The NHIS Girl’s Volleyball Teams look to improve their skills over the course of their season, so they can succeed in becoming a stronger team.

The JV Program is lead by Jeff Uyemura-Reyes, and the Varsity Program is lead by Jubei Wong.

The NHIS JV Volleyball team goals for this year are to strive to become better players and having support on their side.

Bianca Ramila, freshman player, said that one of her rewarding goals is “Sharing positive vibes with everybody and loving each other for who they are.”

Uyemura-Reyes, was the varsity coach at Kailua High School. He has been coaching volleyball since 1999. Coach Jeff was trained on the mainland and he trained in Colorado at the Olympics Training Center.

“I think my athletes say that I am a pretty intense coach. My style of coaching is very similar to that mainland volleyball coaches which maybe little bit different from what our volley players are use to here at Hawaii. I was trained on the mainland, I trained at in Colorado at the Olympics training center, so my style of format of volleyball play is very similar to that at the US Nationals.”

Uyemura-Reyes believes that the NHIS team has potential.

“The NHIS JV team here is very very talented, but we’re not that experience. Not all the players play club volleyball, not all the players play year round, but they’re hard working, they try hard, but we’re still working on the fundamental skills that they need to have in order to become very good volleyball players,” said Uyemura-Reyes.

The NHIS Varsity Volleyball team are striving to become better volleyball players and to learn more about volleyball techniques.

Hailey Thomas, senior player, said, “I feel that we are going to do well for this whole year.”

The team has been facing challenges with not having enough players for this season.

Wong said, “One of the biggest challenges was the number of girls trying out for the team. Within the last three to four years we had about 40-50 girls try out for volleyball so it’s been a good number. This year, we pretty much struggled to get about 35 girls out so our teams are actually pretty small.”

Despite the lower turnout, Wong believes in the talent of the team.

“Although the quantity of players are low, the qualities they bring to the team are high as they strive to better their skills.” said Wong.

Wong said that being a head coach has changed him in many ways.

“I was an assistant my first two years here so I think a lot of it changed in terms of responsibility. I’m the Head Coach of the Volleyball for girls and boys so in terms of fundraising, team outings, organizing the schedules for pre-season, for bus schedules so it’s a lot of responsibilities on one person so I have a good staff behind me that helps us with that.”