Mosley volleyball team into fall workouts as they set out to defend state title

PANAMA CITY, Fla. (WJHG/WECP) -Mosley’s Redfern Gym is a busy place these days, as coach Michelle Mask and her Dolphins prepare to defend the state championship won in 2021, that program’s first. The team back at it in early fall workouts, with Friday morning another practice in advance of the season opener which comes in just over two weeks. Mosley racking up 23 wins last season on the way to the 5A state title. As usual, a few players depart via graduation, so some starting slots need to be filled. Coach Mask is confident there’s enough talent, and size on hand to do just that. And she knows, as the team gets into these fall workouts, well nobody’s out of shape or having to work back into the “volleyball” routine!

“You know kind of the mentality that we’re going into this year, last year we were chasing.” Coach Mask told me. “We were chasing it, this year we’re being chased. So we know we’ve got to outrun the competition. We’ve got to work ten times harder. We can’t do what we did last year and expect to repeat. We’ve got to do something different. We all understand that’s kind of what is expected this year of us. "

And as for the players continuing to put in the work, to prove their hungry....not a problem at all!

”Oh I think they’re very hungry.” Mask said “Moving up a classification changed our mindset a lot. Staying in the same classification in 5A you know, I don’t think it would have made us as hungry. So I think we have something to prove this year, that we did it last year in 5A but we can do again in 6A too.”

And there’s no worry about any of the Mosley players being out of shape, or not in good “volleyball” mode as fall practice kicks into high gear, says the coach.

“You know 100 percent of my kids play club. Or beach, so they played since we ended, you know we ended right before Thanksgiving last year. And they haven’t stopped. And you know there’s pros and cons to both of that. But I think what I take away from that is they want to compete, they want to defend our state championship, yeah they’re uh, no rest.”

That opener on the 23rd comes again 9 time 1A defending champion Sneads, so it will be champs against champs, at Mosley in just over a couple of weeks.

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