After a rough week one loss to Space Coast in which they lost all three sets, the One School Lions volleyball team came into the second week of the season looking for bounce-back wins. Unfortunately for the Lions, they were facing two tough opponents in Brush Arbor (Tuesday 9/12) and Liberty (Friday 9/15).
Brush Arbor had made the volleyball tournament finals the year prior, so the Lions knew they would have to give their all to have a chance of beating this juggernaut opponent.
Ultimately, their efforts fell short, as Brush Arbor swept the series 3-0.
Starting middle blocker and team co-captain Carli Combs, 12th grade, reflected on the team’s effort in the loss. Quoting Winston Churchill, Combs stated, “Attitude is a little thing that makes a big difference.” She continued, saying, “[The team thought], ‘oh, we are going to crush them,’ so we didn’t work as hard as we needed to secure the win… our attitude wasn’t in the right place.”
As the One School Lions volleyball team regrouped after their disappointing loss to Brush Arbor on Tuesday, they knew they couldn’t afford to dwell on the defeat. They had a short turnaround before their next challenging match against Liberty on Friday.
The practice after the loss was very intense according to the starting BM (back middle), co-captain Emma Vega, 12th grade. Vega recalled that “[t]he practice after our loss, Coach Elliott, Coach Joel, and his daughter, that plays at Winter Park volleyball, all coached us. They made the setters practice with basketballs because they are heavier, which made their hand movements quicker and more accurate. We worked on back row and spiking as well, calling out who had the ball and diving for it to keep it in the air and not make it go everywhere.”
Even though they put in the extra effort in practice, they faced yet another loss, losing all three sets for the third time in a row. With the prospect of starting the season 0-4 a third of the way through the season becoming a very real possibility, the Lions knew they needed to regroup and refocus their efforts if they were going to break their losing streak and get their first victory.
Their next game was on Monday, 9/18 against the Deltona squad, who was also going into the game looking for their first win of the season.
Pushing through the hardships of starting the season at 0-3, the Lions started off the game strong, winning the first set 25-17. Winning their first set of the season seemed to give the Lions a huge boost of confidence as they went on to sweep the final two sets by scores of 25-9 and 25-18 respectively.
“It was really motivating and exciting when we won…it makes me feel like we have a better chance [to win] at our next games.” said Madelyn Payne, 11th grade
“Even though this is just our first win, we all have improved since the start of the season and grown together along the way.” said Avery Stepan, 10th grade.
“We’ve come a long way since we started, and the progress we’ve made is amazing.”
said Keegan Crandall, 10th grade.
Coming off of this much needed first win of the season, will the Lions feed off of their success in the upcoming games? Find out for yourself by supporting your team in person for their first away game as they face the Semi-Finalists from last year’s volleyball tournament, Temple.
Buy tickets to support your team in their next home game (check the newsletter for the link).
