A Look Back

As we close out the 2019 Fall Sports seasons, we asked Kimball High Coach Jeri Ferguson to give us her thoughts on the Lady Longhorn Volleyball season. Here are her comments.

"The 2019 season began with two new changes: one being a new assistant coach and the other was dropping to Class D-1. Staci Paxton came on board as the Longhorns assistant coach. She is a great addition to the program. The only difference moving to a D-1 was it changed where the Longhorns sub-districts were played.

"Even though the 2019 season did not go like we had hoped, we did have some success. Both teams finished 3rd place in the Gordon/Rushville tournament and for the first time in quite awhile, both junior varsity and varsity teams won all four games in a triangle.

"Unfortunately, the 2019 season was filled with injuries and illness. The down side to that is, it's hard to get consistency going, but the upside is that many girls got playing time. We also had four girls make the WTC All-Conference teams; Jenna Greenwood and Sydney Biesecker were all-conference and Nicole Delaplane and Megan Spicer made honorable mention. Jenna Greenwood also made the SPVA second team. Jenna will be going to two college tryouts; one at McCook Community College, Doana University and Eastern Wyoming College.

"The future is looking up for Kimball High School Volleyball. The freshman won more sets than they have for several years, and the junior varsity won the most games and sets they have for the past 5 years"

Coach Ferguson and Paxton are looking forward to the underclassmen coming back and really hope they will dedicate themselves to the weight room over the summer.

We also take a look at some top individual stats as provided by Coach Ferguson.

In the serving category, senior Bailie Brower took top honors for ace serves with 35 and had the most serve attempts with 255 and ended with a 87.3% rating.

Jenna Greenwood had 32 ace serves and had 87.7% serving. Megan Spicer charted 21 ace serves and was also 87.7% serving. Others with double figure ace serves were Amy Birkhofer with 18, Sydney Biesecker 12, and Jayden Paxton 10.

Leading in serve receive rating was Nicole Delaplane at 1.44, Jenna Greenwood with 1.40, Jayden Paxton 1.31, and Bailie Brower at 1.26. In the hitting department Greenwood was way out front with 139 kills, Delaplane had 77 kills, Brower 49, and Birkhofer 41.

Greenwood was the only player with double figure blocks with 15 while Delaplane ended with 7 and Birkhofer with 6. In the assist category Megan Spicer led with 278 and was also high in digs with 172. Sierra Rutledge had 135 digs, Greenwood 115, and Bisecker 102.

Kimball will graduate 4 seniors, including Jenna Greenwood, who was All WTC Conference and 2nd Team SPVA All Conference, along with Nicole Delaplane who was WTC Honorable Mention and Bailie Brower, who was high in the stats. Juniors Sydney Biesecker was WTC All Conference and Megan Spicer was WTC Honorable Mention

The seniors will certainly be missed next year, but like Coach Ferguson said, it would appear there are some talented younger players returning and the future looks bright.