BY OLIVIA BLANFORD & DANIELLE HOWARD
With many new team members, it took South’s JV volleyball team a while to get into the swing of things. In previous years the team was familiar with each other strengths and weakness, but this year the upperclassmen on JV had to welcome new members and learn a new team dynamic.
“This season was a hard in the beginning because we hadn’t really played together before and we didn’t really know each other that well,” Payton Dearmont, 11, said.
On Sept. 23rd the team participated in the Maize South JV Tournament. During their first game South played Goddard Eisenhower, these teams had met three times so far this season so it wasn’t hard for the teams to figure out Eisenhower’s game plan. South was up the entire game and it only took the team two sets to defeat Eisenhower.
In the second game South also dominated their competition. They defeated Wichita Heights in only two sets.
During the third game South was matched up with Andale, but the game took an unexpected turn.
“We let some of the mistakes we made drag us down too far and we never were able to recover,” Gabrielle Ramirez, 12, said.
South looked like a solid team that could possibly defeat Andale in the beginning, but due to their minor mistakes throughout, the game lead to Andale overpowering their play.
Even though South took a beating in their game with Andale they dusted themselves off and prepared for bracket play against Goddard. The volleyball team regained their momentum and defeated Goddard in only two sets.
South moved on to the championship match where they played Bishop Carroll. The girls prepared for the worst because of Carroll’s strength in previous seasons. They knew they were going to have to play their best game because Carroll is extremely good at finding openings in South defense and capitalizing on them.
The first set was a close game and the two teams went back and forth in scoring, but South still managed to win the set. During the second set South realized that they needed to take a lead early on and maintain a lead. The girls executed their plan and defeated Carroll in the second set.
“It felt so good to win because we beat Bishop Carroll and we lost to them last year in this tournament,” Ramirez said.
