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Lady Cats gearing up for volleyball action

The Lady Bobcat volleyball team is rearing to go after spending their summer working incredibly hard with open gyms, weight room work, camps and scrimmages.

Head coach Shannon Hill said she was excited for the season back in June.

"We have a wonderful set of upperclasswomen who lead by example and lift our underclasswomen up," she said. "Each day they are pushing each other to better players and teammates. Its so fun being a coach when you see so much love and passion for the game in your gym daily."

There are only two seniors on the squad this year, Kelly Johnson and Jaden Schierkolk, but Hill said they bring their passion each day and are great leaders on the court.

The junior class consists of five athletes who, together with the seniors, show up daily and work hard to be the best they can be for their teammates.

Hill said three returning varsity players will play significant roles on the team, Sesi Jensen, Ashley McPhie and Kaylee DeVries, along with Dani Jo Pebbles, whom Hill says has really stepped up as a setter.

She said there is also a promising set of sophomores who will see some varsity time this year and 12 freshmen that make up the third team that are eager to learn and are showing much improvement.

"I am very excited for our program this season as we have girls who love to play volleyball," she said, "and a varsity team who shows great chemistry and promise."

The team spent last weekend at a pre-season tournament in Riverton, and Hill said it was a good stepping stone to examine where they are as a team and things they need to work on.

"We only won one match in the tournament, against Big Piney," she said, "but the lessons come in the losses."

They played well against Powell, Lander, Kemmerer, Cody and Wind River, but just couldn't pull off a win.

"These pre-season tournaments are perfect though for me as a coach to really see what needs to be worked on and tweaked," she said. "We, as a whole program, really focus on improvement as a process and this tournament was all part of that process.

"We now will have a better focus at practice in order to improve in certain areas. There were a lot of great things happening this weekend as well, which was exciting to see. Our offense is really coming along, and our serve/receive passing was much better than it has been in the past.

"Our JV team played well also this weekend, beating both Big Piney and Wind River. We have very promising players on the JV team as well, so I am excited for them to get more experience this season."

Information on Tuesday evening's varsity matches against Powell will appear in next week's paper along with the outcome of the Border Wars in Cody this weekend.

The JV team will be holding their AceFest tournament this Friday starting at 2 p.m. in the high school gym.

 

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