Dominating the league is the goal for a lot of teams, including the Manhattan High girls Varsity volleyball team, and this year might be the year they get to accomplish that goal. The team is preparing to dominate the league as they split into Junior Varsity, Varsity and Freshman teams.

“I think we have done a lot of more work on serve receive and just more preparing for this next year,” senior Kia Wilson said. “I think we have a lot of experience, because we have a lot of seniors this year, and we only lost two seniors from last year. I wouldn’t say we need to learn because a lot of us already know, I would say it’s just building on what we already have.”

The past few years they have fallen prey to Shawnee Heights and ended up in second place. Shawnee Heights graduated a good sized portion of their starting rotation this past year, damaging their chances at league. MHS also beat them in a tournament over the summer.

“It’s looking like it will be a good year,” senior setter Kenzie Smith said. “We will probably have high hopes at state. We got fourth last year, but pretty much all of our starters are back so it shouldn’t be an issue to get back there.”

Despite the experience and talent of the MHS girls volleyball team, they still will have some challenges that they must face during the season in order to be league champions. One of the challenges that they have faced in recent years past were injuries.

“[Dealing with injuries] is really hard,” Smith said. “I’m one of those that always is suffering with an injury. It puts a lot of stress on your teammates, and I feel like I’m letting them down, with not being able to play as much as I would like, but we all fight through it and everyone is very versatile and able to play every position, so it’s great that we can all do every position.”

Injuries are not the only challenge the team will face. Having too many people is another challenge for them. They kept a decent size bench this year, with 12 on each team, including two freshmen on Junior Varsity.  

“It is hard having a lot of people,” Wilson said. “Just because some people won’t get to play as much because if only six play at a time, we can’t have everyone play, I think that’s difficult for a lot of people, because it’s obviously no fun not to play. I think the team is pretty solid technique wise, I think we all have a lot of different strengths which we optimize in each other which is really cool.”  

Their first competition is on Sept. 7 at Shawnee Heights.