HARLINGEN — After last year’s fourth-place district finish, Harlingen High head volleyball coach Jennifer Martinez and her squad was eager to get back to work and right all of last season’s wrongs.
That time is now here.
“It feels great to get back on the court,” said Martinez on Tuesday. The Lady Cards held their first official practice of the season on Monday.
“It’s exciting but at the same time we’ve got a lot of work to do. We had a rude awakening on Monday, but at the same time we found our weaknesses and at least now we know what we need to work on.
Last year’s bi-district playoff loss to Edinburg High lit a fire under the team especially senior Addison Dickey, who spent the summer working on her game.
Leaders like Dickey, Sami Quilantan and Elvira Fraga will be counted on to anchor the squad.
“Those girls are tough and hard working, they never give anything less than 100 percent,” said Martinez. “During the summer they trained hard and Addison went above and beyond what she was asked. She went to Incarnate Word, Texas Tech and Temple to train and get seen by college coaches.”
This year the team will have 11 girls, eight of which are seniors, one junior and two sophomores.
Now in her third year as head coach, Martinez feels that the program is headed in the right direction but it still has a lot of room to improve.
“We need to keep going in the right direction,” she said. “Each year we’ve gotten better and I just want to make sure that we keep on that upward trajectory. Our mentality was our weakness last year, but we’ve prepared for that too. Now we just need to get all of that together and put the right players on the court and let’s go.
“Harlingen South looks great with their new head coach and Los Fresnos always comes strong along with Brownsville Veterans. “But that doesn’t faze these girls. These girls are so passionate that their hearts will carry them through anything. We’re a big family and we may not agree on everything, but we talk it out and we move on.”
Harlingen begins the season with a scrimmage at Nikki Rowe this Saturday at 9 a.m. and gets the season started at home against Brownsville Pace next Tuesday.