The HHS varsity volleyball team doesn’t have any seniors this year, which means that the juniors on the team are having to step up and lead the team with less experience under their belts than the typical leaders of the team.
The season officially began on August 31, with the team beating McCook in five sets and the juniors on the team showing the impact they can have. Juniors on the team are Cece Beahm, Hope Kohmetscher, Kaylee Kadow, Kamri Adler, and Kyla Rickert. Coach Dave Hepner said that the main way they have shown leadership isn’t always visible to those outside of the team.
“They have to take more of a leadership role than they would have in the past, being juniors, not having any seniors on the team that are playing varsity level,” Hepner said. “They’ve had to do a lot more recruiting of kids to come to open gyms and taking on leadership roles with getting jerseys, and t-shirts, and all the behind-the-scenes stuff done by seniors usually.”
Although being older and having more experience usually helps with leading, sometimes people are just natural leaders and once put in that position they make it work. That is how many of the juniors on the team seem to feel and how they have acted so far.
“I don’t think it’s been more difficult,” junior Kamri Adler said. “We have always been able to lead, it’s just now we’re up there and everyone looks to us for help and guidance.”
One of the main benefits of having juniors lead the team now is that next year they will know what they are doing even more. Along with that consistency in leadership may come consistency in games and practices, as well as the culture of the program.
“That was one of the things that we were really looking forward to this year when we found out that we didn’t have any seniors,” junior Cece Beahm stated. “It was unfortunate, but it was [great] knowing that we could change it into a mold that we wanted it to be.”
Hepner has also seen that excitement of having two years to lead the team.
“I think that is one of the biggest things, they having taken on a theme of ‘It starts with us’ so they are really excited about changing the culture and they have really bought in,” Hepner said. “We are doing a lot of things with building the camaraderie up with the girls and trusting the girl next to you.”
Even though the oldest people on the team are juniors, they have still been playing for a long time. All but Kadow have been playing since their freshman year, and she only didn’t play because of transferring to HHS and being ineligible. Given that amount of time spent playing, the only thing that had to be worked on was cohesiveness.
“I don’t think we changed the game plan much, just trying to get more reps, and trying to get more timing, and things like that is the one thing we’re trying to focus on most.” Hepner said.
Without seniors on the team, and only five juniors, the majority of the volleyball ends up being sophomores. The sophomores on the team have helped with the leadership by being open to listening to the juniors and understanding that it takes time to rebuild a program, especially with a young core of players.
“I feel like we have a lot of girls that want to help change it also, and since we’re not seniors, we haven’t cut it off completely to sophomores helping us, because they are the future of our program,” Beahm said. “It seems like everybody’s been pretty even keel with it, not been too frustrated with trying to establish a new leadership on our team.”
The team has high expectations this year and next year, building around a group of young players and creating the team that the players want to create.
“We know that when we truly work together we can do great things. We just have to stay consistent with everything like we have been the past couple of weeks,” Adler said. “We have just put in the time, now we all have to do is control ourselves and play our game that we know how to play.”
The next home volleyball game is Saturday, October 7, against Columbus.
