The Marion volleyball team kicked off the 2018 season with a 3-2 record at the Peabody-Burns tournament Saturday, good for second place.
“I think one of the biggest things we learned is how well they work together as a team,” coach Kris Burkholder said. “They really came together. As a team, we’ve been working on that.”
Marion lost only to Solomon, in the Warriors’ first match of the day (25-20, 17-25, 14-25), and at the end of the day in the championship (25-22, 25-21).
The Warriors struggled to serve consistently in the first match with the Gorillas, especially in Set 2, and it then became a bit of a mental battle, Burkholder said.
“They got a run on us (in Set 3),” Burkholder said. “It was like 10-2 right off the bat. When we started that third (set) of that (match), we weren’t focusing on ‘win,’ we were kind of focusing on ‘not lose again’. We were worried about losing again instead of going out and doing what we needed to do to win.”
The Warriors made some changes after the first match, which Burkholder said worked much better.
“After the first (match) against Solomon, we did make some adjustments in our lineup,” she said. “We started a different way. We started with the same people, but we flip-flopped our front row and back row.”
In between the losses to Solomon, Marion earned three victories, defeating Central of Burden (25-16, 25-20), Hartford (25-15, 25-8) and Wichita Classical in the semifinals (25-17, 27-25).
Marion simply tired in the championship.
“We were tired, and that hurt us,” Burkholder said. “I really think that was the difference that last game, because really our serve-receive was good. Our serving percentage was good in the last game. It was better actually than the first time we played them, but we just ran out of steam.”
Coming—Marion (3-2) will host Central Christian Thursday. First serve is scheduled for 6 p.m.
