WP 2010: All About Precision

WAITSBURG - When Jesse Buehler tells her girls she wants the WP volleyball team to be the "best-looking house on the block," she's not referring to Kison Court where the Cardinals' home games will be played. She's referring to the players' skills "foundation." She wants every aspect of the game, every step, every move, to be as accurate as it should be for a sport that's all about precision. Some­times she'll even practice the moves in slow motion, making the players feel like they're doing Tai Chi. "I'm brainwashing them in a way," she said. "I want them to buy into the idea of changing and rebuilding the program."

Beuhler said she started her focus on the fundamen­tals during her first year as head coach in 2009 when the team had an overall 6-9 record and made it to the district playoffs.

She hopes that the team's careful attention to every­thing from serving and set­ting to hitting and blocking that made such a big im­provement

last season will pay off in an even bigger way this fall. And she doesn't hold back in projecting her outlook for the season. "I think we're the team to beat," she said about the Car­dinals' strength in the league this year. "I think everyone's worried about us, and we know it." The Cardinals go into their first game with 35 players, compared to 32 in 2009. They include 12 fresh­men, two new sophomores and two new players from Prescott High School who went to Walla Walla High.

Her returning Varsity start­ers include Genesis Pearson (senior), Megan Withers (se­nior),

Alyssa Hofen (senior) and Ronnie Hulce (junior). She'll bring up Rachelle Oseth (senior), Kayla Huxoll (junior), Iris Batalla (senior), Nora Solis (senior) and Krys­tal Harris (sophomore) from last year's JV team. The team lost 10 seniors last year, including ace setter and captain Amanda Weis, outside hitter Kayla Harris, defensive specialist and cap­tain

Taelor Carter and libero/captain Angelina Paniagua. Other graduating players included Ellie Bartlow, Re­becca Brown, Allie Wooder­chak, Darien Hulce, Rocio Escalante and Andrea Cruz.

Weis as setter will be par­ticularly tough to replace but Buehler said she hopes Hux­oll

and Harris will grow into the position. A big concern is the team's strength at the libero position, which she'll probably rotate throughout the season, using Oseth, Solis, Batalla or Hafen. As outside hitter, she has her eye on Batalla, Harris, Hafen and Cook. The advantage of having a bigger group of girls this year is that the team qualifies for three coaches. In addi­tion to Buehler's sister Katie, who will act as assistant head coach for the JV squad, former Dayton High School volleyball player and Walla Walla Community College coach Tressa Robins will manage the C squad as the third team coach. Robins and the Buehler sisters already know each other from coaching softball at WWCC. Because the team will be even younger next year, Bue­hler wants to keep as many promising players on the JV squad as she can to get court experience and only reach into that team in case a Varsi­ty

player is absent or injured. That strategy, which leaves a shallow bench on the Varsity team, will work as long as none of the players develop ankle or finger problems. It's one of the reasons Buehler insists all the girls wear ankle braces. If Buehler's approach and seasonal preparations as coach sound somewhat stiff and regimented, she explained that by nature, vol­leyball is more a technical than enjoyable sport until the players' practiced moves are embedded in their intuition rather than their conscious.

"Some kids give up be­cause volleyball isn't fun right away," she said. 2010 CardinalsVolleyball Team

Genesis Pearson Megan Withers Alyssa Hafen Rachelle Oseth Iris Batalla Nora Solis Ronnie Hulce KaylaHuxoll Amanda Cook Kassie Sharpe Krystal Harris Coaches: Jessie Buehler, Katie Buehler Tressa Robins