Latexo Volleyball Coach's Show - The Messenger News

Latexo Volleyball Remains Undefeated in District Play

By Greg Ritchie

Messenger Reporter

LATEXO – The Latexo Lady Tiger volleyball team seems to have hit their stride this season, playing at a higher level and the team has come together, supporting each other with the results speaking for themselves. Now undefeated in district play, the ladies and coaches will need to maintain that momentum as they sit at the top of the hill, with all other teams looking to take them down. The Messenger was able to sit down with Latexo ISD Athletic Director and Head Coach Greg Horn and his team captains to speak about the season so far and the upcoming games.

To see the full video of this interview, please click on the link below. Thanks to our sponsor, Latexo ISD for making this possible.

Coach Greg Horn

Latexo is undefeated in district play and recently won against Houston County rival Lovelady. What is going right for this team this year?

“Pretty much everything. The girls are serving really well. Usually, in the past three years, I’ve called the serves, like you would call pitches, but this year, they know where to serve based on the defense. I thought it would be a lot less stressful on them if they called their own serves. And after they started, they let me know where they serve and we talked about it. We did that a lot more at the beginning of the year. Now, I don’t even really question them – they know what they’re doing. And we’ve had a lot of compliments on our serves being consistently on, so that’s a big plus. The second thing is we attack really well. We have lots of kills – from our front and our centers are setting well. We’re just running a different, higher level offense with slides and doubles and that kind of stuff. So those two things really pushed us over over the edge this year.”

Kids come and go as each year progresses. What is different about the players this year?

“This year is the first year that all the girls have been with me from the beginning. So we didn’t have don’t have any of that leftover from another coach. The biggest thing with these girls is they all get along and they all come together. The selfishness has gone away. There are times in games when a girl is not hitting well and might think somebody else would do better. ‘Coach, don’t set me or send somebody else.’”

Senior Taylor Dise, Outside Hitter

“I’m very proud of how this team has progressed. In the past, the teams have created drama and caused our team to split a lot. And that’s what really brought us down in the playoffs last year, in my opinion. We all kind of fell apart and we didn’t come together like we should have. I’m really excited for this season because right now we haven’t had any of that splitting and team drama. And I’m hoping that we can stay that way through the playoffs. After high school, I’m planning on going to college and then going into kinesiology to do either athletic training or physical therapy.”

Senior Taylor Dise, Outside Hitter

Junior Lauren Woodard, Middle Blocker

“Coach Horn is a real jokester which is great, but he’s a really great coach and I think he’s most definitely built our program to be the best that it probably has ever been. It’s hard on him because he’s coaching all three sports, but he does a great job at it. And he puts his all and focuses everything on the sport that’s in season at that time. I want to play softball in college and I want to also study kinesiology, to be a physical therapist after I graduate high school.”

Junior Katy Allen, Center

“It’s been a struggle for me trying to balance so much of my higher-level classes with athletics, but so far, it’s been manageable. I definitely feel I’ve shown a lot of improvement compared to previous years, and that goes for my team as well. Coach Horn has definitely helped us over the summer individually, as well as putting our team in a place to bond together. I plan to play softball in college. I hope to study sports medicine and go into either athletic training or physical training.”

Greg Ritchie can be reached at [email protected]