ROGERS — Pea Ridge coach Jessica Woods is excited about the upcoming season after the Lady Blackhawks won their first conference matches in school history last year. Woods said more teams willbe competing for state tournament spots and even a conference title without Shiloh Christian in the mix now.
The 4A-1 Conference will have a different look with the most dominant volleyball team in the league over the past decade, Shiloh Christian, moving to Class 5A thisseason. Several teams got a small preview of the upcoming league race at the Rogers Heritage team camp, the last week of July. Five teams from the 4A-1 participated in the camp.
Pea Ridge and Prairie Grove got a taste of the competitive level as the teams split two tight sets Thursday morning. The Lady Blackhawks took the first set and led in the second set only to see the Lady Tigers rally for a 26-24 win.
“It’ll be a race this year,” Woods said. “I think us, Gravette, Farmington and Prairie Grove will all compete.”
Pea Ridge returns four starters led by all-conference outside hitter Jordan Ingram. In addition, the Lady Blackhawks are counting on several sophomores off last year’s junior high conference championship team to contribute this year,Woods said.
Prairie Grove returns seven seniors who saw action on a team, which lost in the first round of the state tournament last season. Lady Tigers coach Hannah McDonald returns all-conference players Kaleigh Witherspoon and Caleigh Moyer. McDonald was pleased to find out about the team camp this year since it’s given her team a good balance of competition, playing teams from Class 3A to 7A.
A pair of first-year coaches at Farmington and Lincoln already knew each other from playing volleyball, but their teams got to know each other on the court, too.
Lincoln coach Adrian Risley said it was funny to see Farmington coach Marshall Ward down on the opposing bench in their first match of the camp Wednesday morning.
However, the programs are at different points in their development. Farmington reached the state tournament last year, while this will be the third year Lincoln has even fielded a volleyball team. It will be the first year Lincoln has a junior high team. Lincoln has only won one match in each of its first two seasons. But the team camp has helped both teams answer some questions. “I’m seeing improvement,” Risley said. “The girls don’t always see it. But playing against better teams will make us better.” Ward said the camp has been the first time to have all his players together at the same time. “This has been wonderful,” Ward said.
“It’s shown me some strengths and weaknesses, things we need to work on. We’ve had seven practices and haven’t had all my starters there at the same time. But I’ll have them all starting next week.”
Sports, Pages 7 on 08/15/2012