The Manhattan High boys and girls Varsity team placed fourth at the Varsity League meet on Feb. 17. The meet was held at Topeka West, which is an alley that the team hasn’t competed at since last year before the COVID-19 pandemic.

“We mentally started to fall because it was our first time at the alley all year after meets being canceled,” senior Kimberly Crawforth said. “It took time to adjust and that got into our heads.”

Compared to the previous meet, the Varsity boys team’s performance was worse as they placed first at their last meet. The mentality that the team had seemed to be the core reason as to why their performance wasn’t as good. 

“We did much worse than we did in the previous meet, but still good enough to compete,” senior Evan Wasinger said. “I think nerves may have gotten to our freshmen and some of us were just thinking too much about our shots.”

For the girls team, they struggled to throw the ball well.

“What didn’t go well is how we kept rolling or throwing our ball,” junior Jasmine Bridges said. “We would throw them way out to the right or too much to the left. We were just trying to figure out where we should throw the ball in the right spot.”

Despite MHS not coming out with a victory, they are still proud of their effort.

“I am proud of how we performed despite what the results were,” Crawforth said. “I am glad we got this far in the season and what we have accomplished.”

MHS will be competing at Regionals this Friday, and they want to at least place in the top two so that they qualify for State.

Girls Varsity will be working on the technicalities of making sure they are throwing the ball right. They will also try and work on their mental toughness.

“We have a goal to work more as a team and not let a bad shot get to our heads and just relax,” Crawforth said. “For the seniors, it could be our last meet so we want to make it worth it.”

 The boys team is especially concerned about the competition level at Regionals, which means that they are going to try extra hard this week to stay focused at practice and prepare for Friday.

“The team is aware of the challenges we are going to face at Regionals,” Wasinger said. “We are going to practice hard over the next week, so we can have the chance for our seven seniors to go to State one last time.”