The Kentridge High girls volleyball team returns to the court this year with a major change. Deanna Colston takes over for longtime coach Liz Quitiquit, who took a job closer to her home with Kennedy Catholic High School in Burien.
Colston says that Quitiquit’s coaching has set the team up for success this year, and made it easy to transition as a new coach with the large number of seniors and strong leadership.
Colston has been playing volleyball since she attended Pasco High School, later playing for the University of Tulsa and coaching club volleyball at Tulsa. When she returned to Washington, she started coaching the Kent Juniors Volleyball Club and met several of her players including Lexi Klinkenberg, Chantelle Williams and Melanie Dillon before they were part of the Chargers.
At a volleyball jamboree last Saturday, the team went 4-2 and Colston got a better idea of what lineups to run, as well as seeing some of the teams strengths and weaknesses in competition.
“Kentridge this year is a great defensive team, they never stop on any of the balls, they really pursue every ball,” she said.
In practice, Colston is trying to build a fundamentally strong team that will be able to outlast larger teams in the South Puget Sound League.
“We’re not the biggest team, so we’re really working on playing hard and aggressive with limited errors,” she said. “We want to earn our points, but we need to out play those teams so that eventually they’ll make the errors.”
Just as Colston adjusts to the girls, they too are adjusting to her. Captain Mae Thungc says that the style of teaching is different, but the fundamentals remain the same.
“Drills are the same but different, defensive strategy is different, calling plays is different. It’s not hard to adjust to if we all work together,” she says.
“It’s a different feel but we’re open minded to what’s going to come, right now we’re trusting her, her experience and her skills.”
Thungc says that while the team is anxious about having a new coach, they are also looking forward to taking the experience that the team has (10 returning seniors) and turning that into a championship team.
“I don’t really know what’s going to happen,” Thungc said. “I’m positive that we’ll make it to districts and do well at districts.”
She added that the team’s success will hinge on the experienced players ability to work together.
“We’re really lucky to have Deanna and everything, every team has the potential to be great, but we need to work together and really coordinate,” she says. “If we all pull our strings together then I have a feeling we’ll get there.”
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