Girls’ Volleyball sets off a new season
With fall sports kicking off, Girls’ Varsity Volleyball had their first league on Sept. 8. Prior to that game, the team had spent a lot of time preparing for success during preseason.
As he begins his seventh year as head coach for the girls’ team, Chris Forrest aspires to teach his players lots of life lessons, not just with the volleyball aspect in mind. “Making lessons about volleyball and life meaningful, understandable and relatable helps teach [players] more effectively,” Forrest said.
Over the summer, the team was continuously preparing for the season, using conditioning and fundamentals. Forrest puts himself into the position of a teacher, rather than just a coach, and teaches players honesty, integrity, time management and commitment. He feels that it is his responsibility to teach players hard work. “We use a saying, ‘when you lose, don’t lose the lesson.’ We talk about what we learned from our loss and try to grow from each one by focusing on those things we learned in practice the next day,” Forrest said.
Sage Denham is going into her senior year of high school as one of the team captains of the Girls Varsity Volleyball Team. As she tries to motivate the rest of her team, she appreciates the excitement when she gets a good play. Planning to have a successful season, Denham attempts to lead by example, focusing on her attitude and work ethic. “My goal this season is to become a motivational team captain and be uplifting to my teammates and support them all no matter what,” Denham said.
Vivian Falt, sophomore, has been playing volleyball since fifth grade. After being introduced to the sport by her cousin, Falt has grown to love it. “We just get along really well. There’s definitely a family kind of relationship between us. There’s no cliques or anything like that, it’s just really nice to be around them,” Falt said.
Denham enjoys the support and closeness that the program and team experiences. As well as playing for the team, she is also in charge of helping the team physically and emotionally. “I feel my job as team captain is to be inclusive and create an environment where everyone feels welcome as well as still pushing everyone to be their best selves work ethic wise as well as attitude,” Denham said.
Because this is only Falt’s second year playing volleyball at NPHS, she has a lot of room to grow and many opportunities ahead of her. “I really like our coaches this year, I think they’re super supportive but also good critics,” Falt said.
As Falt began to play volleyball, she had models to look up to, and now she hopes to take their position for people younger than her. “I really want to be a starter and also just help our team, improve, and be someone that younger girls can look up to,” Falt said.
As the season goes on, players are only getting closer and working better as a team, which is evident in how the team plays together. “The reward of watching a team grow, watching individual players grow, and seeing how much time put in pays off [through] good practices and lessons was worth way more than money could offer,” Forrest said.
