MORGAN COUNTY
The Morgan County volleyball team, defending title winners of Class 3A, opened up its 2023 season with a difficult slate of games.
In a tournament at the start of the year, the Spike Dogs played four games against all types of opponents. Head coach Kat Goodwin’s squad finished the event 2-2 with wins over North Hall and Cherokee Bluff and losses to Hart County and Chestatee.
Since then, the Spike Dogs have gone 5-3 with some convincing results over high-level competition at the 3A level, and Goodwin has noticed that the girls are finally settling in and playing well with one another.
“I knew coming into the year with some players new to the team and some injuries that we’d have what I like to call ‘roommate issues’, where you’re figuring out who’s going to get the ball on this type of serve, or who’s supposed to pick up the second ball, stuff like that,” Goodwin said. “I think they got some of those kinks worked out because we’ve been moving better and jiving together. We could get more comfortable, but we’ve been happy to see their progression playing together.”
One of Morgan County’s most recent victories came against last year’s state championship opponent, Oconee County, in a three-set battle.
The Spike Dogs started lackadaisical, losing the first set by 10 points; however, they would eventually settle in, winning the second set 25-21 and then defeating the Warriors by two in the third set.
Goodwin was proud of the way her team battled back against the Warriors and emphasized that its chemistry would be important in big matches.
“We easily could have had that match go another direction, so I had to tell them, you aren’t the same team as last year’s, but that pressure is going to follow you just because of what we did last year,” Goodwin said. “I just told them their regular season record doesn’t matter, and it seemed to relieve a little bit of the stress they might have been feeling before the match. I think that was the key to turning it around because Oconee handily won the first set.”
With the team only a third of the way through the regular season, Goodwin is still finding different ways to pair the girls together on the court to find the best six.
In her search, Goodwin and the rest of the coaching staff named junior outside hitter Quinn Butler as the team’s captain for this season. On top of that, multiple underclassmen have stepped into important roles to keep the team balanced.
“[Butler] has been the engine of the team. She’s just very steady, making great plays at the net and playing good defense behind that. I’d be remiss not to mention how she’s helped lead the team so far this season,” Goodwin said. “Camryn Scherer and Abby Dennard are two freshmen who didn’t play a lot last year, and they are now both starters who play all the way around, so it’s been good to see some production from some of the younger girls, as well.”
Morgan County will head into region play with games against Harlem and Salem on Aug. 24, before playing its last stretch of non-region contests to end the month.
After that, the Spike Dogs will have eight more region matches mixed in between multiple games that will feature teams from all different classifications.