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ALTON - First-year Jenna Wiedman is seeing constant improvement in her boys volleyball team.
The Redbirds had some good runs against Edwardsville in a recent 25-9, 25-18 defeat, particularly in the second game, where Alton rallied to make it close, and kept battling throughout.
“We’ve been changing our rotations for the past couple of weeks," she said. "We’ve had a couple of intelligibilities, and commitment issues and what not, so it’s been hard for us to get that set in stone starting lineup situated. We started out slow, started battling back towards the end, and started having a little bit more fun out there, and that’s what I like to see.”
It’s something that Wiedman likes to see from her team, the ability to have fun and enjoy playing the game under any and all circumstances.
“Yes, of course,” Wiedman said. “Whenever they’re not out there doing what they’re capable of doing, I want them to show what they’re actually are worth, and it’s hard to get that transferred over to them, let them know that they are able to play against other teams when not in our conference.”
Wiedman pointed out a couple of her players who are making positive contributions to the Redbirds.
“Ian (Bock) is one of our ones that controls; he’s the one who picks up the team here and there. Then Lance Perkey, he controls the ball, he knows where to place a ball. We just have to have that all the way around with our guys, Our center, Tyler Hance, he runs he court as much as possible, he goes after every single ball, he’s aggressive. It’s just the matter of fact of just them being a unit together right now. That’s what we’re working on.”
The Redbirds are still building their program after the first month, and it’s a process that starts with building the fundamentals, and is now transitioning into a quicker pace of the game.
“It’s still a building process for Alton, I think,” Wiedman said. “Like I said, we started off with strict basics from the very beginning, and now, we’re starting to transition on to just the quicker pace of volleyball. The beginning of the season’s been very slow, and now, once we start getting into these harder teams, picking up the pace of the game, and they’re starting to understand that it’s going to be a lot quicker.”
Wiedman does like her team’s chances of improving, but did emphasize one very important thing.
“I think we’ve got high chances,” Wiedman said, “it’s just they’ve got to believe in each other.”Dan Brannan also contributed to this story.
