Coming back from a loss against Vianny in the Fort Zumwalt South tournament, the boys volleyball team has had a week of wins, starting with Fort Zumwalt East on Tuesday and beating Fort Zumwalt West, their major competitors for a conference title, last night. While the game on Tuesday was a convincing win, the boys fought for their win last night; each set was neck to neck until the end.

For senior Dominic Prince the boys came into the game against FZW knowing it would not be easy.

“We knew they were going to be really hard but we didn’t expect them to be this much of a challenge,” Prince said. “We knew we just needed to block the outside to win points.”

That being said, the boys have been preparing for the game by knowing exactly who they were facing, according to senior Trent Diener.

“ We prepared for a big middle blocker, which is exactly what we saw tonight,” Diener said.

Technically, the team has worked on tips, as well as harder, more consistent serves.

“We have been working on some tips. Serving mainly because we haven’t been serving as well,” Prince said.

For senior Cameron Zelei, practice mindset is as important as game mindset and lately the focus has been on the far future of the season: state.

“We have been practicing with the mindset of going to state,” Zelei said.

The win does not mean the work is over. According to Zelei, there are still things to work on, including team chemistry and passing.

“We need better passing and harder serves,” Zelei said. “We could also do more team bonding.”

Like Zelei, Prince and Diener also saw places the team could improve before they face harder matches in the future.

“Our defense needs to get better before we face harder opponents.We need to work on passing the ball on serves,” Prince said.

“We could probably work on talking for the ball, just knowing who’s getting the ball and who’s going to receive the ball,” Diener said.

There will be more games and more opponents, but this game was a well-deserved win.

“We knew we wanted to beat West just because they beat us in three so they thought they could beat us here and we couldn’t let that to happen,” Zelei said. “During the match, they kept coming back and we’d beat them and ultimately we beat them. I was hyped for the win.”