We are headed towards the final game of the regular season for the Cody Filly Volleyball team. For the Fillies, the season has been a tale of two halves. They started the season 8-2 but since then have only won one of their last seven matches and sit at 9-8 on the season, 1-4 in league play. The Fillies will close out the regular season this Saturday as they host Riverton. I caught up with head coach Stephanie Birch and she touches on how a win this weekend would be a huge boost heading into the playoffs.
“Oh absolutely. I mean to end the season on a positive going into Regionals, beating another 4A school, in our quadrant, I think it would be a good confidence booster. We’ve been playing well, we just haven’t finished. So being able to finish and still play well this weekend would be a really good thing for us.”
Speaking of finishing, that has been a constant theme for the Fillies over the last few weeks. They seem to come out of the gates hot winning the first game of the match but then drop the next three. Coach Birch addresses that issue.
“We have been able to come out really well, especially against Natrona and Rock Springs and play hard. Then that next game we play really well with them until it’s 20-20, 22-22, then their go to players make plays and create something that we just aren’t able to counter. So we’re going to keep working in practice on how to finish. Once we get to that we need our players to create something when there’s nothing there and be able to finish just like some of those other schools have been doing.”
As the saying goes, Big Time Players make Big Time Plays. How exactly to the Fillies make that happen?
“It’s mental, it really is. Being able to trust your teammates to be able to take a risk. ‘I’m going to take this risk cause I know the five of you behind me, you have my back. If I fail, I fail. If I succeed, I succeed but I’m willing to take that risk. We’re kind of waiting for somebody to be able to want to put themselves out there and do that.”
As for a focal point at practice this week it’s all about digging the volleyball and being in the right lane for a save.
“We have been looking over our stats from this season and other teams are out digging us by a lot. If we are getting out dug then they’re having more opportunities to hit at us. So we need to create those opportunities to be able to terminate play at the net by digging. The focus this week and last week for sure was on defense. How to create more opportunities for us to score.”
As for not just this weekend but the rest of the season Coach Birch says it’s the younger players that must step up for Cody Volleyball to ultimately achieve their goals.
“To be more consistent. I mean all of them have put in so much work in the summer. I’ve never had a group that has been more consistent and have worked harder in the off-season than these kids. We started in May with the Google classroom, doing workouts, and podcasts and all that kind of stuff. If they just put all of that together… It’s going to be pretty good.”
The Cody Filly Volleyball team concludes regular season play this weekend as they host Riverton inside the Sweitzer Gymnasium on Saturday. Game time is set to get underway at 1pm.
