Coming off a rough weekend tournament where the Miners went 1-5, it looked like Park City’s struggles had bled over into Tuesday’s road match against Skyline.
Park City dropped the first set 25-14, and Park City coach Matt Carlson was seeing the same inconsistent team he saw over the weekend. But when he went to talk to his team, it was his players that started moving the Miners in the right direction.
“I walk up to them, I hear them talking,” Carlson said. “They’re like, ‘Hey, guys, we have to follow the gameplan. Hey, guys, let’s just take a deep breath, stay calm. We panicked, but we got this. We can do this. It’s not a matter of them. It’s us having to be better.’
“I was like, ‘Wow, alright!’ And I didn’t have to say anything, the girls just took it upon themselves to make the change. I was like, ‘Yeah, I love everything you guys are saying. Good job, that’s huge.’”
Park City took the next three sets and came away with its biggest win of the season. The Miners improved to 13-10 on the season, but most importantly, they kept their dreams of being region co-champions alive. Park City is 9-1 in region play and handed Skyline its first loss to a regional opponent.
“(Tuesday) puts us in this place where we can be co-region champs if we finish out strong and assume that Skyline will finish out strong as well, which is awesome,” Carlson said. “I think just having that region title for Park City puts us back into that spot where we want to be known for. We want to be known for really disciplined just really disciplined, competitive volleyball in Park City.”
Carlson praised senior Lola Lane’s play on Tuesday. He estimated that she had 15 kills in the win over the Eagles. Between Lane and senior Ashley Fannon, Park City’s outside hitters had a big night.
“(Lane) was phenomenal on the outside,” he said. “Just getting some big swings for us. Also, Ashley Fannon did a pretty good job on the right side. She had some big kills in big moments for us.”
Carlson added the Miners were committing about 17 unforced errors per set, mostly from what he considered bad choices. He noted that Park City’s outside hitters were either getting kills or committing attack errors. On Tuesday, they made adjustments and reduced their errors, which helped produce a big win for the Miners.
“They really changed the game because they limited their unforced errors by half, just by following the gameplan,” Carlson said. “And then they doubled the amount of their kills and production just from being aggressive. It was really cool to see them just buy into it.”
Tuesday’s win also showed how resilient the Miners could be to move on from a difficult weekend. In their six tournament matches between Thursday and Saturday, Park City won just one of them, and four of the five losses were in straight sets.
“I think anybody after that weekend would happily be OK not playing volleyball again because it was so frustrating,” Carlson said with a laugh. “The girls were trying, but they just couldn’t figure it out, so it’s discouraging. But if anything, you look at a weekend like that and coming back, it shows resilience. You look at the grit and heart is what you hope kids take away from the sport of volleyball or sports in general, and they’ve done that.”