It's a season of firsts for Episcopal's varsity volleyball team. The team is mostly comprised of seniors, ten to be exact. Four of those seniors are verbally committed to play at the collegiate level at Division I schools such as Mississippi State (Sania Petties), Cal State Fullerton (Hailey Black), and once Texas A&M now Howard University (Bria and Cimone Woodard). Not to mention one junior, Morgan Perkins, who is also verbally committed to Oklahoma University.
Of its six starters on the court, fans witness collegiate-level volleyball from these Knights. With such top-tier talent, the team's record at one point was a disappointing 0-5.
That's correct. The reigning SPC champions managed to start the season with five losses.
"It was bound to catch up to us," stated Cimone Woodard. "It's probably been the weakest start we've had since I've been here," said Lara Verstovsek.
With Covid-19 affecting practice time and scrimmages throughout the summer, it's made the 2020 season a difficult one. Scheduling has been quite the challenge too as the team has faced some top 5A & 6A schools with their own future collegians.
The team kicked off its season against 5A College Station and were swept 3-0. The team later took a tough loss to Fulshear 3-1. Competing with the greater Houston area's 6A competition for dual matches at Don Coleman Coliseum, the girls lost 3-2 to Memorial and 3-1 to George Ranch.
The unfortunate streak ended with a 3-2 loss to Concordia Lutheran before the girls picked up two wins against Fort Bend Christian Homeschool Athletics and Duchesne. The Episcopal team is looking to make the second half of the season more memorable than the first.