The No.1 Warriors took on the No.2 Papillion La Vista South Titans in a duel game on Tuesday Oct.1. These two teams have topped the leaderboards since the beginning of the season. They are big competitors and have already faced off twice this year. The first time they faced off the Titans swept the Warriors in just two sets, but the next time they met the Warriors came for vengeance and won 2-1. It is safe to say this was a very competitive match, but the Titans ended up coming out on top once again.
Sophomore setter Kherington Snider, played all three sets during this game and has gathered 313 assists throughout her season. Although she played well, she believes this game definitely shows the teams room for growth before the end of their season.
“We are using this loss as motivation to continue to get better as we do with all of our losses,” Snider said. “The most important games to us are the three at the end of November. Using situations like the Papio South game will help us be the most prepared team by the time state rolls around.”
Senior middle hitter, Liv Odvody, also played a key role in the match. She thought that there were many things the team did well even though they weren’t at their very best that night, but she sees room for improvement as well.
“I believe we did a good job at staying positive on the court. Obviously it wasn’t our best game, but even though we weren’t playing good we were still lifting each other up on the court,” Odvody said. “There was a lot that could’ve gone better, but mostly it was our organization on the court and terminating the ball. We also struggled to put their long service runs to a stop, which made it difficult for us to get caught back up later in the set.”
The team played very hard to try to fight back against Papio South. Especially in the last two sets, they were only two points away from the win both times. The last two sets both ended 23-25. The team could never quite take control of the game which ultimately led to their loss. This loss did move the team back to No.2 in the state but they will not let a ranking affect them.
“We have constantly bounced between the number one and number two spots this season. The rankings aren’t important to us, if anything we use it to drive us to be the best we can be. Being number one isn’t a priority until the end of the season at state because at the end of the day only one team can end number one,” Snider said.
These players know there are still ways the team can improve before getting to the climax of their season. These games help them learn more and more about what they are capable of and what there is to work on. Odvody believes this game was an important learning experience in order to get even better.
“After the game, we realized we needed to find an identity. An identity for a team means something they are known for and something that is a part of them, and they have with them every time they play. Some teams’ identities are their offense, defense, serving, etc, but we are working on making our identity being organized on the court at all times,” Odvody said.
Snider agrees with this improvement tactic as well. She also added some other ideas on what more they could work on to ensure they end up where they want to be in November. She believed a key point of their loss was that they never took control of the match, which led her to seek improvement there.
“We are going to get back in the gym and work to gain control of all of our future matches,” Snider said.
The team was forced to move on from this loss quickly because they had more exciting upcoming games in just the next few days. They would be flying to Arizona in order to compete in the Nike Tournament of Champions on Oct.4 and Oct.5 where they faced some big competition from teams around the country.
