This past Thursday, Westside’s varsity volleyball took on Omaha North at an away match. Westside won their first set of the match with a 17-25 score. In the second set, Omaha North fell short giving Westside the 6-25 second set win. For their third and final set, Westside took the win of 14-25 claiming their first away win of the season. Even with the win, Coach Bowers feels the team could’ve played better.

“Well I mean going into tomorrow we have a big Bellevue West tournament on Friday and Saturday,” Bowers said. “That’s where the top class A schools are. I feel like it maybe gotten the jitters out tonight. Do I feel we played up to the mentality like we did on Thursday against Bennington? No. It was great to get everybody on and off the bench. But, I feel like if we’re gonna compete this weekend we have to bring more, whether that’s mentally with our communication [or] with our aggressiveness.”

Coach Bowers wants to see how her team plays this weekend to determine who really wants to play.

”Yeah you could ask me now how it went and I’m a little frustrated,” Bowers said. “Ask me after this weekend because that’s really when I’m gonna find out who wants to compete, who wants to start, [and] who has that monster inside of them that wants to come out.” 

Seeing both the pros and cons of the match, Coach Bowers was glad to see her libero, Marissa Koch, playing the way she wants her team play this weekend.

“I feel like Marissa Koch, our libero, she makes everyone around her feel comfortable,” Bowers said. “She leads, she’s talking all the time, she’s somebody I can rely on and so can her teammates. She’s somebody that comes in and I know she’s gonna do her job every night, she’s gonna do it every point, every set, every match. She was our most consistent player, she dug balls, she was covering kids, she was doing exactly what she should’ve done as a libero. She was a great leader for us tonight.” 

Marissa Koch, being the key player of this match, feels her team did well but also sees room for improvement as a whole. 

“I feel like we could have done a little better,” Koch said. “I feel like we underestimated them, thinking they weren’t gonna be good. So we didn’t play as well as we should have, I think we communicated a lot which will help us tomorrow and we just went for every ball. Because random balls were coming over the net that you wouldn’t expect. We picked a lot of them up, that will help us a lot during our tournament.”

Coach Bowers sees this win as an awakening of bigger and tougher matches the team will play at their Bellevue West tournament.

“We’re first in our pool [and] Millard North is the defending state Class A champions,” Bowers said. “They didn’t lose a whole lot. I know a bunch of those kids on that team that are very good. But, you know what, they’re girls, it’s the beginning of their season, and this is the time if you want to catch one of those teams you got to do it at this tournament.” 

Westside varsity volleyball will play against Millard North, Millard South, and Lincoln East on Friday, August 30th.