The Piedmont High School boys volleyball team is faced with not only a new season, but also a new head coach, and more importantly new opportunity.
The team faced a rough season last year, ending the year with a record of 1-23. Coach Mike Glass said he is ready to develop a new team to be more competitive.
“I’m pretty pleased that we have the level of enthusiasm that we have for people coming out and wanting to put in the work,” Glass said. “(I’ve been) pleasantly surprised by how athletic these guys are and how we are able to be competitive.
This is Glass’s first year with the boys. However, this isn’t his first coaching experience.
“I’ve got four years of volleyball (coaching) experience,” Glass said. “Four years of club, and then I helped out the girls JV team at Piedmont when there was a coaching turnover mid-season last season.”
Glass said the team is very young, with 12 players on the roster.
“We’ve got six freshmen, so not a lot of experience. We’ve got all the freshmen getting quality reps and they’re part of rotations,” Glass said. “(The team) has also got this core group of upperclassmen, three upperclassmen, who are team leaders.”
While providing potential for the freshmen, this young varsity team also holds the underclassmen to a higher standard.
“It’s the question of whether those less experienced players can quickly come up to that varsity level that will define our season,” Glass said.
The core group of upperclassmen leaders are the most experienced players.
“Luck Peterson, Drew Kobal, and Lukas Kim, those are team captains and they make up the cluster of guys who are gonna set the tone,” Glass said.
Glass said that the team is well skilled at passing.
“We’ve got surprisingly good passing, especially considering the youth and inexperience,” Glass said.
However, to no surprise, there are a few areas that need improvement.
“One (thing) is, we’ve got to develop our offense,” Glass said. “There’s some quirks on this team. I’ve never coached so many left-handed players and players that naturally want to be on the right attacking, and so we’ve got to work through that. Volleyball is built around right-handed people.”
During the offseason, many members of the team played on club volleyball teams to prepare and condition.
Glass said that the team’s goal is to be the best team they can be in April.
“They had a really tough season last year,” Glass said. “Certainly we’re gonna try to win more games then we did last year, and be competitive in every match. We’re 1-2, and we’ve been competitive (so far).”
While Glass said he doesn’t know opposing teams well, he said he thinks Bishop O’Dowd and Campolindo are going to be the toughest competitors. However, he is more concerned about improvement than rivalry matchups.
“I think that our traditional rivalry around O’Dowd is always difficult,” Glass said. “They’re so focused on sports and have such high participation rates. That’s going to be really tough. Campo looks really tough, but we’re not defining our season by beating those schools that are going to be top five, top 10 in our area, we’re defining our season by being competitive and getting a lot more wins than last year.”
The Highlanders fell to Arroyo 3-0 on Feb. 24, and to Encinal 3-0 on Feb. 26. The team beat De Anza 3-1 on March 3.
Piedmont’s next game is against Campolindo on March 9.