This year’s freshman girls volleyball team has come face-to-face with a challenge other than a big match. They are the first freshman team at SHS in three years. The goal is for the program to grow off of having the freshman team and to hopefully get larger numbers in upcoming years. So far this season, the girls have little found little success and have only won one game as of Monday, Sept 11.

The team has taken multiple losses, including Franklin Central, Columbus North and Bloomington South. All of these teams are in Conference Indiana, which is the same conference that SHS is in. This may prove to be a future challenge, because the girls will have to face the same teams in upcoming years.

“I think that we will improve and I think that most of the girls have great potential as well,” freshman Lauren
Beatty said.

Beatty also says that it can be frustrating to her when the team loses games that they
have the potential to win. She thinks that in the upcoming years, the girls will have improved as a team and beat some teams that they lost to this year.

“I know what our team is capable of and it is frustrating to lose a game that we could have won,” Beatty said.

According to head coach Katherine Busch, the inexperience of the team is not a new obstacle for her, as she is a teacher at Southport Elementary, so she is used to starting at the basics for everyone. Busch believes that this team can help the program in the near future because the girls have the talent and work ethic to improve. She believes that it will help bring in a bigger number of girls for tryouts and to play on the team.

“Our goal is to increase our numbers and being able to have girls start at a level that is more relateable for them and then work their way up to a varsity level will help,” Busch said.

Winning is not the first thing on Busch’s list because she knows that the team isn’t going to blow any other teams out. However, it can get frustrating for her when they lose because the team has the potential to win. The team has shown that they possess this potential by beating Warren Central on Thursday Sept. 8, with a score of two sets to one.

“They do have the talent to win,” Busch said. “They just need to learn how to work together and playing as a team is what is holding them back from winning. So that part is frustrating right now because you can’t coach that. That is something the players need to come up with themselves.”