Undersized Gillen, Head coming up big for UA

FAYETTEVILLE — Outside hitters Jill Gillen and Taylor Head may be considered undersized in the world of Division I women’s college volleyball, but they have came up huge for No. 9 Arkansas.

The dynamic duo have piled up impressive statistics, while helping the Razorbacks rise up through the ranks of the SEC volleyball and even the country.

In Gillen’s freshman season, the Razorbacks finished 11-19 overall and 5-13 in the SEC, but this season they finished the regular season with 25 wins, a 15-3 conference mark and ranked ninth in the country in the latest American Volleyball Coaches Association poll.

Not only is it back in the NCAA Tournament, Arkansas will host the first two rounds of the tournament for the first time since 2006.

Arkansas (25-5) earned a No. 3 seed and will take on Stephen F. Austin (29-4) tonight at 7 at Barnhill Arena in the first round of the NCAA Tournament.

Arkansas Coach Jason Watson traveled around the state doing camps and clinics in the summer, and he said he has seen that his team resonates with the people around the state.

“They see themselves in this team,” said Watson, who is in his eighth season with the Razorbacks. “If you’re 5-8, 5-10, undersized by somebody’s measurement, you’ve got to work really, really hard all the time to play the game above the height of the net. If you’re 6-4, you don’t have to work quite as hard. You’re already halfway there, maybe.

“I think there are moments where they’ve had to work really, really hard and have done so willingly,” he added. “It’s probably hard for a 5-10 person to see themselves in a 6-10 body, and our team is full of lots of 5-10s.”

He said his two outside hitters are blue-collar workers.

“They just do their job,” Watson said. “Their job is to score points and not to give up points. Their job is to be really good when the game is ugly. That’s where they earn their scholarship, I suppose. They’ve been remarkable in the level they’re playing and the cleanliness which they are playing.”

Gillen, a 5-7 graduate student is from Stilwell, Kan., said her time at Arkansas has been special.

“It’s meant everything these last couple years, definitely the most challenging but rewarding chapter of my life,” said Gillen, who earned All SEC honors for the fifth time this season. “Just being able to turn this program around with this group of people, and Jason and all of our coaches who have been with us has been really wonderful, I’m so thankful and I’m glad we’re not done yet.”

Gillen, who became the Razorbacks’ career leader in service aces this season, acknowledged she and Head were underestimated coming out of high school because of their size.

“Yeah, that’s kind of the story at this point that we were both told we were too small or too little,” Gillen said. “You can’t do this. You can’t do that. Again, I’m just so grateful to have a coach who has allowed us to come here and be ourselves and to play really hard so that’s awesome.”

Head, a 5-10 senior, has also climbed up the charts of the record book this season, securing her spot in the program’s top 5 in career kills and currently sits sixth in digs. She has also registered 57 double-doubles, the second-most in program history and most by any Razorback since 1999.

Florida State (23-8) and TCU (16-14) will play at 4:30 p.m. today in the first game of the day.

If Florida State and Arkansas win their first-round matches, the Razorbacks would face off against Seminoles Coach Chris Poole, a native of Heber Springs who was the Arkansas program’s first coach from 1994-2207, facing the team he founded in 1994.

Florida State freshman setter Kennedy Phelan played at Fayetteville High School and her mother, Jessica, earned All-America honors for the Razorbacks while playing for Poole.

Poole, who ranks as the second-winningest active Division I coach with 895 wins, also coached at Arkansas State and Arkansas Tech before his stop in Fayetteville.

“There is no Arkansas volleyball if there isn’t Coach Poole,” Watson said. “Not only here in Fayetteville but before that time when he was over in Jonesboro. The state of Arkansas should be indebted to Coach Poole for raising the level of volleyball across the state at a time when nobody was paying attention to volleyball.

In some ways we’re probably just custodians of the legacy that he built, but I want to beat him. Just as much as he wants to beat us if we get to that point, right?”