Lady Tigers face Bishop Kelly in '09 volleyball season debut

The Mountain Home Lady Tigers will open their 2009 volleyball season Thursday night at home against Bishop Kelly.

Second-year head volleyball coach Rachele Asbury opened practice on Aug. 10 and had a good turnout for volleyball.

"We did have a good turnout. We had 48 girls at our tryouts, so we have some options, and some younger girls really improved over the summer and were able to move up to some of the higher-level teams."

Asbury has 11 girls on her varsity squad and feels the 11 are very versatile in all aspects of the game of volleyball.

"We have a good group as far as having different skills and being able to put one person in three different spots, or another person in three different spots.

"We don't have a lot of people that are specifically specialized in one area, so that gives us some options, and if one person isn't cutting it, the other person's going to be able to step in and fill that spot, being able to back up each other. So I think our skill level is pretty equal with a lot of the girls, so they'll be able to push each other for those starting positions."

Match victories were few for last year's Lady Tigers, although they played a lot of close matches. Asbury sees the need for her girls to learn to finish games.

"A lot of our games were very, very, very close. In the end, that's not what cuts it, but I'd rather play tough teams and be very close than to lose by 15 every single time. It shows the girls that they are improving," Asbury said.

"I think our game percentage on wins and losses will be a lot different this year, but who knows. We need to go out there and the girls need to be ready to play. The part that last year we weren't able to do was finish games, and playing close games, we need to learn how to finish."

Asbury expects the conference race to be tough again this year.

"I believe Skyview lost quite a few seniors, so I think they're going to be on a down year. 'B' is always tough, Emmett's always tough, Middleton is going to be tough.

"Kuna I think is going to be our number one competition for right now, just looking at the people that they were able to return. We also got to see them in two different tournaments this summer, and they looked pretty tough."

After Thursday night's opener against Bishop Kelly, the Lady Tigers will head to Kuna on Friday and Saturday for a tournament.

"I love doing tournaments," said Coach Asbury. "We get a lot of play-time, a lot of games, and the way to get better is to getting touches on the ball. (By) playing tournaments versus just playing a non-league game, you're able to touch the ball a lot more, and that's the only way we're going to get better."

Thursday night's opener against Bishop Kelly is set to start at 6:30 p.m. in Lloyd Schiller Gymnasium.