Gig Harbor volleyball ready for shortened winter season

It’s been a long time coming but the Gig Harbor High School girls volleyball team is finally getting their chance to get back onto the court after a very long hiatus.

That absence, of course, is thanks to the coronavirus pandemic, causing all high school sports in Washington State to be postponed since last March. However, the Washington Interscholastic Athletics Association planned for condensed seasons once sports were allowed to resume.

Traditional fall sports like volleyball are now referred to as “Season One” and will play from early February to late March. This has brewed a lot of excitement from the Tides, but perhaps no one is more excited than head coach Melissa Klein.

“We’re super excited, getting to work with the girls in the gym again makes things a little bit more normal, even though they’re still not totally normal,” she said. “We’re hopeful and excited and encouraged. We love our team and so it’s good to see them.”

Having last seen action on Nov. 22, 2019 at the Class 3A state tournament in Yakima, coach Klein and the Tides certainly have reason to be excited to play again.

The large group of seniors that make up the center of this team will finally get their chance to play the last few games they have in a high school uniform, despite the new rules and regulations.

Chief among those seniors is Ella Hackerman, an outside hitter who was voted to be a team captain this year. As a soon to be high school graduate, Hackerman is thankful that it feels like luck is finally turning around for her and her classmates. Especially now, getting the opportunity to play the sport she loves.

“It was kind of like a breath of fresh air. It was finally like something was going our way this year for the Class of 2021,” she said. “We get to actually have our senior season after everybody [told us] to prepare for the worst. We were all sitting in this state of waiting and [facing] the unknown which is kind of difficult for people like me who like to plan things out.”

As great as it is to get back out onto the court, there are some major changes that the everyone on the Tides will have to get used to. For instance, every player has to wear a mask once they enter the gym and maintain a distance of six feet from everybody.

That made it a little difficult to get practice in during the practice period the WIAA allowed teams to have in the fall. Because the Tides went into pods, doing three-on-three matches wasn’t ideal.

“You couldn’t share balls outside of your pod, so we had separate pods. Each pod had their own ball cart and their own balls,” coach Klein said. “They weren’t supposed to share any equipment without sanitizing. [We did] mostly drills, we really didn’t get much play because the pods are small. Not much conditioning, most of the volleyball stuff we did revolved around getting touches on the ball.”

For Hackerman, the lead up to the season is a special time where she would be able to meet new teammates and make connections with them. Obviously, it was a lot harder this year to do so.

Considering how the Tides emphasize in-game communication, it will have to be a quick adjustment for the players to get used to each other all over again.

“It’s a big change because we rely on being close to each other to tell each other this is the play we are going to run or watch the other side doing this,” the senior said. “So it’s more about having the trust with each other to be like ‘I hope you’re seeing what I’m seeing’… It’s a lot more of trust and talking before and after games.”

As a senior and captain, Hackerman has used that time with her teammates to help coaches identify promising young players that can make an immediate impact on the varsity squad. Her input helps the Tides find their highest potential on the court.

The communication between the players will be more important than ever this season for the Tides, however, as they have temporarily joined the 4A South Puget Sound League. Along with Peninsula, they will essentially be swapping places with Olympia in the leagues.

That means new players, new schemes and a whole lot of new goals that they will make in hopes to finish the shortened season with a strong record. And coach Klein will have her team ready for whatever is thrown at them.

“We are in a new league temporarily right now, and it’s a really tough league,” she said. “We are a 3A school, but now we are going to be playing with 4A schools. That will be a challenge too, but I know our girls will be up for it. I think we have a great group of seniors coming back. I think it will be exciting for them to have that challenge.”

Because of the late start to the season, another challenge Klein faces is balancing her players’ club volleyball schedule as well the school’s. Because so many of the girls play on outside teams, she does not want her players to lose focus.

What she ended up doing is moving the practices from 5 p.m. in the evening, to right after when school would get out, making it easier for the players to find time for both school and club volleyball.

“Even though it’s different, we want to still make it fun for the girls and make it challenging,” she said. “We want to respect the girls and we want them to have all these playing opportunities. I think that’s going to be a big challenge.”

Although there is no set game schedule released yet, the Tides have begun to practice for their shortened, yet hopeful season.