Volleyball team making strides

By Mackenzie Madison
<mmadison@hilite.org>

“Rebounding” is not a common word used in volleyball, but that is exactly what the Carmel women’s team is doing. After a rough start to the season with five straight losses, the team is ready for a come back and are making great strides.“[This year] we had one less week of two a days than we usually do, so we weren’t really use to playing together yet, and we had a really tough schedule to start off with,” Paige Lloyd, senior and varsity volleyball player, said. The Indy Star blames the  team’s losses on the lack of senior players. “We can step up to any position coach wants us to play.” said Elizabeth Lucich, senior and varsity volleyball player, “It’s not like we’re lost without them, we’re just going to have to try really hard to fill their shoes.” Varsity volleyball coach, William Bastin, doesn’t look at it the same way. “I don’t think its such a ‘rough start’ to the season, if you look at the teams we played, they were very very tough teams, it a good gauge of finding out the things we need to work on.”

“We’re about midway through our season,” Bastin said, “so we need to fine tune some of the things we’ve been stressing from the beginning.”

The team has been optimistic against the tough teams, and learning from their mistakes. “[Playing tough teams is] an advantage, its a reality check,” said Lloyd, “it helps the team focus on what we need to work on.” The number one thing Bastin stresses that his team needs to work on is controlling every aspect of the game they can. “The biggest thing for us is taking care of things on our side of the court, when we do that we’ll be fairly successful.” Lloyd, almost word for word agrees. “The biggest thing is coming together as a team, we started off the season as individuals,” said Lloyd, “but now we are becoming one team with one goal.”

But the team has not been too far behind the teams they have played. “The matches we have won against these good teams have been two of three points,” Bastin said, “so we have showed the potential to play with these teams.”

“We’ve always been competitive with every team we’ve played and now we’re learning how to finish games. Our coach calculated our statistics for games lost and he figured out that on average we loose by 2.7 points.”

With State and sectionals coming up, the girls are working harder and harder. “Every team has a chance when it comes to the State tournament. Its a time when the food teams stand out, and our main goal, for us, is where we stand at the end of the season,” said Lloyd. “I think that just since we got a taste of State,” Lucich said, “now we’re going to want it more than anyone else.”

The team will have time to get ready for State though with plenty of practice during tournaments, including a tournament played Oct. 19 at 9 am at Carmel. “We have a couple tough tournaments coming up,” said Lloyd, “and we are gong to approach them as if they are the State tournament.”

“Overall, in the last couple weeks,” said Bastin, “we’ve been playing a lot better, more as a team.”