Morgan Hill – Going into her 12th season as head coach, Laura
Coleman will rely on a mixture of young talent and senior
leadership in charting the path to success for the Live Oak girls
volleyball team.
Morgan Hill – Going into her 12th season as head coach, Laura Coleman will rely on a mixture of young talent and senior leadership in charting the path to success for the Live Oak girls volleyball team.
“I’ve only had practice for a week and it’s a little scary right now,” Coleman said. “All the players are very shy and we don’t have any loudmouths.”
Considering school started on Tuesday, Coleman is confident that team leaders will emerge in the run up to their first scheduled game against Milpitas at 6:30pm Sept. 11.
The lady Acorns will participate in the Santa Cruz Varsity Tournament at Santa Cruz High School tomorrow and Sunday amongst 20 teams from all over the Central Valley and Central Coast.
“The first tournament of the year sets the pace for what you need to work on,” Coleman said. “This tourney will tell us where we’re at.”
Until school started the Varsity and JV teams practiced together, but now they practice separately allowing the respective teams to start building relationships.
Senior Ashley Daw, 17, is looking forward to getting to know all the girls on the team.
“We get along great so far,” Daw said. “We’re having fun, and I think we’ll have success once we get to know each other more.”
With only nine players on the roster this year, Coleman plans on utilizing the skills of every player.
“The reason were small is because Live Oak is getting smaller and smaller,” Coleman said. “We had 13 last year, but when you have so many it’s actually a lot harder to get them the playing time.”
Coleman said having a smaller squad should help in creating team unity.
“We’ve always had really good team spirit at Live Oak,” she said. “That wont be a problem but it will make practices faster and harder … when you have nine you can be more focused on skill stuff, and drills don’t take as long.”
Five of the nine players are returning lettermen who know what varsity volleyball is all about, Coleman said, still a player has yet to emerge as leader.
“I don’t know who the leaders will be,” she said. “Two girls will be good on the outside, and I’ll have four hitters so it will be more of a spread out offense.”
Two senior middle hitters, Arica Hernandez, 17 and Katie Armstrong, 17, are expected to have standout seasons.
“Before last season Arica had only played club ball at the Adrenaline Volleyball Club in Morgan Hill run out off Live Oak, and Katie played JV for her first playing experience last year,” Coleman said. “They have both improved like 500 percent.”
Hernandez is looking forward to competing against the better teams in the league, and getting to know her teammates more.
“Last year we had eight seniors and everyone knew each other really well,” Hernandez said. “But we went on a rafting trip two weeks ago on the American River as sort of a bonding trip and it was a lot of fun.”
Hernandez said the team has mostly been working on passing so far in practice.
Other young players to be on the lookout for are sophomore setter Jenna Robertson, sophomore outside hitter Annie Reyes-Ortiz, and junior outside hitter Alika Lau.
“This will be throwing (Robertson) into the fire, but she’s a gamer and she loves the competition,” Coleman said.
Lau and Reyes-0rtiz come with a lot of experience as they played club volleyball in San Jose, so they have all the game experience and are confident on the court, Coleman said.
Coming off a third place finish in the Mt. Hamilton division of the Blossom Valley Athletic League, Coleman is looking forward to playing Leland High School, where she used to coach.
“Leland and Westmont were the only two teams we lost to in league last year so I’d like to beat them,” she said. “In the last couple years we’ve lost to Leland, and its just always fun for me to play against them.”
