Varsity girls volleyball advanced to NorCal for the first time in ten years after placing second in CCS. The team went 7-5 in league and 26-11 overall.
After beating Leigh and Branham in the CCS playoffs, Mountain View lost to Aragon in the CCS finals. Along with a strong league record, Mountain View also played four tournaments, two of which they won and went undefeated.
Dave Winn, the varsity girls volleyball coach, described the team’s chemistry and how it was able to help them get so far this season.
“What is absolutely great about this group is I can tell they truly love each other, and they’re supportive,” Winn said. “They’re not all best friends, but when it comes to volleyball, we’re all in. There’s no cliques when we’re in the gym- it’s one family.”
Going into the 2018 season, Winn said he was not as concerned about their final placing or statistics but aimed to work out any kinks and work on self improvement. The team had graduated six seniors last year and also moved up to the De Anza League due to an undefeated 2017 league season.
“We were trying to just trying to improve everyday and be the most improved team in our league,” Winn said.
Winn also described how mental strategies over physical ones was a core focus for the team this season.
“We’re trying to work on more mental toughness to be able to play with more poise and be cool under pressure,” Winn said. “I think that’s an important thing that helped us go far last year.”
“We were trying to just improve everyday and be the most improved team in our league.”
Co-captains and seniors Kyra Palmbush and Reyhaneh Turner have both been playing volleyball for more than 5 years.
“In volleyball, it’s super important to be really close to your team because the game is half mental toughness and half skill,” Turner said. “So you really need to know everyone and be comfortable with everyone and I think we did a great job with that really early on.”
Palmbush echoed Winn’s sentiment, affirming the importance of building strong relationships in order to maximize success.
“I think going into the season we knew we were going to have really good chemistry so we wanted to focus on that and working together,” Palmbush said.
Team members described Mountain View’s rival game against Los Altos as one of their most favorite moments of the season, winning in 4 sets.
“We didn’t just beat them- we played really well. We had a lot of energy,” Turner said. “We were really not supposed to beat them because we just moved up the league.”
Winn agreed that the first league game was a memorable one because the team had not beat Los Altos since 3 years ago.
Varsity girls volleyball will graduate four seniors this year and maintain their position in the De Anza League for the 2019 season.