(Elk Horn) Official practice is less than a week away for High School volleyball players. When the Exira-EHK Spartans kick off their 2022 season they’ll be doing so under a new head coach.
Derek Reischauer takes the helm. He has previous experience at Moravia. “I’ve been teaching there and coaching there for the past seven years. Started out as assistant volleyball for two years and assistant girls basketball for four years. Turned into the head volleyball coach for three years and the head girls basketball coach for three years.” Reischauer says, “Obviously most people know about Exira-EHK’s tradition for athletics and I was looking for a new challenge and got the opportunity and am excited to have it.”
Exira-EHK has had a lot of basketball and softball success in recent years. Part of Reischauer’s task will be taking those good athletes and making it all come together for a volleyball program that hasn’t finished above .500 since 2016. “I’ve been talking with our AD about fitness opportunities and agility drills and that type of work that we need to be doing for all of our sports. Everything I’ve found out is they do a good job of working with their girls and all of their athletes in the offseason and getting them athletic. Now it’s just a matter of getting to know our girls and what their talents are and their skills are and putting them together on the floor.”
Reischauer’s M.O. is to play quick and aggressive. “I don’t want to sit back. I have to do some evaluation on what we have skill wise.” Reischauer says, “I’ll always take an athlete over height any time and I know we have good athletes here. I want to be quick and aggressive and attacking as much as we can.”
Official practice starts Monday. “I’m big on fundamentals so we are going to go over a lot of fundamental things and get squared away on what we need to see fundamentally in our volleyball whether it’s passing or attacking or killing or serving. We have to get our fundamentals down especially our footwork. I want to get in and meet the girls and I don’t want to change everything on them or have it all be foreign and new. I do want to find out what they’ve done well and what they can do well and enhance those skills, but at the same time put in some systems that I think can help us be successful.”
The Spartans have had back to back seasons with at least ten wins. They lose just two seniors from last year’s squad.
Exira-EHK coach Derek Reischauer:
