The 2010 girls volleyball team finished the season with a 25-11-2 record and at one point was ranked ninth in the area, but fell one win short of making it to State this year.

MHS defeated Francis Howell North and Parkway West in the District portion of the playoffs to advance to Sectionals. In Sectionals the team beat Hazelwood Central before losing to Incarnate Word in the quarterfinals.

” We played really well as team,” Culver Randolph, senior, said. “You just can’t win every game.”

But despite falling a game short of completing their goal of making it to State, Coach Scott Szevery said this season was a successful one. This year’s team won districts for the first time since 2004. Szevery also said the team played up to and occasionally exceeded the expectations set for them.

“I think we had a really great season,” Randolph said.” We bonded as a team and worked really hard to make it as far as we did.”

As for what made this year’s team so successful, Szevery said having seven seniors helped the team tremendously.

“We had seven seniors who have played with each other for a long time and provided the team with great leadership and experience,” Szevery said.

Szevery said he also made some changes in the way he coached to attribute to the team’s success. He said in practice they spent more time working on offense and worked aggressively on making adjustments during games.

Szevery said he was not worried about how the team would handle the performance in the elite eight because they had ups and downs throughout the year that kept them in check.

Szevery said next year there will be some talented players who will be juniors next year playing on varsity, but it is hard to replace the experience of playing on varsity that they will lose with the seven seniors.

Morgan Beil, senior, also attributed part of the success to having the senior leadership, but also said the team played well together. Beil also said the team could have gone farther, and it was sad the way it ended.

Alli Schaper, junior, said the team could have gone farther in the playoffs, but the season was still successful.

Schaper said the reason why this year’s team was so good was because of how good of friends all the girls on the team were. She also said losing the seven seniors will be a major loss for the team, but is optimistic for next year.

“We have some really good freshman and sophomores that will help our team next year,” Schaper said.