Volleyball team’s hard work rewarded by victories

With an all new Freshman team coached by Aragon graduate Kelsey Stiles, and a promising Varsity and JV team with a series of victories under their belts, volleyball is the sport to watch this season.

Mintonette was the name first given to William G. Morgan’s fusion of hand ball and tennis created on February 9, 1895 at the Massachusetts YMCA. The name was later changed to Volleyball to describe the action of creating a volley between the opposing players.

While volleyball may not be the most known sport at Aragon it certainly has the attention of the world. It is the seventh most popular sport in the world it also enjoys the title of the national sport of Sri Lanka.

Practice for these successful teams involves “conditioning, skill development, scrimmaging and improving skills,” says JV coach and PE teacher Linda Brown. As far as practice goes, “We run two miles at the beginning of practice … and then we practice serving and passing for a while, and then we end by scrimmaging,” says senior Erika Brinkley.

As said conditioning and preparing to perform at your best is key in volleyball, moves such as the spike or set require tremendous amounts of energy and must be done for three or more games per match. Also, countering and being on the defense can be difficult; in a match against the San Mateo Bearcats one player found them self returning a spike and then doing a backwards roll to break the momentum.

Volleyball can be a very challenging sport to play and equally challenging to coach. As the coach of the Freshman-Sophomore team, Brown has the challenge to break in the new recruits and show them how high school volleyball is played.

Annette Gennaro, on the other hand, coaches the Varsity team and has the benefit of coaching already experienced players. However that also means she will face more experienced teams when it comes to matches. According to Brown, the teams that pose a threat are “Burlingame, Carlmont and MA [Menlo-Atherton].” However, to prepare for upcoming matches against such teams, the coaches have developed excellent practice programs.

In the September 23 match against the San Mateo Bearcats, the JV and freshman teams scored many points due to the plethora of spikes, however when it came to Varsity the competition was taken up a notch.

The scores in the matches rarely deviated from each other, while the Dons would score a point the Bearcats would come right back scoring another till the match would reach game point where the winner would be decided on which team could score first. Such tension was not only shown by the players but the crowd as well.

Although they did not win their first match against San Mateo for the first time in five years, the Dons did gain a victory against the Mills Vikings on during the September 7 match at Mills. For the first game the Vikings seemed to lose control, often returning the ball only to have it go out of the boundary line and not being able to recover from the point loss witch eventually led Aragon to jump ahead by eleven points, the largest gap in the entire match.

In the second game however the Vikings showed signs of recovery, staying within a range of about three or four points, but the Dons stuck with their lead and gained another victory.

The third game would be the final with Aragon clinching the game and overall victory. This victory however was not achieved easily, only after tying the game up 24-24 Mills then scored another point to make it game point for them 25-24.
The Dons then came back with a 26-26 tie point only to go to 27-27 and finally beating Mills by a two point victory of 29-27. “The first two games were good, the last one shouldn’t have come to that [tie] but at least we won” says Junior Ariel Mangum.

The players generally feel positive and confident about the season, even though they know that upcoming games against Burlingame and Carlmont will be tough.

With the success of the team the coaches say they will not change much in terms of practice and direction of the team. With a solid formula for winning, the team is mainly building on last year’s skill and emphasizing teamwork.

Magnum says, “We work really well together. We have rough patches of course [but] most teams do.”

Junior Jamie Moore agrees, saying “[the season] is going pretty [well], [but] we’re still getting to know each other as players.” The goals of the team largely remain the same, their aim is to “have fun, win and play to win” according to Brown.