Feeling peppy
RANDOLPH - The Randolph Lady Cardinal volleyball team returns four starters from last year’s team and head coach Lyndsee English is looking forward to this year’s edition of Randolph volleyball.
The Lady Cardinals will be young, but not necessarily inexperienced.
“We will be young with only one senior on the team,” English said. “We do bring back three or four starters, so hopefully we will have some experience and leadership.”
One asset Randolph will lack is size, but English and company plan to make up for that on the court.
The tallest returner is 5-foot-9 senior, Katarina Greiner who plays in the middle for the Lady Cardinals and is joined by four juniors on this year’s squad.
Mabel Ngebeh, Alexis Backhaus, Brooke Meier and Addyson Wattier join Greiner on the Randolph varsity.
In addition, four sophomores return. A pair of sophomore newcomers and a freshman, look to fill out the top 12 players on varsity this fall.
“We do not have a lot of height, so we will work on defense and being extremely scrappy on the court,” English said. “We’re looking forward to getting out there and playing to see where we are at to start out with.”
Sydney Robinson, Lilly Kuchta, Ella Graf and Jenna Guenther are the returning quartet of sophomores.
Alaina Schulz will provide some height at 5-8. Fellow sophomore Delayne Thelen should find the court along with freshman, Abbey Backer.
English welcomed 17 Lady Cardinals to the high school program, so Randolph will be putting a varsity, junior varsity and a “C” team on the court when opponents also have enough players.
“We’ll have a lot of girls playing a lot of volleyball, it should be very exciting,” English said. “And the promising thing is, they can all come back next year except for one of them.”
The Lady Cardinals will open the season Aug. 29 in a triangular in Hartington with Cedar Catholic and Lewis & Clark Conference foe, Homer.
They will finish a busy opening week in a tournament at Howells-Dodge on Aug. 31.
The conference tournament is set to go from Oct. 19-22.