HS Volleyball:Griswold looking to improve mental approach

They have five seniors in the starting lineup, three strong juniors and a freshman who played well in her debut in a Griswold volleyball uniform.
The Wolverines have plenty of reasons to be optimistic about the year, especially after kicking it off with a, 3-2, win over Norwich Free Academy Wednesday night.
"We're all returning players, we have a freshman who's doing really well, I really think we can go far in the ECC's and even states," Griswold senior setter Tessa Velasquez said.
There were some iffy moments on Wednesday when they started to doubt themselves and the Wildcats, despite being young and inexperienced on the varsity level, took the opportunity to rally back after losing the first two games of the match.
The Wolverines settled back and relaxed after winning 25-15 and 25-14 in the first two games, then found it hard to recover that same intensity to finish up the match, despite leading 13-3 in the third game.
"We were shanking balls, we weren't focused like the first two games that we had played," said senior Nina Wojtkiewicz who finished with 16 kills, 15 digs, and four assists.
Wojtkiewicz, the emotional leader of the Wolverines, found herself hitting shots back into the net and the euphoria that she had exhibited in the first two games, suddenly turned to wrinkles of worry upon her expression-filled face.
"We lost those two games and I was like' this can't happen, we're not going to let this go,' ", she said.
As Wojtkiewicz goes, so go the Wolverines.
"She gets a little too hard on herself at times and she has to know that she's our senior leader on the court," Griswold coach Jamie Bruno said. "She has to play steady no matter what, she has to be our rock. If she loses her head and she's not as focused, the rest of the team loses its focus."
Fortunately for Bruno, the Wolverines regrouped in the fifth game and played "smart", something they hadn't necessarily done in the middle two games.
"We were trying to get kills, when we really didn't need them, NFA was just playing safe," Bruno said. "We just had to put the pressure on them by using smart shots."
The little hiccup in the middle didn't take away from the fact that it was still a Large Division team that Griswold had beaten and Bruno, like Velasquez, feels the team certainly has the potential to turn some heads this fall.
"We definitely can go places, we just have to get through the mental blockades that we set for ourselves," Bruno said. "We can be our own worst enemy at times, that's our biggest hurdle to get over, and we can do it by just staying focused through the whole match."