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After a whirlwind of a season, the Mead girls volleyball team heads to state.
Early last week, the Colorado High School Activities Association, or CHSAA, announced that the state volleyball championships would be held in Colorado Springs on May 12-13.
As with all other high school sports programs, the Mead girls volleyball was forced to adapt to an unusual season.
One week into the season, the team was quarantined and had to reschedule several of their games. This caused the team to have to play as many as five games in a week, eliminating the time for practice in between games.
“Not having practices between games has been very challenging because there wasn’t time to work on the things we needed to but also it forced the girls to make changes and adapt on the fly and really work on being mentally tough,” said Coach Mikayla Martinez.
“We were quarantined after our first game of the season and had to reschedule a lot of our games. Within a span of two weeks, we had around ten games, many of them were doubleheaders, and some games we didn’t have our full roster because of conflicts with the club. We adapted to the challenges by concentrating on one game at a time, and having trust and confidence in the team as a whole, no matter who we were playing or who was on the court,” Anna Parmer, senior, said.
The entire team knew, going into the season, that at any moment the season could be over due to the pandemic. They set to make the most of the season from the beginning and committed to putting their all into each game and practice, Martinez said.
Parmer credits part of this season’s success to the length of time the team has played together.
“Many of us have been playing together for a very long time now, so we have a very strong bond as a team,” she said.
The 14-player team plays in the first round of the state championship on May 12. Despite the shortened and challenging season, the team ranks sixth in the state and holds a win-loss record of 11-3.
They have high hopes of making it far in the tournament but are more focused on giving it all they have and leaving it all on the court.
“Our hopes for state this year is to go in and come out with no regrets. We know that nothing is guaranteed and that every team is good. We have been to state two years already and we’ve experienced just about everything. Our hopes for this year at state is to go out every game win or lose playing as hard as we possibly can so that no matter the outcome we can come out saying we gave it our all,” said Senior setter Hailee Martinez.
