By AMY DAVIS
The Progress
This month marks the fourth year of a volleyball club team at Charles A. Hughes Middle School in Mesquite, Nevada. The club team was designed to be a development program so that girls could enter high school with more than just a basic knowledge of volleyball making it easier for coaches to advance their skills and techniques.
Virgin Valley has partnered with Moapa Valley and other rural schools to provide scrimmages and tournaments for these young girls. The program is a voluntary extracurricular activity sport run by parents. The girls pay a small fee to join the team and that covers all uniform and game costs.
Shantelle Felshaw (8th Grade coach) and Josies Hughes (6th grade coach) have been at the helm of the volleyball program for the last four years.
“We had two goals,” Felshaw said. “The first was when our daughters got into middle school, we wanted a program that was already up and running for them. Our second goal was that we wanted to see our high schoolers way more advanced than they were as freshman.”
Felshaw noted that Moapa and Alamo have year-round volleyball programs and were really good by the time they entered the high school scene putting the VVHS team at a disadvantage. She hopes this program can work to bridge that gap.
“We are so excited about this program, and we want it to grow,” Hughes said. “If these 6th graders can really push it for the next three years, by the time they are freshman they could be at a way higher level than the freshman in the past.”
“My goal is to see these girls eventually go to state,” Hughes added. “They are so talented, and are willing to listen and to learn. They are going to go a long way. I just feel excited for them.”
Tessa Frehner and Emily Gleave also volunteered their time to coach. Frehner, 7th grade coach said, “We taught them the game, where to stand what the positions were, how to set and pass. We still have a lot to work on, but they have improved so much.”
Gleave coached the 6th grade B team a few times and said the best thing to learn is that attitude is everything. “When we would lose, they would get so down on themselves and almost take themselves out of the game mentally,” Gleave said. “I told them to fail but have fun. Don’t get so down about it. Shake it off and then try again. Attitude is everything so we have to teach them to work through their fear and their frustrations so that those emotions don’t become stumbling blocks.”
