By Patti Carpenter
What a difference a year makes. The
Lady Bulldogs had big shoes to fill this
season after graduating several of their top
players last year like Leanne Winterhol-
ler, Erin Robertson, Jodi Walker, Miranda
Griffis and Schuylar Davis. With the loss
of those players, the team also lost much of
its height from the previous season. Only
a few girls on the team were in the 5-10
range this year (Emilee Reasch and Bonnie
Rodriguez) with the majority of the team
averaging somewhere around 5-7 in height.
"How different this year was. At one
point at the beginning of the year I was
just hoping we would make it to State. I
would have been happy to make it through
Regionals and to get to state," said Coach
Stormy Jameson. "No one expected us to
win the title this year, especially after ev-
erything we lost last year. In a way, it was
good because we could exceed the expecta-
tion instead of having the pressure on us
like we had last year."
Not flapped by the naysayers, the girls
put their minds to being the best they could
be, proving the old adage that practice does
make perfect.
"There were times we did the same
drills every day - we served, we passed,
and we knew that this was what we needed
to work on because if we couldn't do these
things well we couldn't do anything well,"
said Jameson. "There's really a lot of rep-
etition in volleyball. You pass the ball a lot,
you set a lot and you hit a lot. We just praC-
ticed these things over and over until we
got really good at it."
According to Jameson, the girls also
worked on minimizing their errors.
"At the beginning of the year we were
missing serves; we were not passing the
ball well. We worked on fine-tuning these
things all season," said Jameson. "Most-
ly we just worked on the basics, we didn't
work on anything fancy, we worked on do-
ing the basic things well - passing, serving,
setting and hitting. It's real simple, if you
can pass the ball you can set the ball, if you
can set the ball you can hit the ball."
The season started off with a tourna-"
ment at home Aug. 24-25. At the tourna-
ment the girls played Meeteetse (25-12 and
25-9), Ten Sleep (25-7 and 25-7), Burling-
ton (25-23 and 25-18), Shoshoni (18-25 and
18-25), Lovell JV
(25-18 and
25-15) and
Rocky (21-
25, 25-13
and 15-6),
beating five
of the six
teams they
played.
'rhe
tourna-
ment was
good prac-
tice," said
Jameson.
"It was good
to see what
everybody
had and it
was a good
opportuni-
ty for the
girls to
get game
experi-
ence be-
fore their
first con-
ference
game
of the
season."
In
their
first
confer-
ence
game, the girls played Greybull on Aug. 30,
winning three sets 25-21, 25-16 and 25-18.
"When we played Greybull, we were
kind of where I expected us to be," said
Jameson. "We weren't the standout team or
anything, but we were good. It was a good
conference win, and we expected to beat
Greybull."
Jameson referred to the next week-
end as "the weekend from Hades," after the
team travelled to Billings for tournament
play against several Montana teams Aug.
31-Sept. 1.
"It was a terrible weekend. It didn't
matter who we were playing, we just stunk
it up," said Jameson. "We had drama on
the team all weekend. It seemed like every-
one was mad at each other, and it was just
an all-around bad time. We had team meet-
ings where girls were crying. Afterward,
we had to work really hard on trying to fig-
ure out what the problem was, solve it and
move on."
Ultimately, Jameson said the Montana
experience benefited the girls because they
were able to work out any problems they
were experiencing before their next confer-
ence game, which was with Thermopolis on
Sept. 6.
The girls started off strong with a win
in the first set 25-18 but couldn't hold that
momentum and lost the next three, 26-24,
25-22 and 26-24.
%Ve knew they were going to be a good
team, we hadn't seen them up to that point,
but we knew they had a lot of good girls
returning from last year and they usual-
ly have good athletes
in general on their
team. We played well
against Thermop, but
they beat us," said
Jameson. "There was
a lot of pressure there,
they had a lot of fans
there and it was intense."
The same weekend, the
girls beat five out of six teams
at the Big Horn Tournament
and Jameson said she felt that it
marked a "turning point" for
their season.
"That weekend we went 5-1,
the weekend before (in Mon-
tana) we were just the opposite,"
said Jameson. "I felt that it was
a turning point in the season,
where we realized that we had a
good team."
The girls kept their momentum
up the following weekend when they
played Riverside in Basin on Sept. 14,
beating them 25-22, 25-17 and 25-7.
On the same weekend, the girls
played in a tournament in Thermopolis,
where they not only won the tournament,
but also got sweet revenge when they beat
Thermopolis in the championship game of
the tournament on their own turf.
The next weekend, the girls went five
brutal rounds with Cody. They came on
strong winning the first two games 27-25
and 25-17, but couldfi't keep up the mo-
mentum, falling to Cody, 22-25, 17-25 and
13-15 in the last three sets.
"We played really well that game, con-
sidering they are a 3A team with four girls
who are around six feet tall," said Jameson,
"but it was also a heartbreaker because we
felt we could have won that game and we
didn't."
Next up, the girls got their cage rattled
in five close games with local rival Rocky
Mountain High School, even though they
won.
"We kind of went into that game with a
mindset that it wouldn't be that tough of a
game and they gave us a pretty big wake-
up call," said Jameson.
The wake-up call she referred to was
losing two of those five games 13-25 and
24-26.
"After that experience, we made up our
minds that it didn't matter who we played,
we would always play the same," said
Jameson. "Prior to that we would play re-
Top: Junior Mercedes Haney blasts the ball
over the net during the Oct. 27 champion-
ship match.
Left: Emilee Reasch slams the bail during
the state title match.
ally good against a team we perceived to be
good, like Cody, but we would play only as
good as we need to get by with teams we
thought would be easier to beat."
On Sept. 29, the girls played Ther-
mop again at home.
"I don't know what happened
there, but we lost," said Jameson. "It
wasn't like they beat us, it was more
like we just let them win. We just
didn't seize the opportunity to win.' ....
On Oct. 2, the girls got their re-
venge on Rocky beating them 25-15,
25-12 and 25-9.
"Before this game we felt like ,
people were starting to count us out,"
said Jameson. "In this game we de-
cided we had something to prove."
Jameson felt the girls were
• back on track" after the game .
with Rocky and they went on
to win two more conference
wins against Riverside and
Greybull before facing Sho-
shoni again on Oct. 13 on the
Lovell courts.
"It was senior night at home,
emotions were running high
and I wanted all of the se-
niors to play in the game so
I changed the lineup," said
Jameson. "We lost to Sho-
shoni, but I think it was
important to give all of
the senior girls the oppor-
tunity to play for the last
time on their home court."
The girls ended their
conference season tied for
first place with Thermopolis.
Thermop got the higher seed
going into Regionals because
they beat Lovell twice during the season.
"After the regular season ended we fo-
cused on having two good weekends, be-
cause the team who wins State isn't always
the team with the best overall record. It
doesn't really matter what you've done all
year long, you just have to have three good
days of volleyball," said Jameson. "Region-
als was kind of the same. Anyone we beat
or didn't beat in the past didn't matter,
all that mattered was to focus on having a
good weekend."
After beating Wind River 3-0, the team
lost their second match with Shoshoni at
Regionals, which put them in a "must-win"
situation against Riverside.
"We had to win this game; there was
not an option to lose. We had to beat Riv-
erside to qualify to go to State," said
Jameson.
Riverside fought hard but the girls pre-
vailed and placed third at Regionals after
beating Kemmerer in their last game at the
tournament.
"The whole week between Regionals
and State, the girls practiced lousy," said
Jameson. "We stunk it up at practice. We
tried scrimmaging and it was just ugly. We
just didn't practice well at all."
Nonetheless, the girls focused on pre-
paring themselves mentally.
"Volleyball is such a mental game,"
said Jameson. "We decided that is what we
wanted to tweak during that week. There
was nothing we could have done new in
practice that would change our ability,
so we worked on being mentally tough
because there is a difference between
being physically ready to go and being
mentally prepared. It means being to-
tally focused on the game."
According to Jameson, the girls
got the message loud and clear. They
were inbed early every night, at
the gym early every day and they
stepped into the State Champion-
ships completely focused and ready
to win.
"We went into the champion-
ships after not winning the conference
and not winning the Regionals feeling like
people were counting us out," said Jame-
son. "In a way we liked being the under-
dog. We liked being the upset team who
Right: Senior Chelsey Ellis celebrates a
point during Lovell's three-game sweep
over Big Hom in the state title match.
David Peck photos
took other teams by surprise."
The girls went on to sweep nine
straight sets against the three teams they
played, beating Southeast, Wright and Big
Horn.
"We didn't want to lose at all," said
Jameson. "If another team wanted to have
a spitting contest in the parking lot, we
were not going to lose that. Volleyball is
a momentum game, if you lose one set, it
gives the other team momentum and we
were not going to let anyone we played
have that momentum."
Jameson said she hopes that the win
will spark an interest in the town and that
more people will attend the games. She
also said she hopes more athletic girls at
the school will consider playing volleyball.
"It used to be that volleyball was some-
thing girls did to keep in shape for basket-
ball," said Jameson.
"I think we've
proven in the
last two sea-
sons that we
can produce re-
ally good teams
and that Lovell
can be a volley-
ball town, not just a
basketball or football
town."
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