Coach Leanne Ulmer and her Carthage College women’s volleyball team have a lot of numbers in play as they prepare to open their season in the Pacific Coast Classic on Sept. 4-5 in Claremont, Calif.

Ulmer welcomed back 14 letterwinners, including six of seven starters, from the group that extended to 37 its regular-season CCIW regular-season winning streak, won the school’s fifth straight (fourth outright) College Conference of Illinois and Wisconsin title and third straight CCIW tournament.

Carthage reached the NCAA Division-3 Midwest Regional final for the second season in a row, losing in five games at seventh-ranked UW-Oshkosh. The Reds (32-5 overall, 7-0 CCIW) placed 10th in the final Bison/American Volleyball Coaches Association poll.

Ulmer and the Reds are primed for another great season. They are seventh in the AVCA preseason poll.

“That’s our goal, to get ourselves back in a position to win the conference again and get ourselves in a position to get to the elite eight, win a regional and get to the elite eight,” said Ulmer, winner of three consecutive CCIW coach of the year awards.

“The bar is set extremely high. We had a really young team last year, many times started five freshmen. So the good news is they’re a little older and a little wiser here, and we’re still a pretty young team with a couple seasoned veterans and an All-American right side (player) Rachel Swoboda and our (second team) all-American libero Katie Lundgren. We have kind of a nice mix of young and older kids.

“It’s crazy what the kids have done. It’s been real fun to watch them do it.”

Swoboda, a junior, averaged 3.14 kills and 1.26 blocks. Lundgren, a senior who is the reigning CCIW player of the year (Carthage’s third straight), added 5.77 digs a game. Setter Drewann Pancratz, Carthage’s fifth CCIW freshman of the year in six years and an honorable mention all-America, contributed 7.58 assists. All three were all-CCIW.

Sophomore outside hitter Lauren Dembkowski was a second-team all-CCIW pick with 2.45 kills and 2.26 digs.

Carthage will participate in seven regular-season tournaments, which Ulmer believes is the best way to prepare for possible NCAA play.

“You play back-to-back tough teams, because you’re in somebody else’s tournament and they kind of skew them a little bit,” Ulmer said. “It definitely makes us road tested and road tough.”

Ulmer does not worry about her team losing focus in CCIW play.

“It’s taken on a life of it’s own, this winning streak,” Ulmer said. “It’s bonded my kids. Every year, the girls that come in, they don’t want it to fall on their watch.”

Can the Reds put the cherry on the sundae and get to an NCAA Elite Eight? A Final Four? A championship match?

The numbers indicate anything is possible.

“The goals just change a little bit as you go through the years and with some returning kids,” Ulmer said. “Very difficult things to accomplish. Very tough task. We certainly don’t overlook conference, because you have to do things in order to get to that point. Certainly those are the goals that we’re working toward, and hopefully we can improve a little bit to get to that point.”

One last number to keep in mind is 78, the number of days from the season opener to NCAA final.