'Keeping confidence up' key for Marist continued success

The Marist War Eagles volleyball team are having another great season at 22-3 and are currently on a 16 match win streak. On Saturday, the War Eagles hosted a region play date as teams from GHSA 6A Region 4 were all on hand to participate in a day of competition round robin style.

“It takes a lot of work to prepare for something like this but I feel like it’s been good competition all day and everyone has been playing well with good sportsmanship and we’ve been having a good time,” Marist head coach, Leah Longoria said during Saturday’s event in which she says her players were “excited” to have the opportunity to host.

As the day came to end, the War Eagles finished 3-0 which helped extend their win streak to 16 in a row as well as gave them three region wins to improve to 7-0 in the region standings and as Longoria praised her players for their performances on Saturday and throughout the season, she credited their improved passing as one of the reasons they have had the success they have had this season.

“We spent a lot of time working on that in preseason,” Longoria said explaining the importance of her players “fixing things” during the offseason such as serving "ceives". “It’s always about that first ball, that first pass so I feel like honing in on our serving ceive has helped us throughout the season and then picking up things like defense, just making sure we’re pursuing the ball constantly and that we’re trying to get ourselves in system, I feel like that’s where our strengths are,” Longoria added.

And with just four regular season matches remaining, Longoria notes that “confidence” will be one of the most important factors for the War Eagles down the stretch in hopes of a successful postseason run. “It’s going to get tougher down the road here and it’s hard to be winning all the time like this and then start facing some tough competition so we have to keep our practices pretty competitive so that we’re prepared for the next step. Keeping ourselves competitive, keeping confidence in our blocks for sure,” Longoria said.