Serving Lucas, Ottawa, Sandusky and Wood Counties
With two of his top players — Leah Hall and Riley Gressman — fully healthy after missing last year due to injury, second-year head coach Alan Ahle hopes to see his Gibsonburg squad take a big jump this season.
“Those two players alone, the morale they bring to the team takes us up (a notch),” he said. “We ought to be well over .500 this year just by bringing them back. The morale of this group is really, really good right now.
“Last year was not good. They hadn't been good for several years prior to me coming in. So they came in not expecting anything. And we didn't do anything, but we had three kids out due to injury all last year, and two of them (would have been our best players).
“Those two being back alone are huge, and I don't know how to describe it anymore than just saying it's huge.”
Hall is a senior left side hitter, while Gressman is a junior middle hitter. They’ll help lead a mostly young squad, which finished 2-21 last season.
“We're very young,” Ahle said. “We've got three juniors and three seniors. We’re almost all freshmen and sophomores, but we are extremely talented. We have extreme potential.”
One key task early on for Gibsonburg will be to find a solution to the graduation of their lone senior from last year, Ansley Fleming, who registered a team-best 182 digs.
“Ansley is the best libero I’ve ever coached, and I've had a bunch over the 30 some years I've been coaching,” Ahle said. “That's the question I give the girls — how are we going to fill that big hole?”
Four sophomores-to-be — Katie Hall, Ava Amor, Mackenzie Muntz, and Ava Dawson — recorded at least 90 digs as rookies, so youth could be a solution.
Dawson, who led the team with 84 kills as a freshman, is going to play opposite of Leah Hall on the left side.
“She's hitting the ball about as good as Riley and Leah, and that's really saying something for a sophomore,” Ahle said. “Ava started the year slow and then came on the last half of the year. She plays club ball, and that’s really helped her out.”
Muntz also played a large role as a freshman.
“She came on strong for us all year long,” Ahle said. “She played left side. Middle is her normal position, but due to Leah's injury, I moved her to the left side, and she was awesome. She just really hit the ball well.”
A positional battle at setter is also underway this preseason.
“Our setters are going at it pretty good,” Ahle said. “We have four ladies who are battling for that. Two of them are sophomores and two of them are freshmen. They’re all four excellent. They play way above their grades, so that's a position that's really, really being fought for.”
Ahle said one of the things the team needs to overcome is unforced errors.
“Unforced errors kill us,” he said. “They've killed Gibsonburg for many years. I went back and looked at the video of last year and the year before. Out of 25 points, I’d say we gave at least 20 to 21 away.
“If we get rid of the unforced errors, we'll be there. If we don't, I hope I can make it through this season.”
That said, Ahle said his team’s potential is very high.
“I think we have the potential to be one of the top-notch schools around,” he said. “But it depends on unforced errors. If unforced errors get minimized, we're going to be right on top. If they're anything like last year, we'll be right on the bottom, which I don't expect that at all.
“I think we’re going to be in contention. The girls are starting to believe in themselves, which is really big. They’ve never believed that they could beat anybody, let alone everybody. We can play with everybody in our league except Tiffin Calvert.”
