Thursday was a busy day at The Venue for the UCF volleyball team. With the adjoining UCF Arena holding the Countdown to Kickoff Luncheon at the same time as practice No. 13, the hallways and balconies surrounding the volleyball courts were filled with football players and personnel, cheer and dance team members, staff from the athletic department and even Knightro himself made an appearance.

Head coach Todd Dagenais used this opportunity to teach his players a valuable lesson; adaptability.

With the areas surrounding the court filled with athletes and staff from other sports, background noise limited the amount of hands-on teaching Dagenais and the rest of the coaching staff could do. With practice time at a premium, rather than have a wasted practice, the coaches decided to turn a potentially negative situation into a positive one.

So the team decided to turn on the scoreboards, crank up the volume of the in-house stereo system and allow the team to go through a mock-game preparation before the final practice of preseason camp and the team's last intra-squad scrimmage.  

You can check out more behind-the-scenes looks from today's practice on our official Facebook team page: Don't forget to "like" us if you haven't already.

The players were put through their full pregame warmup routine, complete with 20-minute countdown clock. Just as they would for a regular season game, the players went into the hallway with nine minutes left on the clock for their own private team huddle and emerged with three minutes left ready for action. 

Dagenais stressed that he wanted to simulate as close to a real gameday experience for the players at Saturday's Black and Gold scrimmage.

The regular season will kick off in just 11 days against Creighton in the USF Invitational in Tampa on Aug. 24.  The home opener takes place Aug. 31 as the team hosts Columbia in the Holiday Inn Select/UCF Classic.