Pahranagat Valley’s Mariah Zander returns the ball in a recent match.
The Panthers host Sandy Valley this Friday.
Pahranagat Valley won handily over Liberty Baptist, Oct. 6, in Alamo to take sole possession of first place in the girls volleyball 1A Southern League.
They won the match 3-0 with scores of 25-17, 25-11, and 25-15. It was the second time the Lady Panthers have beaten Liberty Baptist. They had a 2-0 win in the Boulder City tournament just the week before.
Senior player Emily Hansen said since the season began, she feels the team has “definitely improved on our passes and I think we are getting better at flowing with the ball, finding out where it’s going, and if there is a bad pass we know what to do with it. It’s been very fun for us on the team. I enjoy it very much.”
Coach Milly Walch commented, “They are always scrappy. We have to be on our toes, to play hard, and get the lead right away. They are a team that has the ability to come up from behind on you.”
Liberty Baptist was hampered in the match by a number of mishandling errors which gave the Panthers many points. “When we played them in Boulder City, they were not doing that,” Walch said. “Don’t know why it was such a problem in this match. Maybe they were a little intimidated coming up here.”
Some fans from other teams have commented in the past that it can be a bit of a psychological impact on a team that hasn’t been in the Alamo gym very much to have those 19 state championship banners on the wall over their head.
Walch said she learned a lot from playing in the Boulder City tournament, her first visit there. “I saw some of the different offenses some of the larger schools use that we might be able to incorporate into our own game and not just always go outside. We’ve been working on a couple of different things.”
The girls played Lake Mead and won 3-0 on Tuesday. Scores were 25-11, 25-15, and 25-10. The Panthers host Sandy Valley on Friday.
The 1A South/Central playoffs will be Nov. 2-3 at Tonopah.
