The varsity boys volleyball team finished their regular season with a 2-9 loss against Hebrew Academy on May 10. Their record was 1-4 this season.

This year’s team is very different from last years team, as five seniors graduated.  Co-captains, juniors Liam Shemesh and Eli Soumekhian were among only three returning players on the team. The team consisted of five underclassmen and four upperclassmen. 6 of the players being new to the sport.

“…[T]his year was a really big shake-up,” Soumekhian said. “… [W]e basically started from scratch. These guys have never played before, so it was tough but it was fun.”

The captains played a tremendous role in recruitment and teaching the new team members the game.

Though the team didn’t have a winning record, there were still many highlights, including senior night.

“Senior night we went down 2-0 to Trinity and came back and won 3-2 so a lot of great and industriousness to pull out the win,” Shemesh said.

According to coach Ray Hodges, the best plays of the season were when all the players collaborated and went all in to get the ball over the net.

“…[I]t was amazing to see the guys hustle and go after it and not give up.”

Looking to next season, Hodges foresees challenges as three of the current juniors will graduate. Hodges knows that this challenge will be hard to face but not impossible to solve.

“All the experienced players are going to be gone so we’re going to need a lot of new recruits to come in and fill the spots and learn the game quickly like these guys did,” Hodges said.

Although Hodges knows that training boys starting from scratch is hard, he also had good memories from this past season with the whole team, old players and new.

“The best memory is seeing all these new guys come together and play well and get better. And the team just kept improving the whole season,” Hodges said.