First season Junior Varsity volleyball has once again come to an end. Both the girls and the boys team have worked hard all season, hoping to see some great results and make the panthers proud.

The boys’ team is small in number with only nine players. However, the team is very “powerful” as the Junior Varsity boys’ coach Thawit Piakpia states. “We have three eighth grader so the team is somewhat inexperienced. One thing I am really impressed with is the team’s good sportsmanship. When they first played together at the beginning of the season, the students adjusted well to become a strong team.”

The boys’ team came in fifth in the tournament. They were not quite ready on Sunday morning, since they arrived late and had to immediately due to the traffic. When asked about the team’s performance, coach Thawit says, “we were having quite a hard time in the first two matches since we didn’t have time to warm up and the other teams are pretty strong.” Coach Thawit adds that “in the afternoon, we tried to do our best and get the rankings out of our mind. As a result, we won the last two matches, which brought us to fifth place.”

The girls’ team was “strong in their unique way” as the Junior Varsity girl’s coach Gade Romary puts it. The team got third due to a “change in format” that caught the team off guard. She also says that the team didn’t get to practice often. The team went from “three practices down to two practices” because “they wanted to tryout for other sports.” Coach Gade adds that she is a little disappointed that the tryouts “overlapped the practices” right before the tournament causing the team to “lose some form.”

When asked about the girls’ team’s performance, coach Gade shares that the team “played very well, and everyone improved tremendously. We were disappointed as we did not get to play the 2nd place team in the tournament. The performance was very good. JV is part of the building process, and these players are good enough for Varsity now.”

Both teams tried to the best of their abilities and put in everything into the race from start to finish. Although both teams did not win the race, it was still a memorable volleyball season.

Jeff F