Volleyball teams from three different conferences will meet in a triangular Thursday. AGWSR will welcome Iowa Falls-Alden and South Tama to Ackley for early-season tests for all three teams.
The Cadets enter 0-1 after being swept at home by #5 (2A) South Hardin Tuesday. They’ll look to learn from some mistakes after a negative attack efficiency in a match where they trailed for the entirety. First-year Head Coach Betsy Dunphy says it’s a learning process, but likes the makeup of the roster.
“Our offense is going to develop as the season goes on,” Dunphy says. “And I think that’s what you want as a coach. I think you want your offense to start to figure themselves out and start to figure out ways that they can score. You know, we’ve got Carlea Dagel, who’s returning. She’s a young player. She played a lot as a freshman. She’s matured a lot. She’ll be big for us in the middle. Tessa Neumann and Leah Allen are on the outsides right now. Tessa played kind of all the way around. I think last year she was kind of a utility player for them. And then Leah didn’t play at all because she had torn her ACL. So she’s really kind of chomping at the bit to get going. They kind of hold it down on the pins for us.”
Dagel led with seven kills in Tuesday’s loss.
Dunphy on how she hopes to develop the team.
“We talk a lot about like 1% better every day. We’re making daily deposits and we know, and we believe that we wanna be playing our best volleyball at the end of the season. So we’re just kind of staying focused on the things that we can control and then really kind of dialing in on those things to make sure that we’re doing those things that we can control with consistency and efficiency. So my hope is that we kind of see the beginnings of a different brand of volleyball here.”
AGWSR is 1-2 after mixed results at a quad at Grundy Center Tuesday, where they made a statement by defeating #14 (4A) Waverly-Shell Rock 2-1.
It’ll be the season opener for South Tama, which will return three seniors from last year’s team that went 12-22.
The triangular will begin at 5:00 p.m.
Betsy Dunphy interview:
