Lady Miners get wind blown

The Hanna, Elk Mountain, Medicine Bow (HEM) Lady Miners High School volleyball team faced the number one team in their conference this past Saturday.

“I think for what we were expecting we did really well,” Head Coach Hannah Williams said. “They are number one in the conference right now and they played Rock River before us. They beat the Lady Longhorns in three. That kind of shows you the level they are playing at.”

Rock River beat Saratoga earlier this season and looked to be giving Southeast a race for the number one spot in the Southeast conference.

Williams said the Lady Cyclones had a strong height advantage.

“But honestly in all three games we kept up with them,” Williams said. “It was point for point for the most part when we would start and then we would get around to a rotation. Southeast had a really good server that just killed us and then it would be hard to dig out of that hole.”

The first set, the Lady Cyclones took out the Lady Miners 25-5. The next two sets the Lady Miners were almost even until point 10. Then the Lady Cyclones took the lead and did not look back. Southwest won both games with the score 25-12.

Williams said she could not help but be proud of the tenacity her smaller team had against the larger Southeast team, especially when they were going point for point.

Williams said HEM has not played as many games as most of their opponents. This made the Lady Miners still getting experience in comparison to teams that have played four or more games than HEM.

MacKenzie Priest had a good game for the Lady Miners according to Williams.

“Mackenzie has been playing our middle because we don’t have a lot of height on our team,” Williams said. “We mixed it around this week because we were missing a starter, and I put her on the outside and she helped us a lot there. She got a double block in the middle which helped us against Southeast. Mackenzie was great.”

Williams also had praise for Katelyn Maughn, a freshman.

“It was her first time starting in varsity and she took over that middle position,” Williams said. “She hit the ball, her serves were great, and she had the most attacks on our whole team, so she was super aggressive at the net. We need to be more aggressive if we are going to compete against these teams that are going to just hit at us. She did fill that role.”

The Lady Miners will be going to a tournament in Lusk on Saturday.