The lady streaks varsity volleyball team currently has a record of 3-4, which seems pretty average. However, their away record is 3-0, and their home record is 0-4. Even weirder, four of these seven games have been against two of the same teams. So why can’t the girls seem to take a win at home?

Originally, the girls thought it was due to the lack of fans coming out at home games.

Senior Ananda McAfee says the gyms at other schools were much more exciting than our own HHS one.

“When we were away, there were huge student sections cheering against us. Like for us to miss a serve or something, and that made us really hype and we would always come back to win the point,” McAfee said.

After the second loss at home to the same teams the girls had beaten away the week before, Athletic Director Darrell Wilson decided to take action to help the squad. The third home game for the junior varsity and varsity volleyball teams, against the same opponent of Eastern Mennonite High School (whom they had defeated in an away match the week before), was to be completely free for students.

Although this idea was indeed executed, and many more people were in attendance of the third home game comparatively, the girls still fell to Eastern Mennonite in three sets.

Sophomore libero (defensive specialist), Athena Benton no longer had a cause for the losing streak at home.

“I don’t know why we lost. We just didn’t play well, we had a lot of our own errors, even though there were a lot of people there supporting us,” Benton said.

The girls’ varsity coach, Andrew Thompson, then had the idea of the lack of familiarity with the girls’ own home court.

“We practice with JV in our gym, so we practice on two practice courts that go perpendicular to our actual game court. So the only times we play on our home court is when we have games, kind of not giving us a home court advantage,” Benton said.

The varsity girls are now beginning to practice on the full court, moving the JV squad to the auxiliary gym, at least once a week.

“We’re going to try to work harder in practice so we’re always playing the way we should in games, because it’s in the same gym. We don’t want to get in a bad habit in our home gym,” McAfee said.

The girls’ next away game is this Thursday, September 23 against the blazers at Spotswood High School.

“Spotswood is competition, but we’re hoping to keep our away record looking good,” Benton said.