Women’s volleyball looks strong in first home match

By Krystal Lau,
Bluedevilhub.com Staff–

The DHS women’s varsity volleyball team is off to a promising start, with a decisive 3-0 win against Vacaville Christian High (25-22, 25-23, 25-19). Played in front of a full house, the Friday, August 29 game was the first home game of the season.

Starting off slow, Davis lagged behind as Vacaville Christian began to take the lead. However, by the end of the first set Davis caught up with a few smashing serves, causing energy to run high in the gym.

“We had a solid debut,” senior Maya Gilardi said, “It’s only going to go uphill from here.”

By the second set, players began to work together cohesively. As many new girls are on the team, Coach Julie Crawford notes that strong teamwork will take some time.

“We’re really working on trusting each other a lot, trying to build consistency so they know what to expect from each other when they step onto the court,” Crawford said.  “We’re going to play some tough teams this season so we’re just trying to raise the level of our game play and be able to compete with the better teams.”

Breakout performances were accomplished by Davis’s outside hitters, who hit in the 400th percentile, and swung well at the ball.

“I felt we did decent for our first home game. There’s a lot of things we’re still working on but as far as the first time you’re stepping onto a court as a team together, coming out with a win I’m very pleased,” Crawford said. “We started serving tough towards the end of game three. It took us a while to get warmed up but I thought we finished strong and played some of our best volleyball towards the end.”

Nevertheless, Crawford remains wary of becoming overconfident, and is always on the lookout for improvement.

“But overall it definitely highlights some of the things we need to work on, some of our strengths and weaknesses. We have a lot of work to do in order to continue winning,” Crawford said.

Senior Rebecca Monachello agrees that the team took a while to warm up, but is satisfied with their overall performance. For future games, she hopes to work on hitting her block up in time and improving on the whole.

“I think we did well for the first game; I think we started out slow but then we picked it up and performed well altogether,” Monachello said. “I think we’re going to do awesome.”

The challenge ahead is daunting however. Due to the rearrangement and reconfiguration of the league, DHS will be playing many unfamiliar teams. They will have to overcome the obstacle of competing against teams in which the teams’ coaching style or individual players remain unknown. Senior Kimmy Siu believes with greater teamwork they can manage a successful season.

“I think we need to make our serves, communicate with each other, and build a stronger dynamic within the team because there are a lot of new girls,” Siu said. “As a team progressively we did a better job blocking throughout the game and I think we’re getting some really good swings from the back row.”