When looking strictly at the results, the Columbia High School volleyball squad had a rough start to the season with a pair of losses as the host of the Columbia Classic.
However, they actually outscored West Marion despite losing the match two sets to one (15-25, 25-9, 12-15) and went toe-to-toe with East Marion (23-25, 15-25), which hasn’t lost a district match since 2015.
“We looked very good on serve-receive abilities. I went through the stats the other day, and we had a couple sets there where we had no serve-receive errors,” head coach Scott Fitzgerald said. “The main focus right now is we need to increase our serve percentage, get more serves in and work on our setting. We had a lot of calls against us against East Marion that probably cost us the game, so we have to be a little bit more focused on our setting.”
What hurt the Wildcats, as well, was not being able to stop the bleeding when the opposition went on a run.
“Especially in that second set against East Marion, so we’re working on that,” Fitzgerald said. “We have a lot of young ones that are playing, and they just got down on themselves. They’re working on getting better at that, and it’s been better this year than last year.”
Through two matches Abby Morris leads Columbia with seven kills and six aces, Lauren Hill has six kills, Michelle Martin has four kills, eight digs and six aces, Dariel Recasner has 17 digs and Ashley Cox has 13 assists. Fitzgerald said the Wildcats need to work on their timing at the net and get Kacey Stampley more involved, though.
“They’re getting there. We need to get the ball to Kacey more consistently. We need to be able to get Kacey the ball. She’s still learning the attack approach, but she’s coming along,” he said. “We changed some things in practice (Monday) with her approach that helped her out, and she looked good.”
Fitzgerald said the Wildcats implemented some changes in their serving and setting during practice and hopes to see results during their next stretch of matches. The Wildcats hosted Sumrall Tuesday night (results unavailable) and will be on the road to take on Sacred Heart Thursday night at 7 and Hattiesburg Saturday morning at 11.
“Sacred Heart is a different type of game because they have an extremely low ceiling. You can’t rely on high sets, over exaggerate when you receive the ball and have to have low passes,” he said. “Hattiesburg is going to be a pound team. They have about four girls who can really hit the ball. They beat East Marion (in a scrimmage) a week ago, 3-1, and pounded East Marion with attacks. For our benefit, we should block a little bit better at the net because East Marion only uses one blocker and we use two. We’ll try to limit their ability to hit.”
Pictured Above: Columbia's Kacey Stampley rises to spike the ball against East Marion. | Photo by Joshua Campbell
