While the beginning of the 2022 volleyball season has seen Pella Christian win just two of their first seven matches, the young Eagles squad has been encouraged by how they have played. 

Pella Christian has been tested early and often to begin their season, having faced four ranked teams already and going 1-3 in those matches. In the most recent of those games, Pella Christian hung tough but ultimately lost to Class 4A’s #14 ranked Indianola. Despite that loss dropping their record to 2-5 on the season, juniors Annika Van Dyke and Ema Zula believe the team has played well and are heading in the right direction.

Van Dyke: “The score of the last game was really encouraging, to be so close at 21-25 with a more skilled team. So that was kind of fun. That was encouraging. But I think that we had good defense in that game.”

Zula: “Yeah, and I feel like our serve receive definitely stayed pretty strong throughout the game. They went on a few runs, but I feel overall we did pretty good in serve receive and the blocking was really good too. We got a lot of touches on that. So, that helped our defense and I feel like we were pretty aggressive at the net, so I definitely think that we played pretty well.”

Click here for a full interview with Van Dyke and Zula.

The Eagles are off until Tuesday when they play on Eagle Lane for the first time this fall, hosting Grinnell.