Wapahani is working with off-court skills as much as on it during the preseason.
SELMA – When he was coaching the junior varsity team at Monroe Central, Wapahani volleyball coach Jared Richardson had his players take part in team-building activities.
The third-year coach decided to do this with the Raiders for the first time before the start of official practice, venturing out to Camp Yale in Winchester. The big question for Richardson: Why this year, with this team?
That answer lies with who wasn’t there that day. The team’s senior leader (libero Hannah Smith, a Ball State recruit) was on vacation at the time, so Richardson thought, ‘Let’s see who steps up without her?’ The Raiders – heavy on potential but also heavy on youth – didn’t touch a volleyball that day, but they grew as a team.
“Hannah is a great leader,” sophomore setter Lexi Spence said, “but there has to be someone else to step up and take charge. We did really well with it. It was good to work as a team without her.”
One particularly interesting challenge was having the team, made up of 14 players, all touch a tiny ball. The catch: Only one person could touch it at a time. The instructor asked the Raiders how fast they could do it, and the team guessed about 10 seconds. The players were shocked when the instructor informed them that the record was less than one second.
For a half hour, the Raiders experimented with a variety of strategies, like everyone surrounding the ball on the ground and taking turns quickly touching it. The finally got their time down to one second by interlocking hands at an angle and rolling the ball down.
Lesson learned. And not with how to touch a ball quickly.
“… I sat back with the team,” Richardson said, “and I was like, ‘If we set our goal at 10 seconds and we could really achieve one second, what are we really capable of achieving when you really get after it? Why do we set our standard at 10 seconds and not at one?'”
Richardson is enjoying making this group think. The first week of preseason practice, he spent each day going over five traits that make up a functioning team. The first day was about trust, then understanding the value of conflicts, followed by commitment, then a lesson in accountability, capped by attention to results.
Richardson is aiming to squeeze as much out of the Raiders mentally because he believes the team has all the makings of a strong team physically-speaking.
In addition to Smith, Skyler Van Note was second on the team in kills last season as a freshman, and this year she’ll play six rotations. Estella Davis, a member of the Munciana Chipmunks squad that won an AAU national title over the summer, is expected to be a big contributor right away on the outside. Just a sophomore, Spence has developed into that second leader Richardson was looking for, and Chase Curry should contribute as well on the attack.
The root of all this optimism from a team which went 21-9 last season and drops down to Class 2A this season? In two preseason tournaments, the Raiders only lost to two Class 4A teams – and they were competitive in each.
“We’ve got it all, we just have to put it together as a team,” Smith said. “… I think the sky is the limit with this team.”
Contact sports features writer Ryan O’Gara at (765) 213-5829. Follow him on Twitter @RyanOGaraTSP.