The Haines girls’ volleyball team handily defeated Metlakatla in matches Oct. 1 before a loud hometown crowd.
The wins improve the team’s regular season record to 6-4 and boost its confidence as it moves into the second half of its season.
“We’ve learned some key components, like playing as a team and getting into a team rhythm,” said junior Ashley Messerschmidt.
The squad heads to the Juneau Jive Tournament this weekend at Juneau-Douglas High School, where they’ll face teams from larger schools in Anchorage and Juneau, as well as others from around the region.
“Maybe we can play with some of the teams we lost to earlier. This is a chance to see if we’ve actually improved,” said coach Judy Erekson. “We’ve switched our offense around since the beginning of the season and moved some hitters to the middle from the outside, so we’ll see how we do.”
A question mark is how Haines will fare against the Craig Panthers, a team they lost to last year, and fell to by a narrow margin earlier this season. “We just got down. They had one server who served eight points,” Erekson said.
Erekson said she’s trying to arrange non-conference competition against Whitehorse and Thunder Mountain on Oct. 16. The team plays at Craig Nov. 1-2 before the regional championship Nov. 4-6 in Ketchikan.
If the Glacier Bears can get past Craig, advancing past the regional championship may pose even a greater challenge. Only the top two teams at regionals earn a trip to state, so Haines would have to beat either Sitka or Mount Edgecumbe, two teams who’ve topped them this year.
Team members this week said their future may ride on whether they can play up to their potential.