The Manhattan High Varsity volleyball team lost all of their games in the triangular in Highland Park that also included Washburn Rural on Sept. 8, and one of them in the next meet.

“We played good,” senior Ellie Hacker said. “Well, we played good individually, but we struggled playing together as a team. That’s why we didn’t pull off the wins.”

Even though the Varsity team’s second triangular of the season didn’t go exactly as hoped for, there’s still a bright future ahead for them despite the many changes of COVID-19. 

“It’s kind of hard to show our celebration because we’re not allowed to touch each other,” Hacker said. “It’s hard when someone scores a [good] point — you can’t really huddle and give hugs and stuff like that.”

The volleyball team has certain things they look for when they are getting ready to play. 

“We find their strong hitters and just focus on them and shut them down,” Hacker said. “And then bounc[ing] off [of] that by using our strong hitters and just scoring points.”

Energy is one of the things in volleyball you need to have in order to have a successful match or matches. Without it, there wouldn’t be a lot of points scored.

“We [definitely] kept our energy up,” Hacker said. “We had a lot of energy, and at the end of the night, we learned to lean on each other and bring each other up.”

Hacker is very confident in her team this year. This is her senior year, so she is prepared to play her heart out and put in the work to make it a great season.

“I’m really excited for [the season],” Hacker said. “It just started and I know we have a good team. I’m hoping that a lot of improvements will come [as we move forward with the season].”

On top of the second meet, the Lady Indians played in a Emporia/Seaman triangular on September 15. They won against Emporia 25-18 and 25-2, and lost against Seaman 17-25 and 20-25.

“We played Seaman last week as well and lost pretty bad,” senior Bonnie Hegarty said. “But as we played them Tuesday, we started to work better together and executed more plays.”

Despite the many challenges the team faces on and off the court, they are just happy to be on the court at all.

“I think we’re all just very grateful that we get the opportunity to play, especially us having nine seniors on the team,” Hegarty said. “However, we are really disappointed that there are limitations as to who gets to come and watch us play.”

The next Varsity volleyball meet is hosted by MHS at 5 p.m. today in the North Gym.