TMS volleyball season wraps up

Last weekend marked the end of the middle school volleyball season with the seventh graders attending their conference in Riverton while the eighth graders traveled to Lovell for their conference.

Seventh grade coach, Kati Ryan said, “The seventh grade players worked very hard this season. Each player has grown immensely this season.

“As a team, their serving improved from 30% serves made over at the beginning of the season to 75% serves made over by our last week.

“At tournament, they played their hardest and worked their best as a team. I am very proud of the girls and all their hard work.”

Against Powell, the seventh grade girls went down 11-21 and 8-21. They also took a loss against Cody, 5-21 and 11-21.

Eighth grade coach, Aimee Kay, said she is pleased the girls ended their season playing the best volleyball of the season.

They started off playing Riverton and Kay remembers when they played them earlier, losing at that time, 7-21, 11-21 and 5-21.

“This go round we lost the first game 10-21,” she said, “and the second, 18-21. The first game we let one of the jump servers get the best of us, but the second game we shut her down much more quickly.

“We set it up some and I felt like we played them much better this time than last.”

Their second match of the tournament was against Lovell and they came out winning the first game, 21-17.

“The second game we started out rough,” Kay said. “We were down 10-2 at one point and had to fight our way back in it. We finally got something going, but lost 17-21.”

The third game, of course, goes to 15 and the beginning started out pretty even, but Lovell had a server step up and get several points in a row and the girls were just not able to regain their momentum.

“Serve percentages were higher than normal,” Kay said, “and our serve receive has improved tremendously. We spent time practicing with the high school last week and that helped us step up our game.

“I had three different coaches comment on how they considered us the most improved team this season and were impressed with how well the girls played compared to earlier in the season.

“I am disappointed that we weren’t able to get more wins, but I look forward to seeing this team play at the high school level.”