Evans leads volleyball team through great season

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Photo by Orjana Stepien

Evans and teammate go up to block an opposing spike during a late season game against Roseville. Evans great leadership showed after stuffing this spike

The girls varsity volleyball team had many ups and downs this past season.

Senior Susan Evans has been playing volleyball for 14 years and is a setter and libero, a defensive specialist who bumps the ball to teammates, and thinks that this year’s season was a lot of fun. It was her last one so she had to make it count.

Evans says, “This season was actually very fun. There was definitely some difficulty with Savannah Sprenger being out so early in the season with a torn ACL, but the younger girls on the varsity team stepped up to the plate and picked up the loose ends on the court. Everything with this team gelled very nicely because we all got along well and there was already so much chemistry between the eight seniors that putting us together finally on one court showed us our true potential coming into this year.”

 This is Evans third year on the varsity team. Throughout the years she has made truly good friends and will have these memories for a lifetime.

 Evans said, “This season was another building season. Last season the girls had played together often and the team came together from what was worked with when I was on varsity my sophomore year, so it made it very competitive in the way that we didn’t want our talent to plateau. This season we built up our line up and had to improvise sometimes where we had our weaknesses.”

The first section game was against East Ridge, which is their rival.

Evans says, “The number one best moment of this season was probably our East Ridge game. Since I was a freshman on the varsity team, we have not made it past the first section game, and this year we did it. I played libero during that game and that meant I was on the court the whole time. By the last two points in the fourth game I was completely exhausted, which definitely took its toll on me later, but nothing compared to the happiness we felt when the team pulled together to break that three year curse as a family.”

One of Susan Evans’ co-captains senior Savannah Sprenger tore her anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) during one of the first games of the season.

Evans Says, “During the East Ridge game Savannah tore her ACL in the middle of the game and that’s just something you never want to see because it breaks your heart knowing she won’t play for another nine months or so after her therapy. As a captain it was up to me and my co-captain to encourage the girls to keep fighting and keep their heads up. I think that because Savannah was so vital on our lineup the underclassmen definitely needed that reassurance in that time that we could move on and we could be strong without her. We had the right pieces of the puzzle to continue fighting our way through regular season games.”

After playing volleyball for 14 years she does not know where she stands with college because the offers she has received have been schools that don’t have the major she is looking for. This leaves her in a tough decision between the sport that she loves and her career. It’s tough when you love the game to walk away but sooner or later your dream job is going to come.