Beth Peitzmeier has been teaching at Westside for 14 years as well as coaching volleyball. She has had experience coaching different levels of teams from junior high to freshman to Junior Varsity and Varsity. For the last two years, Peitzmeier has coached Varsity volleyball, but is now stepping down due to the fact that she will no longer be teaching at Westside.
Varsity’s new head coach, Korrine Bowers, has had experience coaching volleyball. Bowers began her coaching career by coaching club volleyball while she attended college and played volleyball for University of Nebraska Omaha.
In 2005, Bowers accepted her first high school coaching position at Gross Catholic, where she coached for six years. She then coached at Papillion-Lavista South and Skutt Catholic and is now transitioning to Westside as the head Varsity coach.
“I fell in love with volleyball when I went to a Marian volleyball camp. I got really involved in club volleyball and by the end of high school, I had a scholarship to UNO,” Bowers said.
Bowers chose to apply for the coaching position at Westside to try something different.
“I saw the job opening and felt like it was time to get back into it,” Bowers said. “I had never coached a class A school before as a head coach, and so that was something I wanted to challenge myself with.”
Even though new to the district, Bowers is passionate about Westside.
“When I went through the interview process, learning more about Westside and the opportunities you guys have as students and athletes as well as the education; this school is just amazing,” Bowers said. “You guys are just so lucky to have this place.”
Bowers is hopeful about the team’s performance this upcoming season.
“Some of these girls have never won a state championship; fortunately, with basketball winning this year, I’m going to have some kids on my team who know how to win and I’m going to use that to my advantage,” Bowers said. “I’m hoping to establish a whole new culture in the Westside volleyball program.”
Junior Jordan Bowen has been playing volleyball for eight years, and has played for Westside both in junior high and high school. Bowen is looking forward to the upcoming season.
“I think one of my biggest hopes for us as a team will be just about growing and developing the program and really setting what we want for future generations,” Bowen said. “Even if we don’t win at least we’re still improving; you can’t always measure improvement by wins.”
Sophomore Morgan Mumford has been playing volleyball for five years, four of those years for Westside. Mumford started off as nervous when learning that there would be a new coach.
“I was kind of nervous at first because I really love Ms. Peitzmeier and I thought she was a great coach; I didn’t know how the new coach would respond to the way our team is already, I didn’t know how different it would be,” Mumford said. “But after meeting her and going to some of the open gyms, I’m really excited, I think she’s going to be a really great coach.”
Mumford is curious in seeing how the team will unfold this upcoming season.
“It’s going to be interesting to see how [it] all comes together as the underclassmen start building up the team and becoming more in control,” Mumford said.
Mumford is anxious to obtain a better record for their season compared to last year.
“I’m really hoping our record can be really good this year and that we can come back and beat all the teams that beat us last year during districts,” Mumford said. “We played Marian and we actually were really close which is something that kind of shocked us; so I’m just hoping for a little miracle to happen and for us to beat Marian, I think it would be really unexpected and exciting.”
