JV Spartans battle

Justin Seward
Times Reporter

 

The Strathmore Spartans junior varsity volleyball teams showed tremendous improvement over the course of their home tournaments and got praise from their coaches for developing their games quickly.
Despite losing in the pool cross over game, girls’ head coach Carrie Westgard thought her team had improved immensely in many facets of the game and the play became better from the previous tournament.
“We were starting to put multiple plays together,” said Westgard. “We had long rallies where we were making defensive plays that we wouldn’t have made in the last tournament. Our serving had improved immensely. I think the first tournament we had quite a few of the girls who had trouble focusing putting the ball in. We had little to none (in the home tournament), issues, but very few.”
Westgard praises some of the players for their serving, by saying that there were a few girls that went on runs of five or more serves and one that got up to 10.
She added the teamwork was nice to see, and the confidence coming with it.
“They’re starting to believe they can do their stuff,” said Westgard.
“They’re starting to believe we want them to improve and not necessarily just win. The focus is not winning but to improve as a person personally and as a team.”
As a group they learned a few tips from other teams that can help their overall games.
“We learned what we needed to work on,” said Westgard.
“Some of things that other teams are doing that maybe we are just a little behind on that we don’t have experience with. It looked like some of the teams had more game play experience with, more touches. We had a couple of instances where we’re still surprised when the ball comes over and once we get a few more games under our belt that won’t happen.”
Middle Pacey Strangling Wolf thought the team played well, and the positivity on the court has helped the players immensely in their performance.
“There’s a few girls like me, I’m new this year, and we’ve welcomed each other with open arms,” said Strangling Wolf.
“We did pretty good this weekend, it was fun. Sometimes we say it’s really not about winning, it’s just about having fun and play as hard as you can and when we’re on the best we have contests who can hit the hardest and who can serve the longest.”
According to boys head coach Darrell Hargrove, the boys last place finish was no indication of how the team played as they played strong at many positions.
“Overall not bad at all,” said Hargroves.
“Result-wise it’s a little bit hard to say, we finished last but that’s not how we played. The boys, being inexperienced players have grown so much already. They’ve figured out the system, what their job is and started to execute a lot more this weekend.”