“And…BOOM!” Dungeon members cheered as the Bishop’s Varsity Girls’ Volleyball Team slammed the ball over the net and it smacked the gym floor. On Wednesday, August 21, the Varsity Girls’ Volleyball Team played their opening home game against Eastlake High School. The intense match highlighted the team’s fighting spirit, and set the tone for the upcoming 2024 girls’ volleyball season.
In total, the girls’ volleyball team played four sets against Eastlake, winning the third, but ultimately losing. “It was tough,” Co-Captain Lyla Beamer (‘25) said. “It’s not the best feeling to lose your first home game, but it’s good that we were challenging ourselves against a really hard team first off.”
Both co-captains Lyla and Sierra Lever (‘25) explained that many of Eastlake’s players were seniors, some committed to top colleges, while the majority of players on the Bishop’s team were underclassmen. Despite this, the match was still well-played and fiery.
One notable highlight included Kasia Zwierzykowski (‘27), who dealt multiple scoring spikes throughout the game. They were consistently powerful and unstoppable. “I think Kasia’s one of our heaviest hitters and she got a few really good kills,” Sierra said, praising the young player.
Despite losing the first two sets, the Knights suddenly turned the tide in the third set. Serve after serve, Eastlake’s side went quiet and the Dungeon got louder as the scoreboard flashed: one more for Bishop’s. The score was 6-2. “I really enjoyed the moment we won the third set,” player Angela An (‘27) said. “Being down by two already and not really playing our best, it was really easy to give up, but I think the culture and mindset of our team wouldn’t let us do that.”
Advancing into the fourth quarter, despite still being down 1-2, the team kept up the fight and enthusiasm. “Lyla and I, we had a lot of time to make cheers,” Sierra said. “Probably one of my favorite cheers goes ‘Chugga chugga chugga chugga! Here comes the tool train!’”
While some chants were created recently, others have been a long-standing tradition for the team. One of Lyla’s personal favorites is a cheer first made specifically for two alumni, Kate Donnelly (‘23) and Kaia Grieve (‘23); now, the words have been altered to fit the current team players. Lyla said, “It goes, ‘Go Kate! Go Kaia! Set this place on fi-yah!’ Now, it’s Kate Bennett (‘27) and Myah Koster (‘27), who are both sophomores.”
Cheers are a key element of the tight-knit community the players have built throughout the years. “It’s fun to just see how some of our cheers have transitioned through the years and through the players on the team,” Lyla added.
At the opening game, the Dungeon encouraged, yelled, and laughed, as they sat (and stood) in their seats. Dungeon Member Warner Vaccaro (‘25) was a prominent voice among the crowd, yelling “boom!” whenever the spikers got a kill. Lyla explained that Dungeon members didn’t argue with the referee, but knew “a bit about the calls and what to be hype about. That was fun because you don’t see that very often.”
The opening game drew much excitement and attention. “I think that was probably our largest crowd we’ve ever had,” Lyla noted. “It was great having a pretty supportive fan base.”
For this upcoming season, the Knights have many goals to achieve. Lyla described wanting to be an accessible leader for the underclassmen on the team. “Being open and available for them has been something I’ve always wanted to be,” she said.
“I think every season, two of our goals are to be the best team we can be and be better than we were last year, and for the seniors to have their best year ever,” Sierra concluded. “Our main goal as Bishop’s Volleyball is to have integrity, and we try to have as much fun for varsity and our JV team.”
