Volleyball second at Maize South, plays last game of season at SubState

Taryn Robinson, Sports Editor

The Varsity volleyball SubState game against Liberal High School on Saturday was the last of the 2021 season, and for the five seniors, the last game of their high school career.

Playing in the tournament at Wichita Northwest, the team lost their first match to Liberal High School 1-2 (24-26, 25-19, 18-25), making that their last game of the season, and for the five seniors, the last game of their high school career.

“In the first set we started out slow, we are a young team with only three Varsity returners — senior Monroe Say, [Claire] Shamburg, and I — so it was scary for us,” senior Hayley Hastings said. 

Even though the team did not walk away with a trophy or a SubState title, the girls count this experience a victory.

“This is almost all the teams’ first time at SubState, but I think we did really well,” Hastings said. “Once we started swinging and defensively getting touches we started scoring. Coach Skucius told us to leave it all on the court and anyone who was there can agree that we did exactly that.”

As far as preparation goes, the Varsity girls feel like they were ready as they could be for SubState.

“I think the team was as prepared as you can be for Sub-State,” Hastings said. “In practice we worked a lot on mixing up our shots when hitting and defense wise getting more touches. When game time happened all the hard work in practice paid off.”

Before the Varsity girls left for Wichita that morning, they had a big surprise from friends, family and fellow teammates from the J.V. team.

“The support from friends and family was beyond incredible, I couldn’t have asked for a better send off,” senior Hayley Hastings said. “Everyone was excited and that made us more ready to play.”

For the five seniors, it was hard to imagine that this game was their last one- ever.

“Honestly, I was in denial that it was going to be my last game ever,” Hastings said. “It’s crazy to think that I have played with most of the senior class since 7th grade and this was our last time ever playing together. But walking into Saturday I knew that leaving it all on the court and doing your job was going to score points.”