The Davidson Raiders senior girls volleyball team kept the score close against a talented Outlook Blues team at Davidson School last Wednesday, but couldn’t “catch any breaks” in the two games played losing 3 sets to 2 in the first match and 5-0 in the second.

Tony Baldwin, volunteer coach of the Raiders, said the team “earned every point” against the Blues and generally played good, but the girls still have some work to do in gelling as a team and getting more serves on target as the season progresses.

“It’s just the first week of the season, so there is a lot of rust there, but I thought the young girls played well and they’re in the process of learning how to play together,” said Baldwin. “Some of those girls have played for a couple years in senior ball and some of them have never played a senior game until (this one), so that is what the start of the season is about in getting them all hooked up.”

The coach said the older girls on the team are doing a great job in coaching the younger ones on good position play and it is “really exciting” for him to see how well the Grade 10 students understand the defensive structure already.

He said the main struggle against the Blues in the second game was the Raiders’ serves and in senior volleyball “you can’t miss serves,” so that is something they’ll be working on in practice. Other problems that occurred against the Blues could partially be due to the fact Outlook is a bigger school than Davidson and organizes their team into an A squad and B squad.

To read more lease see the Sept. 17 print edition of The Davidson Leader.