Terry remains pivotal to Illinois' success

CHAMPAIGN — Averie Hernandez knew exactly how to describe playing against Raina Terry.

The new Illinois outside hitter was coming from a place of personal experience. She faced Terry across the net three times and witnessed a fourth from the sideline playing for Northwestern the past two seasons. Hernandez had the best vantage point possible to see Terry hammer 58 total kills in those four matches, which the Illini and Wildcats split in Big Ten play.

“Raina was a threat,” Hernandez said. “A huge threat.”

Terry remains a threat in the Big Ten this year having opted to use her bonus season of eligibility to return to Illinois this fall. The 6-foot-3 outside hitter will continue climbing the Illini record book with a fifth season on the court starting at 2 p.m. Friday against Cincinnati in Bowling Green, Ohio. But she’s already 10th in career kills (1,634), fourth in career aces (164) and is coming off consecutive All-Big Ten First Team seasons.

A threat.

“Terry has one of the hardest arm swings in the nation, and she can take your head off if the block isn’t well formed,” said Big Ten Network volleyball analyst Emily Ehman. The former Northwestern libero ranked the Illinois outside hitter 11th among the top-20 players in the conference.

“What I love about her, too, is she never backs down from a fight — especially in big moments,” Ehman continued. “Head coach Chris Tamas even calls her ‘unbreakable.’ Not only is Terry good offensively, but she’s also an incredible server. She might be up and down in serve-receive, but she makes up for it with that heavy arm.”

Terry finished the 2023 season with 539 kills to rank third in the Big Ten. Her 4.69 kills per set and 5.37 points per set placed her in the top 10 nationally in both. A level of production commensurate with how much Illinois asked her to do. Terry’s career-high 539 kills also came on a career-high 1,516 total attacks — a number that ranked her first among power-conference players and fourth overall nationally.

“We needed her to attack a lot last year,” Tamas said. “She was one of our only big arms that we had that was consistent, so we used her wherever we could. We sent her all over the place.”

The volume of attack responsibility placed on Terry’s shoulders last fall, however, meant sacrificing her efforts elsewhere. Tamas is all about training and developing six-rotation outside hitters — particularly the ones who have professional aspirations like Terry — but he had to tweak how he used her to maximize Illinois’ chances for success.

“She’s a very good passer, and we had to take her out of the passing rotation because we wanted to free her up,” Tamas said. “She’ll probably pass a little bit more this year, which can be a lot tougher. … We’re trying to add some new things to her game. We’re doing a few things different with her, people will see, that we didn’t do last year.”

Terry’s professional aspirations have also led Tamas to putting more on her plate as a leader. Terry will be asked to make more decisions on the court. It’s similar to the way he approached former Illinois setter turned two-time Olympic medalist Jordyn Poulter’s development.

“She wants to play pro after this, so there’s another level of, ‘Hey, we’ve given you a lot of info as an example. Now, you have to start making it for yourself and exuding that to your team more than you have been,’” Tamas said. “If you want to play pro, this is how you have to operate. We’ve put more ownership on her, and she’s accepted it great, accepted it really well.”

Hernandez has been a beneficiary of those changes. The former Normal West standout, who was a two-time News-Gazette All-State First Team selection, played sparingly as a freshman at Northwestern before becoming a part-time starter as a sophomore last fall before transferring to Illinois this offseason.

Where she now gets a different, less frightening viewpoint of what Terry can do on the court.

“She’s a great player, great teammate,” Hernandez said “I’ve been able to kind of learn from her, not in her shadow, but from a distance a little bit. She’s taken pride in it and helped me a lot with assuming my position here.”