The senior outside hitter at Weber State hurt a finger on her left (non-hitting) hand in an Oct. 11 home match against Idaho. It was severe enough that it required surgery and, she was told, recovery would be 6-7 weeks — well past the season’s end or Big Sky Conference tournament on Thanksgiving week.

But after the procedure, the doctor got another look.

“The doctor said, ‘Go for it,'” WSU head coach Jeremiah Larsen said.

In between, Weber State lost three straight without Gneiting, all on the road, to run the team’s road record to 1-7.

She returned for 10 kills and five digs in a home win Oct. 30 over Portland State, a three-set sweep that improved WSU to 13-8 overall and 5-4 in the Big Sky.

“Hopefully she can keep on growing and getting better,” Larsen said. “She’s playing with pins in her finger and it’s kind of cool she gets to be able to do that. … That period of time she was out, we were way more of a mess than we are right now. So generally, she gives us a more calming presence out there.

“She does everything. She goes six rotations, she’s a great digger, a great blocker, generally a pretty good passer so she does all the skills pretty well.”

But Weber State has a problem, Larsen says, and can hopefully draw from Gneiting and past experience to figure it out. WSU returned to the court after the win over PSU and was handily swept by Sacramento State to fall back to seventh place. Weber has lost four of its last five.

“It’s about us handling little challenges. We take things super personally about one play and it just derails everything we do. We’re incredibly mentally weak and, until we figure that out,” Larsen said, “it doesn’t matter.”

He hopes there’s something to learn from Gneiting’s season, if she can lead a resurgence.

“It’s cool because I love that kid. To go from thinking her career is over to being able to finish out the season makes me happy for her,” he said. “Now she has an opportunity to go make it great, so she’s got to figure that out.”

Weber State won both Spring 2021 titles and shared a regular-season title that fall before losing in the tournament final. A stunning defeat in the 2022 quarterfinals led to a 2023 in which Larsen had said some of the same things: that his team was not gritty enough to fight through the swings that volleyball brings — at least not enough to contend for a championship.

That 2023 team figured it out, however, finishing fourth in the regular season before an incredibly resilient run to the conference tournament title.

“A lot of these kids were on that team, so you’d think they would understand, and I hope they do,” Larsen said. “Dani Richins was on that team, Makayla Sorensen was on that team, Kate Payne was on that team. This group of girls needs to learn, and needs to learn fast.

“Better late than never, is always a nice saying, so we’re hoping to figure it out. They’ve had some good examples of what that looks like; now they just need to implement it.”

For now, Weber State is only a half-game back behind three teams tied for fourth place and, on paper, gets a chance to learn how to win on the road with a road trip to play the two teams at the bottom of the standings. WSU (13-9, 5-5 Big Sky) next plays at 7 p.m. Thursday at Idaho (5-17, 2-8) before a 3 p.m. Saturday match at Eastern Washington (2-20, 0-10).