One week down, plenty more to go.

The Odessa High and Permian volleyball teams wrapped up their first week of the season Friday at the Monahans Tournament at the Jerry Larned Sports Complex.

The Lady Bronchos split their two games of pool, play, defeating Fort Stockton, 25-15, 25-17, before falling to defending tournament champion Bushland, 25-14, 19-25, 25-15.

Odessa High will play in the Silver Bracket today.

“As of right now, I’m very hopeful,” said Odessa High head coach Victoria Smith. “We’ve already come so far along from the start of the week. We’re starting to get that rhythm going and we feel like it’s coming together.”

For Smith, it’s a relief to get through the first week of the season.

“It’s tiring,” Smith said. “It’s stressful. But we made it. We survived. And we’re only going up from here.”

The Lady Bronchos opened the season with a pair of losses, to El Paso Franklin and Midland High. Despite the ups and downs throughout the week, Smith is optimistic about her team’s direction.

“We have a good idea of where we’re going and hopefully, we can go in to the next week feeling great and confident that we can get the job done,” Smith said.

 “We have girls who can finish the play and can take care of business.”

The player echoed Smith’s word, knowing that the first 10 days of practice and early-season matching are just the first steps toward a successful season.

 “Getting this first week out of the way, everything feels pretty good so far,” said setter Natalia Benavides. “We did get off to a rocky start but we’re starting to play together as a team. We’re starting to connect more as a team.

 “I can trust my players,” Benevides said. “We can all play a part and we play pretty well as a team; we need to be more aggressive but we’re getting there.”

Permian played three matches on Friday and the start didn’t go as well as the Lady Panthers planned, falling, 26-24, 25-20, to Fabens.

They quickly rebounded for a pair of victories — defeating the Midland Lee JV, 25-17, 25-13, and coming back with a 25-13, 25-13, sweep of Plains — to advance to the Gold Bracket.

Permian will face Bushland at 10 a.m.

 “It’s exciting to be out on the court and see your personnel,” said Permian head coach Gillian Herrera. “Seeing who’s going to step up and become the go-to player, it’s been a heck of a week.”

One of the things Herrera has liked so far has been her team’s learning curve.

“We’re getting better with each game and we’re working hard,” Herrera said. “As far as what we need to work on, we need to control the ball better. On defense, we need to work on serving a little bit better and getting stronger as a team.”

The Lady Panthers have had to do their best with the lack of practice.

Going forward, creativity and finding ways to put the ball down as well as earning points are among the list of things to improve on for Permian High, according to Herrera.

“We need to take care of the ball better and cherish it more,” Herrera said. “We need to speed up our offense more and that’ll come along as this season progresses. I’m excited to see what we can do.”

But getting the first tournament out of the way has been crucial.

“It’s been awhile since we’ve played in a tournament,” Herrera said. “Our players have played club ball over the summer. But we’ve been able to see where we need to adjust and see who needs to step up. We’re going to continue to strive for that each game.”

The players are already taking notice of what needs to be done.

“It feels really good to get this first week out of the way,” said hitter Hanna Heatherington. “I feel like we’ve been doing pretty good and that we’re going to keep improving.”

One of the key differences that Heatherington has noticed late in the week was the intensity level as well as communication.

“We’ve improved on keeping our intensity up and supporting each other,” Heatherington said. “I feel like we’ve been able to put the ball down a lot better and that we’ve been talking a lot more. We can still work on putting more balls down and playing with intensity when we’re down.”
