Creating something from the ground up is never easy, and that is especially true for the boys volleyball team, boys volleyball head coach Marissa Canez said. The team’s current record is 6-10, but the team has much potential to grow throughout the season, Canez said.
The team has been dealing with challenging circumstances as they are a brand new team and lack school funding, Canez said.
“Most of our practices are at Randall Elementary School and we have two practices scheduled at Russell and then a few practices scheduled at MHS,” Canez said. “So that was also part of the planning–I have this whole spreadsheet master calendar, and it shows me where we’re at every day of the week for each month.”
The practicing schedule makes it hard, but everyone on the team is committed and determined, senior Alexander Lu said. Though there are many areas of improvement for the team, slowly but everyone on the team is motivated to keep going, he added
“We have a lot of smaller mistakes that we’re making and, as the season goes by, every game that we play, we’re slowly starting to fill in those little gaps that we have in our game,” Lu said.
They’ve gotten much better at passing and scoring but the chemistry between players still isn’t as strong as other already established teams, senior Atif Muhammed said.
“We have a lot of good individual players, but we can’t connect on a level where other teams have because they have played for four years, and we’re a first-year team,” Muhammed said. “As the season goes on, we’ll be better in the long run.”
Some students have experience playing on club teams, while others have only played for fun Lu said. The biggest area of progress is to learn each other’s strengths and weaknesses, so they can work well as a group, he added.
“When we start getting points racked against us, that obviously means everybody’s making their own mistakes,” Lu said. “Sometimes people get snippy at each other. I think we need to realize when we start losing points, it’s us all losing points as a whole and not just that person’s fault.”
Having to practice at multiple schools has made it difficult for the team, but they have managed to maintained their morale, Canez said.
“They don’t mind,” Canez said. “They’re just happy to be there. They’re just happy to be playing volleyball at this point.”
This is the team’s first year, but there has been demand for a boys volleyball team for a long time, Canez said. With the Milpitas team, the number of teams in the league evened out so Athletics Director Joanna Butcher brought the request to Canez herself, Canez said.
“It (the request for a boys volleyball team) started all the way up with CCS,” Canez said. “She (Ms. Butcher) had mentioned the higher-up person wanted Milpitas to have a team because of the number of teams within our league.”
Starting anything from the ground up is bound to be difficult, especially a sports team, but the boys volleyball team has enthusiasm, determination, and potential, Muhammed said.
“Our highs are really high, but our lows are really low,” Muhammed said.