Volleyball 2016
It’s been over 10 months since last year’s wild ride to the Sectional Semifinal in the WIAA State Volleyball tournament. The 2015 season was an emotional rollercoaster as a 5-set conference championship match was lost, a 5-set regional championship match was won, and the season came to a sad end as it does for every team but the four State champions.
Needless to say, the 2016 team has big shoes to fill. Not just because of the awesome success last year’s group experienced, but also because of the large amount of talent lost to graduation. Nine seniors off of last year’s team walked across the stage last May, resulting in a large turnover of the roster for coach Prof. Lau.
This year's club finds an array of different grades represented from the seniors all the way down to the freshmen. Five seniors are a part of the 12-girl roster, but only one has played a full-time season of Varsity; that one is four-year Varsity player Emily Johannes, however. She’ll be relied upon to lead this new team with her experience. Joining her at hitter are her classmates Rose Schierenbeck, Abby Plath and Emma Gurgel. The three all had very good seasons on JV last year and will be looking to make an impact alongside Alex Garvens, who played up to Varsity some last year, while also having a great year on JV. Alex plays back row and will be the libero at least some of the time.
The other listed libero is junior Lauren Sotnyk, who has been a fixture as a JV contributor for the past two seasons. Lauren also played some Varsity towards the end of last season. Fellow junior Kaitlyn Brandle will be one of the team’s top options at setter in her first full-time Varsity season. Steph Kazemba will be relied on to lead the back row as she joins Johannes as the only returning(full-time) player from last year’s team. A fourth junior, Tara Gerbitz, will split time between Varsity and JV, where she will be playing libero.
Sophomore Alexus Aichele gives the Lady Lancers some more depth at the hitting positions. She returns to split time this year as she did in 2015. Her fellow sophomore Cassidy Noeldner will be also playing middle blocker, exclusively for the Varsity team.
Freshmen Brynn Schierenbeck and Linsey Sydow are the final members of the squad. With overall numbers seemingly down, they will split time between the top two levels as well.
As a team with many newcomers and people who will have to split time, it will be no easy task to remain in the top part of the Dairyland Conference. It’s a task that the coaches and the team will be up to, undoubtedly. The conference isn't overwhelmingly tough and Immanuel could very well find themselves in a top spot towards the end of the regular season, as long as the team develops and not only gains experience, but applies it and learns from it.