By Bruce Nie, Staff Writer
One of the most exciting fall sports offered here at Mills is our girl’s volleyball program. Mills’ girl’s volleyball team has had a long-winded history of winning, having won the league on 11 separate occasions. Yet, despite the prestigious history of the team, the 2022-23 girls’ season is hardly going to plan with an abysmal record of 2-7 halfway through the season. A lack of teamplay and the loss of key seniors from the previous season are the main contributing factors to the lack of success, state co-captains Jessica Sy (12) and An Dang (12).
Coming into the season, expectations were “not that high after losing some of our star seniors, but we were hoping to be able to fight and push through,” according to co-captain and libero of the varsity girl’s volleyball team, Dang. Of course, Dang is referring to recently graduated Mills alumni Ellie Lau and Hailey Lo, two of the most talented passers and outside hitters Mills had seen in recent years. Both played a crucial role in last year’s girls volleyball season, as Lau’s reliable defense and Lo’s powerful swings are now sorely missed. Along with last year’s starting middle Chloe Gao, Mills had lost half of their starting lineup coming into this season. However, even with the loss of three starting seniors from last year, Mills still has a roster filled with current or ex-club volleyball players extremely skilled in their own right. So why is it that this talented volleyball team is losing so many games?
“[Our biggest issues] are the lack of communication and confidence as well as our own anxieties. We’re good as individual players but we’re in our heads and don’t play together,” co-captain and varsity’s right-back Sy stated when asked to elaborate on their issues. Her observation definitely holds some merit, as the amount of talent on the roster is not being reflected on the record sheet, with Mills on a 4-game loss streak at the moment –their most recent after their close loss to Westmoor on Thursday (10/13). The team is currently 1-3 at home and 1-4 in away games.
One factor is that star-freshman outside player, Brianna Zhang (9) has been sidelined for the rest of the season after a partial tear in her rotator cuff was discovered around two weeks ago. Despite her young age, Zhang was a clear stand-out among the team and played well above her age, averaging over 10 kills a game.
Yet another disappointing contribution to Mills’ struggles seems to be the team’s lack of ability to side-out after the opposing team goes on a run. When watching and analyzing the girls’ volleyball team play, it is noticeable that the girls are able to stick with the other team for a good part of the first half of the set. Then, they start to collapse and give other teams large leads. As Sy pointed out in an interview, this seems to be the player’s own anxieties, lack of team chemistry, and low confidence all coming together to play a significant part in their struggles.
Being able to recognize their own problems and what they need to work on is the first step in order to improve. The next step is to actually take action and find ways to resolve these fundamental problems. When asked about their plans for the team, co-captains Dang and Sy emphasized the importance of “more reps” in order to get their fundamental skills down and team bonding activities, such as tie dying shirts in order to get the players more comfortable around each other to improve team chemistry. Hopefully, the girls are able to sort out these issues in practice and improve their record in the second half of the season.
When asked about the player’s morale and their feelings on the season, co-captain Sy explained that they were “extremely disappointed, [as] even though our record doesn’t reflect it, we put up a good fight every game.” This was apparent in Thursday’s loss against Westmoor, where the Rams took an early 2 set lead, yet Mills stayed determined and fought back, dominating the third set and had a 7-point lead in the 4th, just to heartbreakingly lose the 4th set 25-21.
Still, no matter the outcome of the season, Mills’ girls’ volleyball program seems to have a bright future with stand-out freshman Zhang and sophomores Lainey Tsai (10) and Ria Khalasi (10) in the years to come. “I have high hopes for the future because Zhang is leading the team now,” Sy happily stated. Dang also agreed, saying that she also had “high hopes that the underclassmen will adjust and step up to take the lead” upon their graduation. With these plans for improvement in place, the girls’ volleyball team will hopefully see a promising rest of the season.
