WYNNE — Wynne Lady Jackets volleyball is entering the season with a familiar face as head coach.
Blair McClanahan was named the interim head coach after the departure of first-year coach Shatel Gaines. McClanahan was the assistant varsity coach and junior high head coach for the past four years. She said the team worked hard in the off-season.
“Pre-season went really well. We went to three team camps this summer and we faced some really tough competition, some bigger schools, some smaller schools,” McClanahan said. “I was really proud of how we did this summer. We put up a lot of fight and we went out and competed. We’ve got to work on some consistency.
“We would start out really strong and then kind of hit a lull there in the middle, but I was proud of how we finished most of our sets and came back strong and finished most of our sets strong,” she added. “One thing that we’ve really been pushing for at the beginning of our season is just staying consistent through the whole set and just starting strong, finishing strong, being strong in the middle.”
McClanahan said she has a mix of players this year with some seniors and the rest sophomores.
“We have six seniors and we have 10 sophomores. We have a lot of experience, a lot of post-season experience, a lot of players who played sophomore, junior and senior year and then we have sophomores where this is their first year on varsity and they are young,” she said. “They’re coming in. They’re just soaking up everything and they’re learning everything at the varsity level and just taking it all in. We kind of have two sides of the same coin where we have a lot of experience and then we have none, or none at the varsity level.”
After going undefeated in conference the past two seasons, the Lady Jackets will see some new opponents in conference this year.
“We have two new teams that have entered our conference — Harding Academy and Heber Springs. Our returning teams are Lonoke, Southside and Forrest City. We have finished conference champs in our conference the last two years with Lonoke, Southside, Forrest City and Little Rock Hall, but Little Rock Hall has stepped out of our conference,” McClanahan said. “Last year, we played Harding Academy and we lost to them but we lost one of our starting six rotation players in the first or second set that night to an ankle injury. That was a really close match that night, so I’m really interested to see this year how we play Harding Academy. I think that’s going to be a really interesting game.”
The Lady Jackets hosted the Class 4A state tournament last year. McClanahan said she hopes the excitement from that tournament spills into this season.
“I think just hosting a state tournament got a lot of buzz going around for the community and I’d like to see those people come back out. I hope they didn’t forget about volleyball. They came out and had a lot of fun,” she said. “I hope they didn’t go this whole off-season and forget about us and forget about volleyball and how much fun they had at the state tournament. I hope they’ll come back out this season and support those girls and just remember how fun the sport is.”
The Lady Jackets will begin the season Tuesday with the junior high jamboree at Paragould. The senior high jamboree will follow Thursday at Jonesboro Westside. The season opener is Monday, Aug. 24, at home versus Trumann.
