The Westside girls volleyball team is back on the court. After an upsetting end to last year’s season, a quarterfinal loss to Grand Island, the team resets and continues to aim high. With their first event a jamboree on Thursday, Aug.21. The jamboree will be held at Papillion-LaVista South High School. The Warriors will face off against Papio South and ENHS.
This year the Warriors focus on the game, with an emphasis on performance during the match. Junior Jayden Swenson, a right side, talks about how the team has been gearing up for a strong start to the season.
“This year the team has been preparing by doing lots of drills with competition and scrimmaging to prepare for game-like play, ” Swenson said.
Swenson comments on not only the competitive spirit of the team but also the camaraderie.
“This season I am most excited to play with everyone and get to know them more,” Swenson said.
Head coach Andrew Wehrli thinks that the team has a good group of young athletes.
“I was actually thinking about it today, just how when you have a really good group of young people, how it makes you wanna show up and be a better coach” said Wehrli. “So, I mean, that’s actually the thing I’m looking forward to the most this season.”
Wherli is very excited for this upcoming season and would really like to make it to Lincoln. He sees the Westside team fitting in as tough competitors this year.
“Your class A is a little bit top heavy in the sense that there’s maybe two or three teams that should be a little better than everyone else, but there’s not a generational team in class A this year,” Wehrli said. “I’d like to think that by the end of the year we’ll be working our way to state semi finals and hopefully we’ll see where we go from there.”
The Westside team lost many influential players last year but we still have a lot of great players returning to the program. Wehrli thinks that this will make them a better team overall this year.
“I think it’s a good thing in the sense that our returning seniors took in all the lessons that we learned last year and we fell short of our goals last year and I’m confident that this group of seniors really gathered some good leadership lessons and also just a hunger to come back to prove themselves,” Wehrli said.
With their first event just around the corner the Warriors are setting up for success with their eyes on taking state. Catch their jamboree at Papillion-LaVista South High School on Thursday, Aug.21. at 5pm.
