing a single-elimination tournament to determine a National Champion. 

The Argos hopes to continue to ride their recent hot streak, as the team is currently in the middle of an 18-game winning streak. That includes the two wins the squad got over at the weekend at the Frontier Conference Tournament, where they cruised past Rocky Mountain College and Carroll College in three sets each to win the tournament for the fourth season in a row.

The coaching staff didn't waste much time shifting gears to their next opponent however, pushing the team in practice to prepare for the championship mentality.

"It was a bizarre week in the sense of we had so many more practices than a normal week," Duda said. "We actually pushed them pretty hard. We competed at a high level which is what we wanted to sustain. I thought we left the Frontier Conference Tournament playing extremely well. We're just trying to sustain that going into the National Tournament."

The team also spent a lot of time preparing for the Falcons (21-19, 4-2). The team has spent multiple days in the film room studying their tendencies and ran specific drills in practice to prepare for what they're expecting on Saturday.

"They run a little bit of a different system than what we run," Duda said. "They have some unorthodox things that we haven't seen too much of this year. It's just a different style of volleyball. It's going to be a little bit of a slower pace than what we run. Our key is going to be staying in our system even though we have a different system attacking us."

The focus, however, has been staying consistent with their preparation that has got them to this point so far.

"We have to pour everything we got into it," Duda said. "I think our girls are so locked in. We have great leadership from our seniors and our returners. They know what's at stake. We don't have to constantly remind them. I think they're more prepared than the coaching staff. They're ready to go."

 
Because the event is an official NAIA Championship Event, all staff, students, coaches, players and spectators must follow all NAIA Championship rules, which includes wearing a mask for the entirety of the event.