Volleyball just misses out on state bid

The 2022 girls volleyball season came to a disappointing end this weekend after the Tigers lost to Palisade during this years regional tournament.  Holy Family was poised for another run at state, but costly mistakes and inexperience in big moments hurt the Tigers.  The season showed drastic improvement over the course of the season, but saw glaring issues such as trouble closing, or “taking their foot off the gas” costing them games.

Holy Family welcomed The Classical Academy (TCA) and Palisade High School to the Class 4A Region 11 tournament, a tournament that they fought to host all year after a rough start to the season.  Holy Family held on to beat rolled TCA in five sets and set their sights on Palisade, a team that beat earlier during the season 3-0. Holy Family got in a early hole, down 2 sets to 1.  They battled back, winning the fourth set and forcing a winner-take-all fifth set. That would be all to write about for the Tigers, they lost the fifth set — being outscored 8-1 down the stretch –a set that was filled with crucial mistakes and showed the team’s youth, a talking point throughout throughout the season.

Despite a shocking end, this Tigers season could be described as successful.  They won the games that they needed to so that they could be in a position to make a run, they just couldn’t put it all together at the end.  This young and inexperienced team — that will graduate just two seniors — exceeded their own expectations along with all the outside voices. The program will say goodbye to Morgan Anderson (she is going to play beach volleyball at Stetson University in Florida) and setter Megan Gonzales but will look to what experience they had left to build around.  This young talent now sheds a piece of optimism for the program.  The team saw multiple sophomores see valuable time on the floor, along with multiple JV underclassmen swinging up to varsity during the course of the season.

The bad news:  The season is over.  The good news: This team is going to be fine and even better next year.  The team returns the majority of the team, losing two seniors, and has already built a steady foundation that can succeed for future seasons.