The Pirate Junior High “A” volleyball team played two more games on February 3 and 6.

Pomeroy hosted Colfax Feb. 3. We ended up losing by the scores of 25-16, 9-25, 11-15.

“We played them earlier this year and lost all three games so I was very happy with not only taking a convincing game 1 from them but also playing a tough game 3,” said Coach Adam Van Vogt. “I feel like we’ve improved steadily every week this season and it is nice to see evidence of that based on closing the gap against an opponent we played earlier.”

The team had its best serving game of the year at 86%, a number Coach Van Vogt was happy with. “It will help us win future games if we can keep it up or improve on it,” he said.

Haliee Brewer led the team with 6 aces on 12 for 12 serving, 4 kills, 2 digs, a block and an assist. “Haliee is really becoming a good volleyball player and I’ve enjoyed watching her game grow this season,” he said. Cassidy Bales added 9 out of 10 attempts serving with 5 aces and a dig. Hannah Bagby led the team with 4 assists.

February 6, we traveled to Tekoa to play Tekoa/Rosalia, winning 21-25, 25-10, 15-6.

“We came out slowly in game one and I didn’t like our focus,” Van Vogt said. “We missed four of our first five serves and dug a hole we couldn’t quite recover from.”

Pomeroy “pulled ourselves together,” recovering to play better in the second and third sets for the win.

“I give the girls a ton of credit as it is tough to play poorly early on and refocus, especially in junior high,” Van Vogt said. “I’ve seen many high school teams without the kind of character necessary to pull it together and this group did a great job of regrouping.”

Laynee Herres served 18 for 19 including the last 18 straight, hitting 9 aces and giving the team a huge pick-up from behind the line.

Hannah Bagby played all the way around and gave us a boost with her back-row play, Van Vogt said. She led the team with three kills in the front row, too, and had a great game. Bagby took last year off but has improved steadily all year and is becoming a very solid player.

Pomeroy had its best net play of the season, Van Vogt said. Izzy Field had two stuff blocks on back-to-back plays. Ashlee Pemberton also had a huge stuff block and added three aces. Taylor Gilbert had her first block of the season on an important game 3 point, and added three aces of her own.

“I was most proud of the fact that after serving so poorly to start the night, the girls served 93% in games 2 and 3,” Van Vogt said. “That statistic would make any high school team happy and certainly keyed our turnaround between games.”

With two weeks left to play, Van Vogt is looking for more consistency. “We have improved so much and if these girls can play with consistency, we will continue to compete well moving forward,” he said.