To say the Anzar High volleyball team had a tough 2013 season would be a mild understatement.
The Hawks finished 1-16 overall and 1-10 in Mission Trail League play, missing the Central Coast Section playoffs for just the third time in the last 13 years. However, the returning Anzar players are confident they’ll be making a return trip to the postseason.
“Our expectation is nothing less than the playoffs,” said senior defensive specialist Emily Papenhausen, who has been on the varsity team since her freshman year.
Papenhausen is one of three captains on the team, along with senior outside hitter Karina Campos and sophomore outside hitter Katia Dizon.
The Hawks also expect key contributions from senior defensive specialist Lynette Weckerle, senior middle blocke r Leslie Martinez, junior middle blocker Yesenia Rios, junior middle blocker Megan Campos, setter Ally Ford and setter Samantha Bleisch.
“Last year was a rebuilding year, but this year I think you’ll see the Anzar of old, if you will,” Hawks coach Tom Schatz said.
Papenhausen agreed: “This group has more chemistry and will work together better, since a lot of the girls played for Fault Line (a club team coached by Schatz) over the summer.”
Karina Campos said going through a rebuilding year made the team tougher, both physically and mentally.
“We knew we weren’t as strong as in other years, which made it all the more important we didn’t give up on each other,” she said. “(Assistant coach Chris) Wardlaw has a saying that volleyball is our church, and we treat each other like sisters. We try to make it where the team is drama-free, which is huge since we’re all girls playing the same sport.”
It’s often said that a team’s character is revealed more through adversity than in success, and Anzar plans on using 2013 as a building block to catapult itself to another playoff run.
In Dizon, the Hawks have a player with enormous potential. Dizon comes from rich athletic bloodlines: Her dad, Jun, played college football and her mom, Anissa, was the only girl when she played baseball in San Benito’s Babe Ruth League. At 5-foot-8, Dizon is usually at a height disadvantage whenever she attempts to terminate the ball against the opponents’ block.
However, Dizon has learned to get past the block in a variety of ways.
“I look at where the blockers are positioned and read them,” Dizon said. “Sometimes I can hit through their hands or sometimes I can jump higher than them.”
Said Schatz: “We’re looking for Katia to play above her grade. She’s a great athlete and can execute some strong swings.”
If Anzar wants to return to the playoffs, it has to get back to what it does best: excel in the fundamentals. Those are the areas Papenhausen and Karina Campos excel in, and they’ll be counted upon to be as solid as ever on serve-receive and making the spectacular dig early and often.
“We need to be scrappy and technically sound,” Schatz said. “Defense will be our strong suit, and we’re going to run a dynamic offense where hopefully we can keep teams off guard.”
For Karina Campos, the savvy senior enters her final season under a cloud of uncertainty. In the offseason, Campos started to experience a sharp pain in her left hip whenever she did a physical activity.
Campos said she hasn’t received a definitive answer on what her condition is, or why she’s having problems with her hip.
“It doesn’t seem to be getting better, just worse,” Campos said. “My parents don’t want me to play (if the pain persists), but this is my last year, and I’m going to put everything I have into playing.”
Campos has learned to tolerate much of the pain, and she puts an ice-heat pad on her hip everyday, combining that with sessions of stretching in the morning and evening.
She’s worked too hard not to be on the floor for her final season, one in which Anzar hopes ends in another playoff berth.
