The Girls Varsity volleyball team dives into the season with an undefeated Saturday at the sixteen team Sutter High School Invitational. 

Junior Sarah DeSart expressed excitement for her team’s accomplishments.

“We actually won the entire tournament at the Sutter High School invitational!” said DeSart. “It was awesome.”

Girls Varsity volleyball coach Matt MacDonald explained the team’s performance at the tournament.

“We did really well,” said MacDonald. “We ended up going undefeated. We won six games and we won the championships. It was really cool because we had a very difficult week last week, so it was great to kind of ride the ship, so to speak.”

Senior Liah Fuller mentioned successful plays that helped with their success.

“I felt the team did amazing,” Fuller said. “We truly pushed through with only nine players and surprised the other teams there. Our serving was exceptional along with our communication with each other and many more points.”

DeSart explained some of the ways the team has been practicing and preparing for games.

“We recently had a practice where we just went over hitting mechanics, and I feel like our hitting has grown a lot stronger because of it,” DeSart said. “We’ve recently been running a slide, which is where our middle hitter runs to her right and hits it across the court, so that’s a pretty cool play.”

MacDonald conveyed the team’s best advantages.

“I thought that we were probably the best serving team at the tournament,” said MacDonald. “That led to our ability to score a lot of points. We had nine players just because of some COVID protocols. Everybody played, everybody had a role, everybody embraced what we needed them to do to be successful.”

Freshman Aly Vieira pointed out some things that the team could improve on.

“The team…  could improve on talking more; calling out plays,” she said. “I really am confident for the rest of the season. As long as each person does their job we will do great: good passes, good sets, and good spikes. [Then] we are set.”

Junior Kaylee Vieira agreed that the team could communicate better.

“The one thing that I think we really need to work on is communication on the court,” she said. “For example, yelling at the setter to ‘set me’.”

K. Vieira expressed some plays during the game that she found particularly notable.

“One specific play that I thought was incredible was Aly (my sister) setting the ball to Liah for a slide,” she said. “Aly and Liah have been working on this in practice and they thought to give it a shot in one of our games. So Aly back set it to Liah and Liah came down with a hard kill right in the middle of the court. Another play that I thought was awesome was the last game to see who wins the championship; it was just a long rally till Liah hits the ball at the other team Libro and it tips off of her hands. That was the end of it, [and] we were so excited! We got first!”

The team has high hopes for the rest of the season.

I am very confident that we will have a great season no matter what happens,” said Fuller. “I feel that we are already really close as a team this early on. I can’t wait to see how much more we can progress from here on out. Hoping to bring home a banner this year!”

K. Vieira conveyed determination for the success of the team this season.

“I am very very confident about the rest of the season,” she said. “The reason… is because of how far we have come and how hard we have been working. We are pretty much always focused and ready to win.”