Steeleville volleyball ready for the challenge
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With a new head coach and a squad that is both young and small in numbers, this could be considered a rebuilding year for the Steeleville Warriors volleyball program. Still, Coach Renee Rheinecker is excited about the season. The 1999 graduate of Steeleville High School is looking forward to her role as head coach after spending three years as an assistant at Chester.
"We have been conditioning and working hard for several weeks on skills and setting up out offense and defense" said Rheinecker. "We only have 14 girls but I am making the best of what we have!"
Brooke Rees and Megan Jeffers are the only seniors on this year's roster. They will be counted on to lead the team along with returning varsity players Alex Gale and Brooke Cates. The junior class is the largest as they are represented by six girls. However, they do not have much varsity experience as a group. You can also tell that Coach Rheinecker is looking toward long-term success as she mentioned that she has four freshmen "that show a lot of promise for the future of Steeleville volleyball".
Steeleville's regular season schedule does appear to be a challenging one. The Warriors will compete in four tournaments (at Marissa, Trico, Herrin and Sparta) and compete in the usually tough Kaskaskia division of the Cahokia Conference against rivals such as Marissa, New Athens and Valmeyer. Rounding out the schedule will be a few non-conference games against larger area schools like Sparta and Pinckneyville.
Steeleville volleyball is entering a new era, but hopefully the hard work of Coach Reinecker and her players will result in many successful seasons to come.