Playing a close game, girls’ volleyball lost a tough match against Bloomington Jefferson Oct. 22 putting its record at 4-1.

Head coach Emily Minnick said that in order to win sets, the team needs to minimize the amount of errors it’s making.

“We need to be more consistent. We showed up in the first and the fourth set and really played our hardest, but in that second and third set, it just wasn’t us; we made a lot of errors,” Minnick said. “We just need to work on consistency and making fewer errors.”

A way that the team is minimizing the number of errors made is through early morning practices on game days. According to Minnick, these practices help the players get in the right place mentally.

“It’s just important for them to touch a ball before the match, and with my schedule and my assistant coach’s schedule, mornings are the only thing available for us,” Minnick said. “They like it, it gets them started for the day because their mindset is set right.”

According to senior captain Raegan Alexander, the practices are specifically helpful while distance learning is still in place.

“It gets our bodies moving in the morning. Especially with distance learning, we don’t really know what people are doing over the school day, so it just gets us up and ready,” Alexander said.

Senior Macy Martinson said that the main focus for this year has been the fundamentals of volleyball.

“What we’ve really been focusing on this year is having a good serve and pass game, and that’s what we focus on in the mornings,” Martinson said. “It helps us with the hardest part of the game, which is the passing. When we win a game, we win it with passes and serves.”

According to Alexander, another focus for the team as a whole is to avoid an individualistic mentality.

“We were too hard on ourselves individually, which causes a struggle because (volleyball) is such a team sport,” Alexander said.

Going forward, Martinson said she thinks that the team needs to be immediately prepared going into the match.

“It’s all an attitude, we have to start ready to go. We have been taking the first set to just warm up these past few games, and we need to just start on our game,” Martinson said.

The next girls’ volleyball game is at 7 p.m. Oct. 27 against Robbinsdale Cooper at home.