The preseason is heating up for Panther volleyball.
After a successful 2022, in which the varsity team won 17 matches and JV advanced to the Mountain Seven Conference Final, on the week of July 10 the program played their first live intersquad action of 2023. In two full days of scrimmages at Seckinger High School in Buford, Georgia, the Panthers looked sharp against some tough competition.
“It’s been great. In June itself we had 10 workouts and two open gyms, and then of course we had a vacation with the dead period and just came back,” said varsity head coach Bekah Brooks. “In July so far, we’ve had two workouts on Monday and Tuesday, and then these two days with scrimmages split up into a JV day and a varsity day. … We went down there and played a bunch of Georgia and Alabama teams, and a couple from North Carolina as well. We played four to five games [both days], and the competition was really great.”
Starting Wednesday, June 12, Franklin had a busy two days against teams from across the Southeast. With several new players moving up from middle school, the scrimmages were especially valuable for Panther JV.
“The JVs competed very well. They were missing a couple of players so we went down there with 10 girls yesterday, and they really played hard,” said Brooks. “They didn’t keep score, but we didn’t really keep up with that. We played 45-minute games, so you can play two games, two-and-a-half games in that amount of time, and sometimes three. They were probably .500 over the day just really learning to play with each other, especially the freshmen coming in and sophomores. The effort was great, and we tried to fix some things that we [wanted] to work on.”
Still in their first weeks of offseason work, JV squads are rarely a finished product at this point in the summer, assimilating this year’s crop of freshmen into the veterans. After a full day of JV action Wednesday, on Thursday the varsity team kicked things off with a familiar foe.
“Today we took the varsity down there, and the first game was Robbinsville, which was kind of cool because we’re gonna play them during the season,” said Brooks. “Then we played another team called Mountain View (Lawrenceville, Georgia) – I didn’t really know too much about that team. We kind of rocked them pretty good, but they rallied back there at the end and gave us some real good competition.”
In matches with the team from Georgia and Robbinsville, whom Franklin beat in both meetings last fall, the Panthers dished it out better than they got it to start the day. After dispatching Mountain View however, they finished the trip with some difficult opponents.
“The last two games were phenomenal competition. One team went to the Final Four, and one team went to the Elite Eight in their region in Georgia,” said Brooks. “One of them is a 6A high school that graduated 500 kids and we really competed well with them, but we did get behind about eight or nine points. I thought, ‘Last [match] of the day, we’ve got to do this,’ and we came back and lost by three. I think we lost the second game to them by three or four again, and we were winning the third game with a timeout. I wish we could have finished that one, but the game before was a team that went to the Final Four with only two seniors, and now they’ve got all of those kids back. … They ran a lot of stuff that we will see within our own conference/in the playoffs, and they were really, really good. We hung with them and were actually ahead of them for a while – we won one game, they won one game, and it was very close the third game until the time ran out.”
In scrimmages with two elite programs from Georgia, the Panthers consistently punched above their weight, giving both teams all they could handle in two 45-minute periods. In doing so, Brooks credited her players for their determination.
“I was just proud of the effort. Coming off the dead period Monday and Tuesday, we had a little bit of a hiccup there, and sometimes we just need to come and get centered back around while we’re all here,” she said. “I put it all on them and rely on them for being coachable, having a good attitude, giving effort and hustle, and the rest of it’s kind of on me about placement right now and who can play what. They’ve got to be able to give me all they’ve got, and I’m a big person on having a good attitude all the time. … Overall, it was a great two days.”
After two strong days at Seckinger, the Panthers had little time to rest, traveling to WCU for the Karen Glover Volleyball Camp July 14-16. After losing three outside hitters to graduation in Tori Ensley, Andrea Terrell and Taylor Moss, Brooks says the strength of the team right now is in their setting, passing and defense, but has faith that younger players can replace the former seniors on the outside.
“I’m always sad when a senior class graduates, and sometimes you’re like, “How am I gonna fill these spots?’” she said. “Initially in the offseason and throughout this summer, we’ve had a lot respond well to that. We’ve filled in some spots with a couple of those sophomores that are now juniors. There is some work to be done, but I’m probably gonna end up having to carry pretty heavy this year with 16 girls. They’ve showed up, they’ve worked, and there’s really not one of them that I’m like, ‘Ooh, I don’t know if I can put this girl in.’”