Lawrence County volleyball kicked off their offseason earlier this week by hosting a youth camp with local volleyball rec-league clubs.
“ This is probably my 11th year of having these,” head coach Robyn Hutto said. “So this is where it all starts because most of the kids that are in my program, this is where it started for them. So we try to make it enjoyable.”
Hutto said the varsity girls have been participating in summer workouts with other girls but just started the volleyball portion recently
“ Fall sports get the last four weeks and in those four weeks, you can have three weeks of competition,” she said. “We could have started competition last week, but we have so many multi-sport athletes and I don’t want to just wear them slap out.”
After the youth camp, the Red Devils will host a University of Alabama in Huntsville volleyball camp with some playdates later on in the week.
“ We’ll have camp here, UAH is coming in and doing a satellite camp here July 7th and eighth,” she said. “Then the little girls are coming back the next day and I’ve invited any of the rec teams that want to come over and just do a little practice play thing for them. Then we have our first play date on the 11th here.”
She said the girls have been conditioning and working out with other sports and those playdates will be the first time she sees who can fill in what spots.
“ We haven’t done any ball work yet because they’ve been in other stuff. But I’m looking at our serve-receive and passing because for the past two years, Bentlee (Cross) and Sarah (Dutton) have been in every single serve receive.” she said.
Hutto said she’ll be looking for a kind of utility player, someone whose not afraid to do the work down low in order to set up a hitter,
“ So if I’m looking for anything, it’s just seeing if somebody kind of jumps into those roles and takes off,” Hutto said. “Everybody looks at the people slamming it down and people getting aces on the serve, but they don’t really notice that passer.”
She said she’ll return six-rotation players like LA Norwood, Ava Templeton, Kathryn Dutton and Harper Long but also welcomes Alivia Templeton and Emily Byers – who will vie for Cross’ outside hitter spot.
“ We did two days of tryouts. The first day wasn’t spectacular and then we had a big break in between the second day because of softball and they looked great on that second day,” Hutto said. “I was like, ‘I don’t know what y’all have done between this time and that time but I couldn’t have picked just six.’ They just really impressed me because it’s hard to get into the gym and work on these things by yourself.”
With the season quickly approaching within the next two months, Hutto said her excitement is starting to pick up now and she can’t wait to see what she has to work with come this fall.
“ June’s nice for me mainly because I get to rest and all that. But I’ll get excited, especially once next Monday rolls around and they start camp and I start seeing them,” she said. “It’s fun, this is going to be team 28 and I’m just as excited today as I was the first year that I started this.”
