Losing a lot of seniors last year, expectations weren’t too high on the 2023 varsity women’s volleyball team. “Everybody expected us to be a lot worse than last year,” explained Senior outside hitter Ila Cantrell. “But honestly, we’re better.”

As of now, they’re 13-9, even getting 3rd place in the Albany Tournament earlier in the season. All of this was a big improvement from last year’s 5-23. For the most part, the players didn’t exactly see this turnaround coming either.

When Junior outside hitter Taylor Roloff was asked if she expected the team to be this strong going into the season she said, “I didn’t honestly, we only won like five games last year.”

Roloff was able to credit what she believes is the reason they’re so strong currently to the fact that everyone on the team gets along really well both on and off the court.

“The team dynamic is really good and everybody is really close.”

Both Cantrell and Junior opposite Alejandra Alvarez both held similar feelings.

“I think our team chemistry is better even though it’s just preseason I think we’ll have a good year in league,” said Cantrell. “We’re starting off stronger because we work really well together. We have a lot of connection as a team.”

Alvarez similarly credits the team chemistry as a driving factor towards their success.

“This Varsity volleyball season has been our best season yet since this year everyone has good team chemistry with each other,” said Alvarez. “I feel like that is an important factor in any sport because in order to win everyone needs to be on the same page and everyone should be communicating with each other.”

We can see this clearly in their recent win against Alameda High in 3-0 fashion, beating them for the first time since 2021 and winning the “Island Spike” in the process.

While team morale is obviously high, the players also understand that there’s always room to grow.

“We have been doing great so far in our games but you never know what unexpected moves other teams can pull in a few weeks,” Alvarez explains.

The goal for the Jets this season is clear to Cantrell, as well as the rest of the team.

“Hopefully we get to NCS and go farther than we did last year. This year we’re trying to go for round two or three or four or even win Division III NCS.”

Until then, we’ll just have to wait and see how far the Jets can fly the rest of this season, starting with their upcoming league game against Piedmont.