by Victoria Ramirez | staff writer
Starting off the year, the volleyball team has a promising start. Coming in with only one senior, Grace Matson, they are so far 5 and 1 and plan to make it far in playoffs according to Matson.
“It will be good, it’s kind of like game by game because we are a young team so I am the only senior, but there’s a lot of juniors and sophomores on the team and one freshmen so we are just taking it game by game,” Matson said.
According to Matson, it’s sad being the only senior but doesn’t really make a difference, only some pressure to be a role model for the younger girls on the team.
“It’s sad that it’s my last year but since I am the only senior it’s easier to lead everyone else because they all look up to me, so I can help them get ready for next year, especially the older ones,” Matson said. “There is some stuff, because I am the only senior I have the biggest responsibility and make sure everyone is doing the right thing but it’s also fun because I’m really good friends with everyone.”
Matson said even though there is an age difference, they are pretty much together all the time, are really good friends and love to hangout as much as possible, and don’t let the class difference get in the middle of how they play on the court.
“We are all actually really close this year, have team dinners and a lot of times on the weekends we’ll hangout like after a game or we’ll go get food or team sleepovers and we just eat a lot,” Matson said. “It definitely helps that we have been playing together for a long time so we are all really good friends and there are definitely other teams out there that have more talent all across but since we are really good friends and play good together we have beat some teams that we probably shouldn’t have.”
The team does several things to get pumped for the games, but other than stretch and get physically ready, they need to do other things to get mentally ready.
“The night before we have team dinners, and then on the bus drive over there we jam out to the music or go and jam in the locker room, we usually play this one song before every game that gets us really excited and ready to play,” Matson said.
According to Matson, their hard work and dedication has taken them this far but they hope to go farther while putting a lot of their time in the gym, even though they practice during the school period they still put in time before and after school on some days as well.
“It has brought us pretty far in the season, I mean since a lot of new people have came on to varsity this year we were trying new stuff so we didn’t start our season with a super good record but we have come pretty far and I think it will help us, we’ve gotten better every week so we’ll see. We practice during 4th period every day and then…I guess actually 4 times a week when we have games,” Matson said.
Varsity head volleyball coach Nicole Blakeman said the girls have definitely grown a lot since the beginning of the year while looking forward to the rest of the season, and having the girl put in all they can.
“I feel like we have improved a lot, we are a completely a different team than we were at the beginning of the season and if they continue to come in, work hard and play well and work together as a team, who knows what we can do. From the beginning of the year they have improved 150%,” Blakeman said.
Even through their challenges, they still believe they can make it to state.
“There’s new challenges with every team, they are different challenges, they have been eager coming in and working hard. Our goal is always to go to state and represent our region, I expect them to do the best they can,” Blakeman said.
