Area Teams Compete At Volleyball Jamboree

The Elgin Public/Pope John, Clearwater/Orchard and Elkhorn Valley volleyball teams had their final preseason preparation Monday night before the start of the 2018 campaign.

"What's great about the (Volleyball) Jamboree is you can get all the bugs worked out and the jitters out before the first game," commented EPPJ volleyball coach Tina Thiele-Blecher. "It was definitely good to come out and play. It's different than a practice and that's the biggest thing. We got the little things down now and we're good to go."

At Elgin, the Lady Wolfpack and Lady Falcons competed against each other and Laurel.

"We had moments where we did really well," stated Elkhorn Valley volleyball coach Emily Vaughn. "We need to get our passes a little bit more accurate. We didn't pass as well as I would have liked. We had some good touches at the net to slow stuff down, but serve receive broke down a little bit. I was pleased with our serving and we did a lot of things well for the first time out."

In the first match, EPPJ split with Laurel, 1-1.

"Our serving in the first set was ugly, Yikes," Thiele-Blecher spoke. "We missed eight serves and we pride ourselves on better serving."

The second match saw the Lady Falcons sweep the Lady Bears, 2-0.

EPPJ and Elkhorn Valley split the final match of the evening, 1-1.

"The girls need to work on our competitiveness," Vaughn noted. "I want to see more spirit out of them on the court and we need to communicate, communicate, communicate. We were a very quite team and no one was being very vocal. We'll just have to work on that."

The Lady Cyclones hosted Madison at Orchard in their final scrimmage before Thursday's opener. 

Three of the four Antelope County teams begin the regular season Thursday. OC and Elkhorn Valley travel to West Holt for a 5 p.m. tri-match, while EPPJ goes to Lutheran High Northeast for a 5 p.m. match.

"We're going to watch a little bit of game tape and I think we need to move our feet a little more, get low on defense, transition faster and work on our attack game," Thiele-Blecher said. "We kept hitting it to the same spot every time and teams are going to start to pick up on that. We're going to work on those things."

"We need to stay more consistent in the back-court," Vaughn concluded. "It all comes from each other and talking to each other and believing in each other. I think we can get a little bit more offense going once we do that."