The Warriors volleyball team competed in their own invite last weekend. For the first time in school history, the team came out on top as champions of the Warriors Invite. Going three for three, the Warriors came out of this tournament with wins over Papillion LaVista, Elkhorn North, and finally Lincoln Southwest. The Warriors didn’t give up a single set all weekend. Of these three games, senior Ashlyn Paymal was once again the Warriors stand out player.
“It’s a really good win,” Paymal said. “It’s a really good feeling and it definitely gains our confidence to know that we can come out here and beat these teams that everyone is really head to head with this season. It’s a good feeling to win this tournament this late in the season.”
Head Coach Andrew Wehrli believes that this string of wins is enough to get his team back on their feet after a tough loss to Pius X last week.
“It’s awesome. Girls played amazing today. We had kind of a rough week. Earlier this week, we ran into a Pius team with a kid who just was fantastic and this match gave us a chance to reset things.”
Over the span of the weekend, Paymal had 16 digs and a total of 38 kills. So far, the Creighton commit has been an imperative part of this team. She will undoubtedly continue to play her role as the team moves towards a potential run at the state championship.
“We have exactly three weeks left until the season’s done for the state championship,” said Paymal. “So we’re really just pushing in practice and in games. Andrew (Wehrli) called today a practice day to just get out there, work hard, and make sure every single rep is important and counting towards the end of the season goals.”
After a long season, practices must become tedious. Especially considering the fact the Warriors are ranked second in the state currently and have hopped around the top 5 all season. For now, Paymal is trying to stay focused in practice and remember the end goal of her and her team.
“We’re really focused in practice right now,” Paymal said. “This past week has been like a work week, and it’s been really important to, like, gain our reps and stuff. And we’ve definitely done a lot of, like, conditioning stuff to get us to these really pressuring moments and being able to handle moments like this.”
As they approach the road towards the state championship, Wehrli has some strong opinions about how he can get his team ready. Although this win was incredibly big for team morale, Coach Wehrli does have some concerns about the focus of his team with homecoming right around the corner.
“We’ve got to build on what we did this week,” Wehrli said. “I think the biggest concern I have personally is homecoming next week, because unfortunately, our metro tournament conflicts with every homecoming event. We just have to stay focused on what’s important right now. Because if we can do that and build momentum in, I think we have a real good shot of winning the whole thing.”
While Wehrli tries to keep his team focused and pushing, he has some things that he will try to keep at the forefront of his players minds.
“I think the biggest thing is just the cultural piece of it,” Wehrli said. “We do a lot of good technical things. We struggle maintaining consistency, because our momentum doesn’t allow us to do that. So we’ve been really intentional about communication, about I think you saw our bench today. They were wild the whole day, celebrating more, putting others first, making sure we’re celebrating other people’s successes before our own. I know everybody wants to hear me say, we need to pass better or do this or that. The truth is, we’re good enough to win this, we just don’t regulate momentum well enough.”
