The 2016 season came to a close last weekend for the Mancos and Dolores volleyball squads.
Playing in the Class 2A District 3 Tournament, both were eliminated from the postseason as Telluride, Ridgway and Norwood advanced as the district’s representatives in the Class 2A Regional Tournament.
Mancos opened play on Friday against Ridgway, falling 3-0. And then the Blue Jays were swept by Dolores on Saturday to put an end to their season.
They finished the year with a 2-19 record. But with a team consisting of two seniors, and then three sophomores and four freshmen, MHS head coach Brittany Lang is optimistic about the future.
Lang said that her young players were able to get valuable experience and learned to play together as the season went along, and that she saw glimpses of great sequences that she hopes to continue next year.
And while it probably wasn’t the year that Nicole Hess and Tayler Power-Bahr had envisioned, Lang spoke of their resiliency and their impact on her as a coach and the program as a whole.
“It’s really special to me that I was able to work with these girls from freshmen to seniors and to really watch them grow,” she said. “Overall, they laid a pretty solid foundation for what Mancos volleyball is going to look like in the future.”
The Dolores Lady Bears opened the district tourney with the win over Mancos. And although they were swept by Ridgway in their second pool play contest, the win got them into the third place game against Norwood to determine the final regional qualifier.
Dolores had won a five-game battle against the Mavericks just nine days prior, but on Saturday, Norwood senior Macie Magallon racked up 18 kills as the Mavericks went on to sweep Dolores and end the Lady Bears’ season.
“Had we played the way we played earlier I think the outcome would have been different,” said DHS head coach Gina Hollen. “But we played really flat and we were totally off. We did get a run going for a few points, and then it wasn’t very pretty.”
“We definitely had a lot of good things that happened this year, skill-wise and coming together as a team,” she continued. “But we also had the opposite of that. I think towards the end of the season we were progressing in the right direction, I just don’t really know what happened Saturday.”
The Lady Bears finished the season with a 9-13 record. And while they will lose seniors Harlie Valdez, Bailey Boyd and Alyana Frasier to graduation, they’ll return a slew of key players.
“We still have our big hitters,” said Hollen. “I think we’ll be better off next season starting than we were this year. This year was kind of a re-start, re-set. I don’t want to sound like my mind is made up for who is going to be on my team, but it’s looking promising.”