Lady Bobcats’ varsity volleyball team looking to build momentum off banner 2023 season

After a banner season in 2023, in which the Phil Campbell High School varsity volleyball team made a run into the Class 3A regional tournament, the Lady Bobcats have been preparing to achieve similar, if not greater, success in the upcoming campaign.

Phil Campbell head coach Julianna Taylor, who took the reins of the program before the start of the 2023 season, wants to build on the accomplishments the Lady Bobcats achieved in her first year with the team.

“We won area last year. We won 22 games and ended up making it to regionals and into the second round of the regionals—the sweet 16. We made it further than anyone else in this area, so I thought that was awesome,” Taylor said. “We had a really good season last year. It was the first year making it past 20 wins in the program. It’s just Phil Campbell’s fourth year having a volleyball program, so the girls did really good making it that far.

“There’s a lot of pressure this year, especially with the season we had last year, but I think that now that we know how to win games—that was a learning experience, as well last year: learning how to take over and win games—but now that we know how to do that I think it’ll be a different season this year starting out,” she added.

The focus heading into this offseason, in preparation for the new campaign, has been strength and conditioning, Taylor said. The Lady Bobcats have also placed an emphasis on the service and receiving aspects of their game.

“Our conditioning and our workouts, getting stronger in the weightroom, was really important this year, as far as moving and being quicker,” she said. “I’ve noticed our girls are definitely getting up, they’re jumping higher and they’re moving quicker. They’ve worked really hard.

“We’ve also really worked on our serving and serve receive in our offseason, and I think those are areas we’ll see a lot of improvement in,” Taylor added.

The Lady Bobcats varsity roster is a combination of experience and youth, but Phil Campbell will be reliant on a core of veteran, senior leadership to guide the way this season. Phil Campbell’s three seniors—libero Mia Ambrosio and hitters Britney Coffman and Bradley McDaniel—constitute “the backbone of the team,” the second-year head coach said.

“We’ve got three seniors, three starters, back, and the rest will be newer players,” Taylor said. “My setter who we’ve moved up is only a ninth grader this year. She’s going to be really good—Lexxi Santoni—and she’ll help us a lot as far as speeding up the game, but our seniors are definitely our backbone this year.”

“I expect my seniors to really step up and be leaders this year,” Taylor added. “I feel like they can change our game, as far as taking over games and just being leaders on and off the court. A lot of the girls look up to them, especially on JV and the younger girls on varsity. They look up to them, and I think just having them step up will really help us. Whenever we get down in games we’re going to look to them to lift us up.”