Clear, 43° F
Growth was a continual message to the Powell Middle School seventh grade volleyball team this season, as a team with little experience entering the year saw a lot of promise despite earning only one …
This item is available in full to subscribers.
The Powell Tribune has expanded its online content. To continue reading, you will need to either log in to your subscriber account, or purchase a subscription.
If you are a current print subscriber, you can set up a free web account by clicking here.
If you already have a web account, but need to reset it, you can do so by clicking here.
If you would like to purchase a subscription click here.
Please log in to continue |
|
Growth was a continual message to the Powell Middle School seventh grade volleyball team this season, as a team with little experience entering the year saw a lot of promise despite earning only one victory.
“All of these girls came with very limited (time) playing volleyball,” coach Jodee Metzler said. “We were the only team that didn’t have at least one athlete who played AAU or some type of competitive volleyball in the offseason.”
She said that the team started from square one at the start of the season, learning the court, rules and basic skills of the game before putting all of that knowledge into play.
“The growth these girls made was tremendous,” Metzler said. “They were competing with teams at the end of the season that beat us pretty badly at the start. Now that they have the knowledge and basic skills, they can start to play real volleyball and compete with teams that previously had these experiences.”
The one win for the Cubs came in the third game of the season when they defeated Thermopolis, with the team continuing to battle throughout the season despite ending with a 1-13 record.
“Watching girls improve is the greatest joy a coach can have,” Metzler said.
She said that in seventh grade serving is one of the most frustrating skills to learn for most of the girls.
“All of these girls pushed themselves in and out of practice to become better servers, and all of them scored at least one point in a game,” Metzler said. “Watching this self-satisfaction of being able to do a skill you were so frustrated with is a coach’s joy.”
She said volleyball is one of the first competitive sports that most of the middle school girls played at that level, and she hopes they took valuable lessons from the season that they will use going forward.
“I hope they learned the value of hard work, teamwork and pushing yourself to do better,” Metzler said. “When you don’t have a winning season, you need to learn to look at what you can work on and what you did well.”
Metzler said now that these girls have the fundamentals of the sport, she knows they will continue to grow and see greater success.
