Lady Bronco volleyball excited for season to start

Wauneta-Palisade’s Katie Lawless has a strong group of letter winners on which to build in her first year as head coach of the Bronco volleyball team.
WP returns five letter winners, four who started last season, to lead the group of 17 who reported to practice. Several others spent time on the court with the varsity squad last year.
Lawless picked out senior Alexa Sandman as an obvious leader of the team.
“She’s a four-year starter with a lot of experience playing big roles and just being a really versatile, competitive and gritty player. She pushes the other players to get better every single day,” Lawless said.
Fans will see some new faces in new positions, Lawless said, but not a lot has changed as far as the style of volleyball WP likes to play.
The biggest change will be on offense where the Broncos will be utilizing their outside hitters a lot more than in the past, Lawless added.
There may be a learning curve early in the season.
Lawless said a lot of players are seeing much different roles this season so she expects that to be a cause of some errors but all of the girls are working hard to improve and settle into their new roles and positions.
Staying aggressive out of system will be important, but Lawless feels a team strength is having a lot of girls who can hit the ball well from every position.
“As long as our passing game holds up we should be able to give a lot of players different opportunities all over the floor. I also really like our defensive mindset right now and the girls have really bought into it and have worked hard,” she said.
Heading into Thursday’s season opening home match against Hitchcock County, Lawless said the team has been practicing well.
“The girls’ mindset is to come in and work hard and accomplish things and that’s exactly what we’ve been doing. They’ve been working really hard and responding well to everything we have thrown at them so far,” Lawless said.
Lawless will be joined by first-year Assistant Coach Staci Applegarth.
The Broncos’ schedule has a little different look.
WP has added the Cambridge Invitational to the schedule and the Broncos will face Axtell, a team it often sees in the Hitchcock County Tournament, in Cambridge to round out the regular season.
“We’re really just taking everything one game at a time and with the mentality that we want to compete at our highest level no matter who we’re playing against,” Lawless said.
 The new schedule addition, the Cambridge Invite, will be played Saturday.
WP will be in Pool A against Cambridge and Rawlins County, Kansas in the main gym.
In Pool B, playing in the junior high gym, will be Southwest, Red Cloud and Norton, Kansas.
Games will be played at 9 a.m. CT, 10 a.m. CT and 11 a.m. CT. WP will play in the first two games.
Playing at 1 p.m. CT will be the number two teams from both pools in the main gym and the third teams from both pools in the junior high gym.
The championship game will be played at 2 p.m. CT in the main gym.
“We’re just really excited for this group of kids and to see what they can accomplish this season. It’s really an upbeat, positive, hilarious group of girls so I’m hoping that chemistry can really help them see a lot of success,” Lawless said.