The Greeley West volleyball team has made regionals for the first time in…wait, what? They didn’t make regionals? The Spartans were duped into thinking they had made the playoffs Sunday. But no more than a half an hour later, the Colorado High School Activities Association corrected their mistake, promptly ending the Spartans’ season in a disappointing way.
The Spartans have had an up and down season finishing with a record of 11-12. They had a rough start to the season going 0-2, but won six of their next seven games before suffering a four-game losing streak. The rest of the season proved to be a similar rollercoaster. We rolled off another four straight wins but then slipped late, losing four straight starting with their Roosevelt game. Senior setter Chelsie Roberts offered insight on how thinking the team was going to regionals affected their finish to the season.
“Our coach told us that no matter what, we were going to go to Regionals. So we got into our heads going into our last game unfocused. We didn’t really care if we won or lost. Obviously we wanted to win, but it wasn’t like we had to win. I don’t think anybody had that mindset that we had to win,” Roberts said.
Senior Middle Hitter Davanee McKinney expressed her thoughts on how the season got away from them. “I don’t think it should have got to the point where it was a toss up. I think that if we did win our last game – and even the game before that – it would have put us even higher up so that we would not have to worry about not making it.” McKinney said
Senior Ouside Hitter Itzy Guidry expressed some factors that went into their eventual end to the season. “I think that we were psyched the whole season to make it to Regionals. We knew that we could. When it got to the point where the coach said that we will get in no matter what, but (then) our last game our coach said that we were not going to make it. So it was like this back and forth like ‘we are making it,’ ‘we’re not making it’ and I think that messed with us mentally,” Guidry said.
