Lady Grizz look impressive at home tournament

The Lady Grizz hosted the Rocky Mountain Invitational volleyball tournament last weekend and looked sharp to begin the season by going 4-1.

“The girls did a really good job,” head coach Kay Townsend said. “It was good to get out some first game jitters.”

The varsity squad began Friday’s pool-play matches by defeating Meeteetse 25-12, 25-12.

They then beat Dubois in an exciting three-set match, 25-21, 21-25, 15-5 before sweeping Wind River 25-8, 25-13 to take the top seed from their pool into Saturday’s bracket play.

Advancing to the gold bracket had them taking on Burlington, where they took their first loss of the season, 25-21, 25-23, in a well fought match.

Rocky Mountain then defeated Dubois again, 25-21, 25-16, to claim third place.

“I think we served the ball really well,” Coach Townsend said. “This week we will continue to work on serve receive, block timing and hitter coverage.”

She highlighted Kaysie Cooley, Halle Grandalen, Layla Gardner and Keylee Christiansen as key servers behind the service line for the Lady Grizz on the weekend.

Townsend emphasized the importance of getting good passes to the setter target so that their offense can be most effective.

“We did OK when we weren’t able to get perfect passes, but we can be so much more effective if we can get those passes right to our setter,” she explained.

No statistics were recorded at the opening tournament for Rocky Mountain.

UPCOMING

The Lady Grizz will travel to Wyoming Indian on Saturday to compete in the Foothills Classic.

They are set to play five games starting with Saratoga at 9 a.m., followed by Wyoming Indian, Fort Washakie, Wind River and Big Piney with a rolling schedule.

“We are looking forward to playing some different teams we haven’t seen yet,” said Coach Townsend. “The girls are practicing hard and are very coachable and cooperative.”

JV

Rocky Mountain’s junior varsity team also had success on the court in the opening tournament by winning six of eight sets.

The Lady Grizz JV swept Meeteetse 21-13, 21-17 and then took that momentum forward to defeat Dubois 21-15, 21-17. Rocky then split with Wind River, 17-21, 21-13, to round out games on Friday.

On Saturday, they split with Burlington, 21-15, 20-21 to cap off the weekend.

The JV team will now go with the varsity to Wyoming Indian on Saturday and will face the same opponents as the varsity immediately after those games are completed.