August 17th marked the Girls Varsity Volleyball’s first practice of the 2022 season. Since then, they have been practicing nearly every day with games at least once a week or upwards of three times a week. 

“Our next home game is Waukesha West next Tuesday at 7pm,” Sophie Nowak, a junior middle hitter says. 

Sophomore defensive specialist Emma Groff said, “I think it’s gonna go pretty good. I mean the Waukesha schools aren’t amazing and our team has been pretty successful this season so I think it will go well.” 

Head coach for the girls varsity, Janelle Jaquish says, “That should go well. I wouldn’t say they’re the most competitive team in the conference right now so I think by the time we get to west we would’ve already played a lot of tougher competition from the conference.” 

Waukesha West has a current rank of 132 in Wisconsin. They have a win rate of 0.41% and overall have won 9 matches and lost 13. In their conference play however, they are 0-3.

Jaquish says the team has goals this season. “I think a goal is to always try and win conference and win state,” Jaquish said.

Last season Jaquish says didn’t end well.  “Who did we lose to? DSHA in a regional maybe? We didn’t make it out of our regional,” Jaquish says.

Arrowhead’s Girls Volleyball is ranked 22nd in the state. Their win rate is 0.62%. Overall, they have won 13 games and lost 8. In conference play, they are at 2-2.

 “Just to make sure that everyone’s included and everyone’s connecting and to have a winning record not a losing one,” Groff said for the team’s goal this season. 

Groff has had 39 digs within 36 sets played. She has only had 6 serve receive errors out of her 33 receptions. Groff’s receptions per set was 0.9% and her receptions per match are 1.9%.

“My individual goals are physically to improve my vertical and strength and to work on closing the block,” says Nowak. Nowak’s team goals were to: “Get that team tempo down, to work together, and go to state.”

Nowak has an average of 1.2 kills per set. She also has a hitting percentage of 0.333% and a 46.7 kill percentage. 

Jaquish said, “It will be tough but it’s definitely possible. We’ve had moments this season where we are playing with the best of the best. We have not necessarily beaten the best of the best yet but there’s a long way to go in the season and anything can happen.” 

Jaquish has been coaching the varsity girls volleyball team for 11 years. She went to Valpo school where she played volleyball for them. The varsity team last won state in 2019 against Oconoowoc who was also in the same conference. 

Groff said, “I think we could. I just think we need to clean up some of the little things and just keep working hard at practice and then really focus during our games and learn how to just finish it instead of letting teams back in.”

“I honestly think we will. I think we’ll do really well as long as we can work on closing sets, finishing out, and keeping a good mindset throughout the game, we have all the skills we just need that mental part of it,” Nowak said about making it to state. 

As far as difficulties go, there are some that the players and coach spoke about. A player recently rolled her ankle so the team is dealing with that and getting the starting lineup down. They have also had to play a lot in the past week. They had games on Tuesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday which doesn’t leave them with much time to practice.