The routine has become like clockwork. Do laundry. Pack uniforms, socks, shoes, T-shirts, sweatpants and other essentials into a duffel bag. Travel to a new city or state for a few days of competition. Return home late at night.

Lather, rinse, repeat.

For the UTSA and St. Mary’s volleyball teams, this has been the norm thus far this season. Both played at home for the first time last weekend, with the Roadrunners opening Conference USA play with a pair of wins over Louisiana Tech, while Mary’s fell to nationally ranked Texas-Tyler in Lone Star Conference action.

Both teams are once again headed out on the road this weekend, with St. Mary’s (8-4 overall, 2-3 in conference) defeating Western New Mexico in Silver City, N.M., on Thursday before playing Texas-Permian Basin in Odessa on Saturday. UTSA (5-10 overall, 2-1 in conference) traveled to Hattiesburg, Miss., and lost the first of two matches vs. Southern Mississippi on Friday. The teams play again on Saturday.

“It’s brutal,” UTSA coach Laura Neugebauer-Groff said. “You leave on a Thursday and you come back late on a Sunday night. It’s very difficult when you’re gone that much.”

Putting together a volleyball schedule can be a tricky endeavor. Finding tournaments to play in or opponents to play against is not always an easy task.

Even before an attempt to host a season-opening tournament was unsuccessful, Neugebauer-Groff set out to put together a 2021 schedule that would prepare her senior-laden Roadrunners in every aspect.

“They haven’t won a conference championship,” Neugebauer-Groff said of her seniors. “They’ve never been to the NCAAs. I told them I’m going to plan a schedule that’s going to put ourselves in position to be there.”

Groff got her wish, piecing together the most ambitious slate in her 20 seasons at the school. In doing so, it meant playing a lot of matches away from San Antonio.

Road warriors

On Aug. 27, UTSA traveled the roughly 85 miles from its campus to Austin to open the season. The team arrived in the capital city, held a practice, had a team dinner, went to its hotel and turned in for the night.

About 12 hours later, the Roadrunners would open the season vs. San Diego, ranked No. 20 in the country by the American Volleyball Coaches Association (AVCA).

Things started off smashingly for UTSA, which rode tough serving to a 25-11 win in the opening set. The Roadrunners continued that momentum into the second set, grabbing a 15-8 advantage. They, however, couldn’t hang on as San Diego rallied to win the second frame and the following two sets to prevail.

The task wouldn’t get any easier for UTSA on the opening weekend. In less than 24 hours after the San Diego match, the Roadrunners would face No. 1 Texas. The Longhorns played for the 2020 national championship in April, falling in four sets to Kentucky, and returned five All-Americans.

Before a crowd of nearly 2,900 — not to mention, a live television audience — Texas jumped to a 21-8 margin in the first set. But behind freshman Mekaila Aupiu’s serving, UTSA reeled off seven straight points to close within 21-15. The Longhorns tallied four of the final six points to prevail.

The Roadrunners were within 17-13 in the second set and 11-9 in the third frame, but Texas used a mid-set surge each time to pull away.

In a matter of two days, UTSA didn’t back down vs. a team that is a strong favorite to win a national championship and another that should make the tournament.

“I’m different in my mentality,” freshman defensive specialist Brooke Hirsch said about playing two nationally ranked opponents to open the season. “I’m not going to say, ‘This is the biggest thing ever. This is the greatest thing ever.’ I always think of everything the same. So, if I’m riding on a bus to Ole Miss or I’m going on a plane to Wisconsin, I just think of it as another business trip. I try to keep everything really level-headed so I don’t overthink.”

From Austin, UTSA returned to the Alamo City for a few days of practices before it loaded up for its first out-of-state excursion — Mississippi.

 The Roadrunners opened the tournament vs. host Ole Miss, which includes former Fredericksburg High School standout Aubrey Sultemeier and won its first 12 matches before falling in five sets to defending national champion Kentucky on Wednesday. Northwestern State (La.) and Coastal Carolina were also opponents.

With any trip, Neugebauer-Groff has always tried to have a balance of volleyball and entertainment. On this occasion, she dearly wanted to take her players to Ole Miss’ famed “The Grove,” an area in the center of the Oxford, Miss.-based university used for tailgating during home football games and was featured in the movie “The Blind Side.”

But because the Roadrunners had to play two matches in five hours on the first day, and three matches in less than 24 hours overall, the visit to the iconic site fell through.

“Sometimes the schedule makes it difficult,” Neugebauer-Groff said.

UTSA sandwiched earning its first win — a 25-16, 25-16, 25-15 decision vs. Northwestern State (La.) — around losses to Ole Miss and Coastal Carolina. The team, following the Coastal Carolina contest, drove an hour to Memphis for a flight back to the Alamo City, arriving home at midnight.

Three days later, the Roadrunners again hit the road for their next match. This time, though, there was no airline flight, bags to pack or laptops to bring along to do homework. Instead, this “road trip” consisted of a nearly 20-mile trek across San Antonio to play Incarnate Word.

UTSA prevailed 25-16, 27-29, 25-22, 23-25, 15-13, using a late surge to snap an 11-11 tie in the fifth set. Two days later, the team was on the road again, this time to College Station for the Texas A&M Invitational. The Roadrunners swept Albany to open the tournament to notch back-to-back wins for the first time this season. The momentum was short-lived as UTSA was swept by Houston and Texas A&M.

On Sept. 16, the Roadrunners flew to Wisconsin for the Marquette Invitational, where they would play the host school, Northern Iowa and Wright State — all programs that are traditional NCAA tournament contenders.

It was a lost weekend in some ways. Off the court, Neugebauer-Groff had to cancel a dinner invitation from former player Annie Kunes, who played from 2012-2015 and was on the 2013 NCAA tournament squad, and her husband, former UTSA football player Cole Hubble, because a scheduling forced the Roadrunners to play two matches in about five hours. On the court, the team lost all three matches.

UTSA never seriously threatened vs. Marquette, squandered late leads in the first and third sets in a four-set loss to Northern Iowa, and yielded a 6-0 run after grabbing an 11-9 advantage in the fifth set vs. Wright State.

Neugebauer-Groff had hoped to go at least 2-1 at the tournament. Instead, her squad headed into conference play on a five-match losing streak.

“It’s definitely not easy, because we’re all competitive,” said UTSA senior libero Mia Ybarra, a Clark graduate. “We’ve been trying to take a step aside and try to look at the bigger picture and just focusing on how we can use these losses to later meet our goal of the postseason.”

Early returns

Across town at the same time, St. Mary’s University was preparing for a season that would have a different look.

Laura Farney Ulrich was hired in mid-May as the new coach, inheriting a squad that went 2-10 during the spring season and lost its final 10 matches after starting 2-0 and earning a spot in the AVCA Division II Top 25 national rankings.

Ulrich was about a month from giving birth at the time, and combined with a move from Denton, where she was an assistant coach at fellow LSC member Texas Woman’s, and no offseason to fully implement her systems, she would have to do a lot on-the-fly.

“Just keeping an open mindset was really important,” said St. Mary’s senior outside hitter Alissa Tolbert, a Marshall product. “In order for us to have a successful season, the whole team needed to be ready for anything that was given to us. The new coaches were going to come in and do their best, so if we give them any resistance it would make everything that much harder.”

Ulrich added a season-opening tournament in Oklahoma to the Rattlers’ schedule, meaning the team would spend the first three weeks on the road. What could have been an obstacle instead became a benefit.

St. Mary’s opened the Oklahoma Christian tournament with a five-set win over Lubbock Christian, topped Bentley University (Mass.) in four sets, and concluded the event with a five-set triumph over the host.

Freshman outside hitter Meghan Stiefer had 10 kills, a .318 hitting percentage and three blocks in her collegiate debut. She missed her senior season in 2020 at La Vernia after tearing her left ACL playing in a club tournament the previous spring.

“I was a little nervous at first, because it was the first time playing without a knee brace,” Stiefer said. “It was very exciting. After the first set, I kind of forgot about it. I felt like we played like a team, so that kind of took away from me thinking about, ‘Oh, this is my first college game. This is my first game playing without the knee brace.’ “

A week later, the Rattlers traveled to Pittsburg, Kan., for the Gorilla Classic, driving more than 630 miles and 11 hours. They defeated Truman State in five sets, Northwestern Oklahoma State and Sioux Falls (S.D.) each in four sets, before suffering their first loss to Pittsburg State.

In the first two weeks of the season, St. Mary’s traveled more than 1,100 miles and 18 hours, passing the time watching movies, listening to music, doing homework and even having a scavenger hunt at a multinational conglomerate. The payoff was the team earned its best start since 2011.

“While being on the road on long bus rides back-to-back preseason weekends isn’t ideal, it does build some camaraderie between the team, and helps prepare us for conference road trips as the LSC is spread out all over Texas,” Ulrich said. “It does help create bonds and memories along the way.”

Perhaps the biggest takeaway was the Rattlers’ newfound mental toughness. They went 3-0 in five-set matches. In 2020, they ended the season with four straight five-set matches, a result that likely cost them a berth into the LSC postseason tournament.

“To me, it was excitement to be back on the court and playing again, especially since our team did so good,” said senior Julia Deais, a Johnson graduate. “Last year was pretty frustrating to win the first two sets and lose the next three. We were always so close. This year is the complete opposite. We’re really good in high-pressure situations.”

That much was put to the test on the weekend of Sept. 17-18. The Rattlers lost to Dallas Baptist in their LSC opener in four sets. A day later, St. Mary’s bounced back and swept Texas Woman’s for its road win during conference play since entering the LSC in 2019.

St. Mary’s also snapped an 11-match overall conference losing streak dating back to last season.

“Obviously, when you win you’re thinking, ‘OK, this is what went well. This is what went well.’ When you lose, your mind is kind of going in the direction of, ‘OK, what do I feel like we could’ve improved on in this match,’ “Tolbert said of the Dallas Baptist loss. “I think it was definitely encouraging and showed the potential that we had.”

terrence@terrencesports.com

Twitter: @sa_terrence1