“High School will be the fastest four years of your life… All good things must come to an end…Talent wins games, but teamwork and intelligence win championships.”

Throughout high school people tend to tell you many things that go in one ear and out the other. You often neglect listening to these statements because they seem like cliches.  And they are. But they’re also correct. So why don’t we listen to those who have gone through what we are about to experience?

Looking back at my volleyball career here at VHS, I realize all the cliches were true.  

Four years ago,  eight other current seniors and I walked into the Verona High School gym ready to play our third game of the season. That year they had been redoing the bleachers in the gym and it practically looked like a war zone. All our summer practices had been held at the middle school and our first two games had been at the community center. We were terrified of embarrassing ourselves in front of the upperclassman and tried to blend in, despite the obvious inferiority of our skills compared to the varsity players. Our Varsity team ended that season 16-13.

We did not know what our sophomore year would hold. We had only lost two seniors and we were looking at a much similar lineup. After changing around some positions, we set  some goals at the beginning of the season. We wanted to end first in our conference and win counties. Both goals seemed like a reach to much of the team. Then jokingly someone suggested we attempt to win states. This ended in most of the team laughing at a goal no one believed would be remotely close to possible.

We ended that season 32-2. We won our conference, county, state section, and would ultimately be defeated in Group 1 state finals.

The year after that, we had once again lost two seniors and now we were determined and confident we could win the state championship but that goal would come after our smaller goals of winning our conference, county, and state section back to back. We finished our regular season that year 30-0 and defeated the team that had beat us the year before in state finals. After regular season ended, we played in the Tournament of Champions, which featured all five teams that had won state championship the week before, and made it to the semi-finals.  We lost to the number one- ranked team in the state and finished with a 31-1 record. We also finished ranked third in the state, the highest in Verona volleyball history.

This year, six seniors from the previous year had left for college and six of the original nine freshman that walked into the gym four years ago, returned once again for our final high school last season.

We knew many things would be different: half of the starting lineup from the year before was gone, and we had a new coaching staff. We lost the second game of the season and then the fourth. Coming off a combined record of 63-3 in the prior two years, we quickly realized this was a new kind of challenge.  We faced it, refusing to give up. Of the next 23 game we would only be defeated one time.. We once again won our conference, county, and state section. We ended the season November 10 with a final record of 26-4, and just shy of a Group 1 championship.

We seniors could not be more proud of our season and the past four years. The scared freshmen who walked into the unfinished gym four years ago are now confident seniors who, through hard work, teamwork, and intelligence, earned 10 career titles and 105 wins. We didn’t just gain volleyball skills, we gained memories and a family that will last a lifetime. The past four years have flown by but all good things must come to an end.