The scores have only told so much about the progress of Madison volleyball.
Coach Dean Mortland sees — across three weeks of games and two more before it of hard work — a completely different team of Dragons and different for the better.
“They have improved leaps and bounds,” he said after the Dragons’ latest match of last week. “Again, they don’t show from our scores, but we’ve got to start from somewhere.”
That somewhere was once just focused on instilling the fundamentals into his girls’ everyday practices and then the matches. One month in, the progress is evident watching inmatch play. “When a quarter of them couldn’t serve the ball over the net, and now I’ve got 80% of them getting it over,” Mortland said.
The focus has now turned to operating those fundamentals into in-match success while continuing to progress in athleticism. Part of it comes from continuing to drill through the basics in practice, but with an extra element of going back through the previous matches available, Mortland said it’s time to really start utilizing that.
“A good chunk of it is that we’re going to have to go back and - I’m not a big film watcher - but we’re going to have to go back. I’m a visual person. I have to see what I’m doing wrong. I’m hoping if they can see what’s going on, maybe that’ll help click,” he said.
Madison has found its moment to really click this past week, especially in Tuesday’s match at Wakefield. Down 16-4 in the first set, Madison began to peck away at the lead. The Dragons were down 11 when a Dragon point put sophomore Ember Hysell back to serve.
It quickly became the run of a lifetime for Madison, who with some crucial blocking at the net led by sophomore Sophie Cienfuegos, tied the set at 17-all. Hysell, still serving, dropped in an ace to put Madison in front. Though the lead
