Girls’ volleyball comes back after coaching switch

With regular head coach Brad Frederickson out for family reasons, the girls’ volleyball team will be coached by Steve Chiou, father of senior setter Nicole Chiou, for the rest of the season.

Coach Chiou has been one of the main coaches for the Mountain View Volleyball Club in the past.

“[Coach Chiou’s ] coaching technique is to focus on one specific skill such as blocking or serve receive for a long period of time in order to make one specific aspect of our game extra strong,” senior captain Jennifer Chen said.

Despite multiple wins against non-league opponents, the Falcons are struggling in the De Anza League with a record of 2-7 as of Oct. 23.

The team lost 3-1 against Mountain View on Oct. 22 after having to go into a fourth tiebreaker set. The team also lost 3-0 against Los Gatos on Oct. 20.

One specific skill that Coach Chiou has been working on with the team during these two games is something called the serve receive. In particular, the team is working on making sure that each first touch to the ball is correct in order to strongly end the set.

According to Chen, the team has been adjusting well to switching coaches in the middle of the season. The team works for two hours most days and consistently stays over practice for an hour or more in order to strengthen skills together.

This extra work may have helped the team beat both Gunn 3-1 on Oct. 15 and Homestead on Oct. 13. These wins reversed the losses in the first of two league matchups.

To make CCS, the team has to finish in the the top three teams in the De Anza League. This would mean that they have to beat Mountain View, Palo Alto and Los Altos.

“Even with a big transition to a new coach, we have improved very quickly as a team,” Chen said. “We all have the mindset to fight hard for the remainder five games left in the season in order to make CCS.”

Remaining games are against Palo Alto on Oct. 27,, Los Altos on Oct. 29 and Homestead on Nov. 3 could not be covered because of printing deadlines.