Youth wasn’t served for the Panther volleyball team this season.

Eastern traded exuberance for mistakes in the team’s 9-21 (4-12 in the Ohio Valley Conference) season. The Panthers stumbled through a midseason 12-game losing streak, but recovered to win three of their last five games.

The last-season push wasn’t enough to put Eastern in the conference tournament, the first time the Panthers didn’t play in the tournament since 1995.

“We were within a couple of points in a lot of matches,” Panther head coach Brenda Winkeler said after wrapping up her third year at the helm Friday. “When you have more seasoned veterans, they know how to step it up and win ball games.”

So this year’s younger freshmen and sophomores will make for next year’s team leaders. At least that’s Winkeler’s conventional wisdom.

The stats are on her side.

Freshman outside hitter Megan Kennedy broke a freshman block record that had been intact since 1994. Freshman Sarah Niedospial fell eight digs short of breaking a freshman record in that category, which she would’ve broke had she not suffered a concussion at midseason. Sophomore Shanna Ruxer is in the top 10 in single-game kills.

“As a freshman you’re just trying to survive,” Winkeler said. “They definitely did better than that.”

The Panthers had the exact inverse of their record this season after a 21-9, NCAA Tournament berth season. But Eastern lost its core of six seniors from that squad, five of which were starters.

The Panthers stand to lose only three seniors this season: Karen Liss, who is on Eastern’s all-time dig list and Jennifer Fisher, who showed a formidable offensive threat after seeing little playing time last year.

Senior outside hitter Carrie Stevens played in the season’s final month after she was deemed to have a half year of eligibility left due to a rule change this season. Stevens was a volunteer assistant coach for the first part of the season.

“When you’re coming back after being an assistant volunteer coach to becoming a player it’s quite of a transition,” Winkeler said. “She didn’t want to go in and be a task leader on the court, you don’t know how people are going to take to her trying to do that.”

Stevens often struggled to simply keep her error total lower than kills a year after she earned OVC Tournament MVP honors and averaged 2.19 kills per game. She averaged 1.23 kills in 31 games and struggled to a .135 attack percentage. Sophomore Erica Gerth led the team in kills with 3.33 per game. Liss averaged 2.93.

But Winkeler is about ready to bring in the reinforcements. One recruit was signed last week to shore up the middle hitter spot.

Kara Sorenson an outside hitter who played club ball in Avon, Ind. and at 6-foot-2, is comparable to Ruxer.

“She’ll be the biggest kid we have next year,” Winkeler said. “Her game is a lot like Shanna’s, but Kara is more physical.”

Winkeler said the incoming recruiting class will also add depth to both the left and right hitter spots. She believes the additions will put the Panthers back in the top three in the league.

“When you look around the league, you’ll see that Tennessee-Martin (22-5, 15-1) will lose six seniors this year, SEMO (20-11, 13-3) will lose four,” Winkeler said. “So they’ll be where we were this year. I’ve heard Florida State’s coach talk about why they’re good every year. A lot of that is timing.”

The timing of introducing the libero position, or defensive specialist, came was near perfect for the Panthers.

Niedospial and classmate Heather Redenbo thrived at the new position. Niedospial was second to Gerth on the team in digs with 350, but averaged 3.5 per game – a team high.

“I really liked the libero – we may need to move toward making that a libero of the year in the OVC,” Winkeler said. “I think it generated questions, like people in the crowd simply wondered ‘why is she wearing a different jersey than everyone else.’ Anytime you can create conversation about your sport, it’s a good thing.”