Inspired by Thunder Mountain softball\u2019s state championship this spring, Falcons volleyball is trying for a first of their own: a Region V title and a trip to the state tournament.<\/p>\n
Thunder Mountain, who split two games with Juneau-Douglas and beat Ketchikan twice at this weekend\u2019s volleyball jamboree, know they\u2019re up against stiff competition.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis year is going to be a battle,\u201d head coach Arnold Ibias said. \u201cAll three teams (in Region V) are strong and whoever shows up on a particular night is going to win.\u201d<\/p>\n
All of the Southeast Region V 4A teams (Kayhi, TMHS and JDHS) attended the pre-season jamboree. None of the games counted toward regular season standings, but were more a chance to \u201cget used to the reps, lineups and size everyone up,\u201d according to JDHS coach Lesley Kalbrener.<\/p>\n
Juneau-Douglas and Thunder Mountain varsity split a pair of tight games while Ketchikan fell in all four of their games. The Lady Kings didn\u2019t travel with three of their key seniors due to prior engagements and both Ibias and Kalbrener expect them to be in the mix for the Region V crown.<\/p>\n
TMHS center Mary Landez, one of the leaders in Ibias\u2019 strong junior class, thinks the Falcons benefit from their underdog status and the added incentive of being the first Thunder Mountain volleyball team to head to state.<\/p>\n
\u201cA good thing about having a team that hasn\u2019t gone to state is there\u2019s no pressure,\u201d Landez said. \u201cBut we definitely want to be the first ones to go.\u201d<\/p>\n
Landez and other Falcons leaders convened a team meeting early this season to discuss their goals and expectations. No coaches allowed. Ibias credited the meeting with helping his team \u201cgel earlier than expected.\u201d Landez said it helped set the tone for what she says is going to be an exciting race between TMHS, JDHS and Ketchikan.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe talked a lot about what we would need to do to win and have a positive attitude,\u201d Landez said. \u201cIt helped us get a good dynamic going. … Ultimately we\u2019d like to go to state, but overall we just want to have a good season. We want to start a system going so we can have a good two years.\u201d<\/p>\n
Last year, the Falcons finished third at regions behind JDHS and Ketchikan, with Ketchikan winning Region V. Only the Region V champion gets a berth to the state tournament on Nov. 10-12 at a location to be determined later.<\/p>\n
For Crimson Bears junior Abby Meiners, the road back to the state tournament starts with communication, something she said has previously been a stumbling block.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve struggled a bit in the past communicating on the court, but this year we have a good connection so I think we\u2019ll be fine,\u201d Meiners said. \u201cI think we have a pretty good defense and our serving is really good. We need to work a little more on offense.\u201d<\/p>\n
Kalbrener, taking over for varsity home games in her first season coaching, said she saw an impressively cohesive team at the jamboree, something necessary for a \u201cmental game\u201d like volleyball.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe went into this with the goal of working on our mental game and attitude and these girls have just been so excited about every game and every play,\u201d Kalbrener said. If you have a team that gets down on themselves and lets it show \u2014 it\u2019s contagious. But these girls are very mentally strong.\u201d<\/p>\n
JDHS will need to be particularly mature this year as they graduated several excellent volleyball players last year, including the college-volleyball-bound Maddie McKeown. Program director and coach Leslie Knight, who will coach the varsity at away games, said the jamboree was an opportunity to identify emerging talent from their JV team to bolster their eight-person varsity squad.<\/p>\n
TMHS travels to Sitka for their first regular season games on Sept. 2 and 3. Playing games on those same dates, JDHS starts their season off in Ketchikan.<\/p>\n
\u2022 Contact Sports and Outdoors reporter Kevin Gullufsen at 523-2228 or kevin.gullufsen@juneauempire.com.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Inspired by Thunder Mountain softball\u2019s state championship this spring, Falcons volleyball is trying for a first of their own: a Region V title and a trip to the state tournament. Thunder Mountain, who split two games with Juneau-Douglas and beat Ketchikan twice at this weekend\u2019s volleyball jamboree, know they\u2019re up against stiff competition. \u201cThis year […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":427,"featured_media":26276,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":6,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-26275","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26275","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/427"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26275"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26275\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/26276"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26275"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26275"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26275"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=26275"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}