Having fallen shy of a district and regional title a year ago, Owensboro Catholic is looking to fill in the missing pieces and play as a team to find success in the 2022 campaign.
Lady Aces volleyball finished last season with an overall record of 25-13, while finishing with a district record of 5-3. They’ve lost multiple rotation players that graduated, that included senior Cate Sights who had a monster year offensively.
But Owensboro Catholic and Head Coach Brian Hardison won’t have a completely different roster this year, as a number of key players have made their return to bolster the Lady Aces rotation.
“Paige Miles and Kennedy Murphy are my returning setters who run our offense very well,” Hardison said. “Emily Christian is our returning libero who runs our several defenses with Karsen Tipmore and Blair Riney rounding out our back row. Blair is a six-position player also hitting on the outside.”
Abigail Williams also returns to change positions to outside from middle as well as middles Abbie Baughman and Olivia Castlen. They will also have some new right sides in Mollie Pride and Tyranda Staurt, while Jaiden Grant, Lindsey Warren, Kirsten Williams, and Isabelle Reiz round out the team.
Hardison said that the key to them returning to form and having another strong season will be teamwork. If they can focus on playing for each other and limiting little mistakes, Hardison thinks they can go as far as they want.
“Our expectations are to be playing our best ball that we can in October and to go as far as we possibly can,” Hardison said. “Our key thing is everything has to be about all of us or none of us. To be able to go anywhere we have to limit our unforced errors and make every single team play defense give them nothing.”
The Lady Aces will get their first opportunity to grab a win on Monday, Aug. 22, where they will host Bowling Green at 7:30 p.m.
