On Sept. 23 and 24, the Lakeland Hawks volleyball team partook in the Rocky Mountain tournament in Rocky, ID.
Lakeland played against seven teams over the weekend and won five games.
The Hawks were tired by the time they got to the tournament, but they fought on and ended up winning most of their matches.
“The team that we lost to is ranked number four in the state, and the number one team was also there and made it to the championships,” senior Ella Terzulli said. “The team we lost to ended up getting second, so if we won that, we could have definitely made it to the championship.”
For the Hawks’ first match, they won due to a higher point differential in the two sets played against Centennial.
To carry on the winning streak, the Hawks won the next three games in the same manner;
Against Mountain View, 25-22 and 25-13; against Weiser, 23-25 and 25-20; against Highland, 25-13 and 18-25.
In a sad turn of events, the Hawks ended up losing the next three, knocking them out of the tournament: Against Melba, 13-25 and 25-27; against Timberline, 25-20 and 16-25; against Rocky, 15-25 and 25-22 and 12-15.
Placing fifth in the tournament, the Hawks fought as hard as they could, facing some of the top schools in the region.
“We have a bunch of injuries and a bunch of sicknesses on the team right now,” Terzulli said.
Relying only on backups, the Hawks still were able to put up a great fight for the opposing teams and an amazing show for the audiences.
Regarding the Hawks’ health being down, communication and teamwork skills helped them greatly in their games.
Possibly being thought of as the underdogs in this tournament, they were able to come through and prove to all the other teams in the region that they are no group to mess with, even with multiple players hurt and sick.
Players mentioned that they battled hard, but they need to work on starting their games out stronger and not getting down on themselves so fast.
“I definitely believe that we could have won… the first game that we lost for sure, and honestly, I believe that we could have beaten the second game as well because that one was really close,” Hanna said.
Even after some losses, the Hawks decided to keep their heads up and look on the bright side of things. Even though they lost, they want to believe that they could have gone either way and made it further into the tournament.
Even in the games that the Hawks won, they believe that they could have done better and possibly made the winning margin larger. The games that had won are still used as learning points for the Hawks and helping them grow.
