Tomorrow, the girls volleyball team faces No. 7 Floyd Central at Bedford North Lawrence in their first semi-state game. A win would send them to the semi-state championship tomorrow evening at 7 p.m., where they would compete for a spot in the state finals.
To get ready for the game, the team has placed an increased emphasis on film to take advantage of the week between their last game, when they defeated Brownsburg for the regional championship.
“We’ve been watching a lot of film over [Floyd Central] and translating the film into our practice, and we’re working on increasing our sideout percentage,” junior Natalie Vance said. “Getting our passing ready because when we pass we have a lot of options on our offense. When we spread out our offense, we’re really good deep.”
For sophomore Kaelyn Groce, preparing for such a highly-skilled team is a hard task, especially considering the depth of talent of the Floyd Central roster.
“We have been focusing all on our blocking,” Groce said. “We have been really trying to work on making our hand-eye coordination a lot better, focusing on being ready because they have a good outside and just a great setter all around.”
Groce believes the key to this match is to stay strong as a team and to try to be faster and more observant.
“I think we have made a lot of improvements on hitting, especially speeding up the attacks,” Groce said. “Speeding up the attacks just helps everything, and being able to find a spot on the floor helps a lot too. The plan is just to go out strong. Against Brownsburg we didn’t go out quite as strong, so we are trying to work on first of all kills most of all, and just winning quickly.”
The team understands that to succeed, they need to ignore the statistics and focus on the game being played.
“I like to think the state [tournament] games have an added layer of pressure going in,” Vance said. “You don’t know what team you’re going to see because teams play a lot differently in the postseason, so it’s really important that we just go in the same as always and play our hardest.”
While the Trojans beat Floyd Central in regionals 3-0 last year, new players on both sides of the court mean Center Grove must be focused to win this matchup.
“We know that they’re going to be tough,” Vance said. “They’re not used to losing. They have only lost five games this season, but it’s going to be close because we beat them last year in regionals, and we know they’re going to want revenge. We are going to have to play our hardest.”
