Last year’s Pratt High volleyball team set a school record for wins and leaned heavily on a talented group of seniors. This year’s senior class has just three members, Rystal Hoeme, Breanna Blankenship and Emma McNay. That leaves plenty of room for younger players to make their mark. Coach Dean Rausch hopes they will sooner rather than later.
“We’re awful young,” Rausch said. “We’re actually going to play three freshmen on varsity this year, maybe even four as the season goes on. So we know that we’re going to be young and inexperienced, and having done this for about 22 years, I know that there’s a learning curve that has to be done and you can’t speed it up. We’ll go ahead and take our lumps and do what we have to do.”
Rausch has a competitive and athletic young group of girls, and he says the team will probably continue to get better as the season goes on and the team learns the intricacies of playing at the varsity level. Until then, he’ll lean on his returning players to provide leadership and experience.
“What we returned is our middles, a couple six-foot girls in Payton Hoeme and Aubrey Hoover,” he said. “They’re making good progress and are better than they were last year. They’re still pretty young.
“Rystal Hoeme is one of our seniors, and she returns from an injury, shin problems from last year. So she’s had some varsity experience.”
Playing in a 5-1 offense, the setter is an important piece of the puzzle. Last year’s setter was Ashton Neumann, who has since graduated and will play softball at PCC.
“Avery Neumann is Ashton’s little sister, and when her sister was hurt, Avery set for us,” Rausch said. “So she’s had some varsity experience.”
The team will be competing in the new Central Kansas League, a group of teams that have had success in volleyball, including Hillsboro, which made it to the 3A State tournament. In addition, Rausch beefed up his schedule, setting dates with 4A State qualifier Valley Center and a 6A team in Goddard.
“We toughened up what was already a fairly aggressive schedule and we’re just going to go, and do what we can do,” he said. “We will return most people for next year, but we want to see how far we can go this year.”
