Girls and Boys Volleyball march through pandemic and finish seasons

Throughout the past years, the boy and girls of the Greendale volleyball teams have had their fair share of up and down seasons. With COVID-19 present this year, many wondered how it would affect the volleyball season and what type of impact it would have on the players, coaches and fans. 

Because of the virus, players and coaches had to adapt to the pandemic and change the way they practiced. If the boys and girls volleyball teams wanted to play safely, they would have to change many things and this would cause a shift in their normal routines. “Our coaches focused on keeping us healthy by strictly enforcing the mask mandate and having us clean our equipment regularly throughout practice,” senior Annabelle Hoth said.

During a normal volleyball season, the boys and girls teams usually traveled to different schools to compete in games or tournaments, but due to the pandemic, traveling to other schools didn’t occur very often. “I feel like this season we had a ton of home games, and only a few away games. But if we did have an away game, varsity players would have to drive themselves to the school because the coaches didn’t want all three teams on the bus,” junior Hannah Cvikel said.

In a sport like volleyball, there are many tactics and strategies that a team can use on the court. Due to COVID-19, some of these tactics and strategies had to change. “Due to COVID-19 we do still use the same strategies as we did last year. But while doing this, we just have to be a bit more precautious and careful,” sophomore Ben Sauvageau said. 

The pandemic made this season very weird and awkward. It forced many teams to change their way of playing the game and the overall vibe of being on the volleyball team. “It was really strange this year with having so many rules for COVID. We were unable to have any pre-game dinners that happened in previous years which would have been really fun. Some teams had to completely quarantine so we would have to cancel our game completely,” junior Tori Donnelly said.

With COVID present throughout the season, the games were bound to be hard, but both teams managed to push through the pandemic and fight strong. “Our best game was on Sept. 26 against Greenfield. It was a good match and Greenfield put up a fight. That day we won 3 games straight, while managing proper social distancing. On the bench we sat further apart and kept our masks on for the majority of the day,” senior Evan Smazal said.

Even though COVID-19 may have affected the way they had to play, it didn’t affect how well they did this season. “We had many good games this season. Even though we had to deal with COVID, I think our team still did a good job this season. We managed to both play well and properly social distanced ourselves,” junior Sadie Richlen said.