By all accounts, it was a successful inaugural season for Northside volleyball coach Matt Waack.

The Lady Bears made significant improvement, challenging for the 7A-Central lead early on as they finished with a winning record and reaching the 7A State Tournament.

But Waack wants to go to a higher level, which means contending for the 7A-Central and going deeper into the postseason. The Lady Bears bring back some experience as they have eight seniors on the roster, plus Waack is real high on his younger players.

On Tuesday, Northside hosted a team camp which included Southside, Springdale, Shiloh Christian and Rogers Heritage. Following the Lady Bears’ play, and with their season opener less than three weeks away on Aug. 21 at Lavaca, Waack sat down for a Q&A session.

Q: What have you been able to do these last few weeks in preparation for the upcoming season?

A: We’ve been going every day; we went up to a team camp at (the University of Arkansas) on July 17, and ever since we got back from that, we’ve just been going every day getting ready for (the season) and we’ll keep going. ... Next week, we’ll go every day.

Q: What have you seen from the team so far?

A: I feel like the team’s progressed really well; we’ve kind of got some kids who have really solidified into a nice lineup for me. I think we’ve got a good rotation running, so I think I’m kind of done playing with that for now and I’m going to let them run with it for a little while and see if we can really, really get solid on our serve-receive and our defense. We’ve changed a few things about the way we’re playing defense this year, just some things that I think our kids are more comfortable with and it seems to be paying off. We’ve got really big blockers; this is the biggest team I’ve ever had and I’ve got five girls that are six-foot or real close. ... We’re really tall in the front row and that comes with some senior leadership with Alexis Evans, Chloe Fitzgerald, Mari Sumbler, Shalay Prendergast, so I’ve got a lot of seniors up there blocking for me which really helps my defense, and then I’ve got Sydney Green playing libero again and she’s a senior, so that really helps.

Q: Last season was your first as head coach, and the Lady Bears really exceeded a lot of expectations. Now, the expectation level has increased so to speak, hasn’t it, and what’s the mindset of this team entering the 2017 season?

A: We definitely have higher expectations. I’m curious to see how a couple of other teams in our conference will fare so I kind of know where we will stand, but we definitely would like to win conference, that’s still a big goal of ours. Also, we have a lot of home games early in the season, and we’ve done a lot of talking about winning at home, just really setting that standard for our home games and making it tough to come play here at Northside.

Q: What else really has you excited about the upcoming season?

A: I’m really excited about the youth I’ve got coming up through the system; I feel like we’re really starting to build. We’ve got a lot of sophomores this year. ... I think they’re really going to push these older kids. We haven’t had a lot of depth in the past, and so I feel like we’re going to have some depth and we’ve talked a lot about not just winning varsity but also winning (junior varsity) matches and sophomore matches. We want to start building Northside into a program that people don’t want to play, and it takes time and we’ve put some of it in and we’ve got to continue from here.

Q: What else have you liked from the kids this summer?

A: They’ve worked really hard. I put my kids through a rigorous strength and conditioning program, and some of them had never been in the weight room before, and then they come and we do workouts with lifting weights, running, conditioning, all kinds. I’m tough, I really am a tough coach to play for, but at the same time, I love my kids, they’re good kids and they work really hard for me and they know that their work will pay off and they’re starting to see a little bit of that this week.

Q: If there’s one thing that’s really been a pleasant surprise for you this off-season, what has it been for you?

A: Our defense. I’ve been really, really pleased with how our defense is coming along and we’ve worked a lot on it in the past and I feel like it hasn’t always quite clicked and that may have to do with some continuity. ... But I feel like we’re digging a lot more stuff, getting touches on stuff, which I really like because I like for us to make it hard on teams to score on it because that makes it frustrating for them.

Q: What’s going to be the biggest emphasis going into next week when the practice schedule ramps up?

A: Going into next week, we’re really going to start fine-tuning all of our lineups. I’ve got the varsity to where the lineup’s set, but we need to go over what play sets I want called in each rotation, so that way my setters know without even looking at me, this is what we’re running, this is what we’re running. We’ll also start practicing with my setters because both my setters that will run a 6-2 with it have never started varsity for me before; one’s a sophomore (Lexie Mosby) and one’s a senior (Kassidy Sayavong).
