By JUSTIN KANE
Tonight the girls start the Dig Pink tournament at the Orlando Sports Center.
With some of the best talent in years, the girls volleyball team looks to win the state championship and send the seniors off on a high note.
“[Our goal] is to make a deep run in the play-offs and to win the state championship,” third year head coach Mike Ladewski said.
Kristin Faust leads the team as both a role model and a player. Prior to the start of the season, Faust committed to Clemson University.
“She makes it better when we mess up,” senior teammate Rachael Mason said. “When the set is bad, she’s there to fix it and to make sure that we make it better.”
Standing with a 9-4 (3-1 in district play) record the girls are ranked third in the Orlando Sentinel Super Six.
“So far our team has shown brilliance,” Ladewski said. “We are a work in progress but expect to be extremely competitive every night.”
So far against top match ups the girls are 1-1. The most recent victory was against the Lady Titans of Olympia on Sept. 29. The girls won the game in three sets.
In the win against Winter Park sophomore Kendall Sexton set a season high five blocks in the match. The girls took the game in three sets.
After a victory on Aug. 31, against district foe University, the team came home to another district match
against Timber Creek.
The Lady Wolves took the first two sets 25-14 and 25-23, and looked like they were going to take the game in three sets when they took the lead in the third. After a timeout, the momentum switched and the girls outlasted Timber Creek and took the third set with a score of 25-22. It looked like the girls would win the fourth set and force a fifth set, but fell short 16-25.
“We could have done better,” Sexton said. “We had very low attitudes, and we weren’t confident.”
After the Timber Creek match, the girls played in the Orlando Volleyball Academy Invite at Orlando Sports Complex. They started off the first night winning both matches against Holy Trinity Episcopal and Fernandina Beach. The next day they lost the first two matches against Lake Howell and Lake Mary, but finished the day with a win against Lake Brantley ending the Invite with a 3-2 record.
“The OVA tournament was a great opportunity to see some of the top competition in all of our matches,” Ladewski said. “We were competitive; it is up to us to go back and fix the small details that will enable our team to ultimately win
big tournaments like that.”
One key to the girls’ success is the rhythm they have from playing together outside of the school season.
“We know each other’s rhythm, and [we] don’t have to adjust to new people,” Faust said.