•August 30, 2017•

By Jason Brown
NP Sports

With a complete new coaching staff and a young team, Okaw Valley volleyball head coach Sarah McDowell has had to shuffle several new situations before her team even took the court.

In her first year as head coach, McDowell has been joined with first-year junior varsity coach Kirsten Durflinger and first-year assistant coach Maggie Luckenbill.

“We have three new coaches to the high school program,” said McDowell, “so it has taken time for our players to get comfortable with our style of coaching. We are…challenging the players every day in practice to be leaders regardless of age and push them to ask questions and share their successes and failures from previous seasons with the coaching staff in order to better plan for this year.”

Despite the varsity being made up of a majority of underclassmen, the returning players do have experience, and some have been participating in club leagues around central Illinois and improving their skills all winter.

Plus, she has better overall numbers of players out this season than last.     Login or Subscribe to read the rest of this story.