After a rough preseason with only four wins and 15 losses, the varsity volleyball team hopes to learn from their mistakes and apply their competitive skills into district season. 

“We haven’t really played any games that are weak competition at all. We’ve definitely won some against good teams but we’ve also lost ones we probably should’ve won,” Coach Ryan, AP English III teacher and volleyball coach, said. “So our record doesn’t necessarily reflect the type of plays we’ve had during the preseason.” 

With this year’s varsity team consisting of two sophomores, five seniors and seven juniors, the team works harder at every game for the win. Junior Nyla Ruffin feels that as a varsity rookie she has to put in twice the amount of work. 

“We’ve been working hard trying to play each game and taking it one day at a time. I think every game is a learning experience, so what we struggle with in games we take back to practice and try to do it better,” Ruffin said.

Although the girls didn’t do as well as they thought they could during the preseason, senior Trinity Mongare looks at their losses from a different perspective. 

“We’re using this time as an opportunity to work on what we need to work on before the season starts and so far we’ve been doing really well with that even though it hasn’t been showing in our games,” Mongare said. “We’ve been working on a lot of things that we think will be beneficial to making us get a run on playoffs in the season.”

Both players predict the team will be ready to go against their most competitive opponents like Granbury, Birdville and South Grand Prairie based on preseason experiences. 

“We should be ready for when the season starts. Our coaches are trying to push us to match the intensity level is and build our skills from there,” Ruffin said. 

The next district season game will take place in Seguin on Tuesday, Sept. 17 at 6:30 p.m.

“We talk about taking care of the teams we need to take care of and that really starts Friday night,” Coach Ryan said. “Granbury matches up with us pretty well and it’s really hard to play Granbury, so if we can get a win there, it’ll really start us on the right track moving forward.”