The women’s volleyball team is well on their way to finishing their regular season and playing in the post-season tournament, but first they must compete in a few more Metropolitan Interscholastic Conference (MIC) match-ups. The team is scheduled to play MIC rivals Terre Haute North and Terre Haute South on Saturday, Oct. 9 at Terre Haute North High School. The Hounds are to play Terre Haute South at 9:30 a.m. and Terre Haute North at 2:00 p.m.

Assistant Head Coach Samantha Goebel said, “These matches do carry more weight than typical tournament matches because Terre Haute North and South are MIC matches for us.”

Goebel said the tournament is better than most in terms of its length. “This tournament is not as long of a day.  Usually, we play four matches at a tournament so it requires lots of physical energy and focus from the players.”

However, she said that the team would still need to focus in order to win their games that day. “Anytime you play more than one match in a day it requires the players to really come into the day with an attitude and mind set to take care of business the second they come onto the court,” Goebel said. “The players can get both physically and mentally tired playing two matches, but they just have to learn to push through it.”

Captain and Senior Sophie May said that the team has improved since the start of the season and are ready for these two competitions. “We have really improved on the mental aspect of our game,” May said via email. “We still need work executing some things, but we now have the focus to achieve those new goals.”

“The team’s greatest strength and weakness is each other,” May said. “We all feed off of each other’s energy so much; if one person is having a great game, then we all play well. But by that same token, one person can really bring down the whole team down.”

May is confident in her team’s ability to pull a couple of wins out of their last few games. She said, “I think we will really head in a good direction since we have strengthened our mental game to a point where we can stay focused on doing our own responsibilities, so we can all work together as a team.” By Alex Mackall <[email protected]>